Thoughts on New Age’s therapeutic functions
Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking over how New Age practices have actual therapeutic value that ultimately contribute to more prosocial behavior and greater social cohesion. I figured I’d do a post on this, both to shed light on why New Age spirituality has such a powerful draw on people, and to highlight certain practices that could perhaps be adapted into a framework without the conspiratorial mythology and dangerous pseudoscience.
Full disclosure, I will be approaching this topic from the perspective of an atheistic-leaning agnostic who approaches magic and religion from a psychological and sociological point of view. I’m not here to try and convince you that gods and spirits absolutely don’t exist, but if you do believe they exist, you may find this challenging to your worldview.
So to begin, everyone’s psyches are essentially made up of different, yet interconnected parts. (I would recommend looking at this infographic for deeper, albeit somewhat simplified explanation. Note that post will be mainly be speaking of singlets.)
Let’s take a hypothetical person named Roxie. There’s a part of Roxie that wants to clean the house. There’s another part of Roxie that wants to play a video game. There’s part of Roxie that wants to destroy her enemies. There’s part of Roxie that wants everyone to be friends and live in harmony. There’s a part of Roxie that wants to surrender herself to a strong, powerful figure, and another part of her that wants to remain independent.
Our psyches are all made of different parts like this (though perhaps not all of the exact same parts), and our parts have their uses at different times and places. But it’s possible for some of us to become over-reliant on certain parts and use them in inappropriate times and places. For example, tradwives are taught to always use the part of themselves that wants to surrender to someone strong (usually referred to as their “feminine” or the “divine feminine”), which gets them stuck with extremely misogynist men.
Another example, which is more pertinent to the topic of this post, are people who become over-reliant on the part of themselves that wants to destroy their enemies. This makes them prone to paranoid thinking, essentially seeing enemies and threats everywhere. This in turn prompts them to behave in all kinds of ways that are detrimental to a healthy social life, and detrimental to a healthy society in general. This is basically the state that the kind of people who go around writing wildly hostile replies to absolutely milquetoast takes are in.
However, New Age’s practices and beliefs encourage people to get in touch with their prosocial parts and silence their hostile parts. For example, they are taught how to connect to spirit guides and various higher beings who have loving intentions and want the best for humanity. They are taught to practice discernment by asking themselves how information makes them feel – if it makes you feel afraid or discouraged, ignore it. If it makes you feel uplifted and encouraged, listen.
Now of course this is a terrible method for evaluating whether information is factual or not, which many people in this movement end up trying to do. “Aliens are going to arrive tomorrow and get rid of the world’s tyrants” might make me feel good, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. But it’s a very good method for connecting with and strengthening the parts of yourself with prosocial desires while training your mind to give less priority to your hostile parts and allowing them to weaken and fade.
Even the concept of starseeds is fundamentally a prosocial tool. Each starseed type represents a certain kind of positive role a person can play in society. When a person reads about starseed types and feels resonance with one or more of them, this is essentially a response from the parts of their brains that find these roles appealing. Starseed mythology validates their associated impulses by telling people that this the very thing they’re on Earth to do.
Past life regression hypnosis can also serve the same purpose, with those who undergo it often seeing themselves filling specific roles. When people undergo hypnosis and sees themselves as a priest or priestess, these are arguably images formed from the parts of themselves that want to fill the role of a teacher or guide. In this way, people become aware of the roles they want to fulfill, which empowers them to start doing something they actually enjoy.
Of course there there are flaws. The specific roles that New Agers learn about are not always as useful as they might seem – in fact, they’re sometimes dangerous. Many of the “cosmic truths” an aspiring teacher will go on to spread are just far right conspiracy theories. New Age’s mythology about reptilian aliens is a hodgepodge of antisemitic canards including but not limited to blood libel, economic manipulation, and media manipulation. Their mythology about aliens is largely based on pseudohistory created by white people who could not accept that people of color were capable of building architecture considered impressive by European standards. It all comes from what the New Agers would term a fear-based consciousness.
Meanwhile, the aspiring healer will likely learn alternative healing techniques that are not as useful as they might seem. Fortunately, most alternative healing practices favored by New Agers are fairly harmless in and of themselves (one cannot overdose and poison oneself with reiki, for example). But when coupled with a belief that these treatments should be used in place of conventional medicine (which is often driven by anti-pharma conspiracy theories), or when the practitioner charges so much money that people are compelled to choose between evidence-based medicine and alternative medicine and choose the latter, things can become deadly. Scientific studies have never found evidence to suggest that any alternative medical approach is more effective than current evidence-based treatments, even if people do anecdotally report feeling better or report the occasional miracle.
Furthermore, believing that the images they see under hypnosis are genuine memories of real past lives reinforces belief in conspiracy theories and pseudohistory. They also create a false sense of expertise and entitlement, such as a white person who believes they had a past life as a Native American ritual specialist believing they have authority to speak on matters of Native spirituality and history, and believing they have the right to conduct closed practices.
Yet all of these problems come from the belief system the practices are used in, not from the practices themselves. Outside of the belief system, the practices are a simple yet effective way to identify positive social roles we are likely to find satisfying. Without the conspiratorial, pseudohistorical, and pseudoscientific framework, one can identify more useful ways to fulfill these roles and seek out appropriate education.
I believe New Agers are onto something when they say that we have forgotten who we truly are. But I don’t think it has anything to do with some sort of transcendent divine nature or past lives. I think that through trauma and upbringing in societies that encourage fear and selfishness, we have been raised to forget that we are born to love, cherish, and help each other. I think we’ve also been raised to forget that we don’t need anyone’s permission to follow our hearts.
I think they’re even almost onto something when they say that our governments and economies are ruled by something that feeds on blood and fear. But that something isn’t extradimensional space lizards. It is the systems of government and economics themselves – they was created through fear and bloodshed, and they requires fear and bloodshed to continue existing. But there are no secret places where dark rituals are performed or where bodily fluids are extracted for consumption; only boardrooms where executives discuss moving production factories someplace with fewer safety regulations and politicians discuss manufacturing consent so that the populace will support the invasion of whichever country they wish to extract resources from this time. It is not reptilians that possess these people, but a fear-based belief that their safety and the safety of all they care about relies on these systems.
I fully believe that if things are going to get better, we must get better at loving each other and recognize that wanting to help each other is a natural and normal thing, and we should use whatever tools we have at our disposal to that end. But we must also recognize that the narratives and myths New Age spirituality has relied on this far are products of fear-based consciousness themselves, and cannot truly serve humanity in its progress.
