growing up — Wisdom — Elizabeth Hayes

What New Age Spirituality Gets Right and What it Doesn’t

New Age spirituality isn’t really new anymore. In fact, it’s been around for a few decades, so these days it’s really just branded spirituality. Yet, ask anyone what spirituality or New Age spirituality really is, and the answers will likely be all over the place. New Age spirituality has given rise to so many different modalities, ideas, theories, truths/half-truths, pseudo-sciences, and feel-good totems, it’s become a kitchen sink of spirituality. From body and wellness to astrology, mindfulness and meditation, energy healing, channeling, chanting, sweating, Tarot, Angels, Star seeds, crystals and so on, there’s seemingly no end. With such an exhaustive list, it’s no wonder that New Age spirituality is difficult to really encapsulate, which feeds a common perception that it’s wishy-washy and lacks any true identity.

Virtual Insanity

At the beginning of every dystopian film, there’s always a story about how a society or civilization reached its breaking point. We have now entered our own dystopian reality. Our lives have been upended, although for many, our daily demands of family, work, school and other responsibilities continue. The world as we know it appears more or less like it had on the surface, yet it has now become an empty shell waiting to be filled.

Fear Factor: Why We Need to Stop Using Fear to Motivate Us

The more conscious we become, the more we can see how fear has been used to manipulate, enslave, suppress, control, and even destroy us. How our primal need for safety and survival has led to our own demise, like lambs to the slaughter. Even if it doesn’t kill us, fear kills our spirit, numbs us to our purpose, and forces us to surrender our power.

Life Doesn’t Just Happen: Taking Responsibility for Who We Are

Our spiritual maturity requires that we first acknowledge and own our individual responsibility for our decisions and actions.This is not easy. It requires us to see ourselves not as victims but as the architects of our reality.