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I want to know what new age religious people are out there and what they believe. Atheism and Christianity are not new age, if that is the main basis of your religion or non-religion.
What I mean by new age, is out of the ordinary. Druidism, shamanism, wicca, etc. Or, something that you created or mashed together yourself.
What I mean by new age, is out of the ordinary. Druidism, shamanism, wicca, etc. Or, something that you created or mashed together yourself.
Those are not examples of new age. Those are very old religions.
When I hear "new age", I think of "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle; "The Seeker's Guide" by Elizabeth Lesser; and "When the Soul Awakens: The Path to Spiritual Evolution and a New World Era" by Nancy Seifer and Martin Vieweg; etc.
Edit to add: Oh, and "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne.
The problem with the "New Age" label is that there's nothing new about it. What it actually is is the leaving of the major religions, and establishing a spiritual path that suits the individual. The thing about it is that the people who choose this path is judged, ignored, or rejected by the majority.
Back to the question. My path of spiritual living is the belief of reincarnation, the use of medicinal/psychedelic plants and fungi, the belief that we all are apart of God(not the biblical one), we all have infinite power, alot of eastern philosophies and that everything in life happens for a reason
Those are not examples of new age. Those are very old religions.
When I hear "new age", I think of "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle; "The Seeker's Guide" by Elizabeth Lesser; and "When the Soul Awakens: The Path to Spiritual Evolution and a New World Era" by Nancy Seifer and Martin Vieweg; etc.
Edit to add: Oh, and "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne.
Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now" is a very good book. While I don't necessarily buy into all of his mushy quasi-transcendental stuff, he's got some good stuff in there. I find it's mostly Buddhist philosophy repackaged a bit, but it's presented in a way that's easier to understand than most "religious" texts.
I spent some time long ago with New Agers in California and Arizona. They had some interesting belief sytems, but the long and short of it was that they were trying to find a link to god, by whatever definition that might be. Same thing other religions do.
They borrowed heavily from other religions and faiths, especially older tribal religions and Zen.
"New Age Movement" is an umbrella term for any variety of these movements, and one may have nothing in common with the next.
They were hated by Christians because, as the Christians claimed, they were worshiping Satan by empowering the individual on his own to attain to the Godhead without going through the traditional church. (I think it was all about money though)
Bottom Line was, the New Age Movements I encountered in Cali and 'Zona had some people who were just as hypocritical and hokey as the Texas Fundys I had left beghind. Wherever there is money, hoaxsters will converge with a hand out, be that New Age Channelers or TV Faith Healers.
I've created my own religion which is still evolving....it's a Buddhist-Pagan-Native American mix with my "god" being John Lennon (if I had to choose one). I do believe in angels and archangels, I just feel they were people once. I have to believe in things that make sense to me. The things I can't explain, I don't worry about....some things can't be explained.
I'm interested in shamanism, but that's not usually included with the New Age label due to it being the oldest form of spirituality on Earth, from which all other forms of spirituality and religion sprung. But for the purposes of this thread I think it's okay to include it.
The thing that got me interested in shamanism was the fact that ever since I was little I have had lucid dreams. Lucid dreaming, for those who don't know, is when you are fully aware that you're dreaming while you're dreaming. Your waking consciousness knows that you're body is sleeping at that your mind is in the dreamworld. When you lucid dream, you're able to explore the dreamworld in a way that you can't when you normally dream. You can explore it's laws of physics and ask dream characters deep questions and get interesting answers. It's really interesting and fun, but can be scary too, because the more you explore the dream state of being the more you realize that it's a real place. The reason this ties into shamanism is because in a shamanic worldview the place we dream every night (the dreamworld) is the same place as the spirit world. So lucid dreaming is one way to travel to and explore the spirit world. Trance is another. Certain forms of meditation is another. Ingestion of psychedelic substances is yet another.
Lucid dreaming opened the way for me to explore spirituality in a really hands-on way. The dreamworld has its own rules of physics, it's very interesting to try out different things while lucid dreaming and see what works in that realm and what doesn't. It takes quite a bit of time and effort to get your bearings - to recognize which dream characters are real beings and which aren't, to figure out how to travel to different places. Time doesn't really exist there in the same way as in the waking world.
I found that reading about shamanism put my lucid dreaming experiences into a concrete and historic perspective and the philosophies behind shamanism really get straight to the point, spiritually speaking. It cuts through all the fluff and dogma that have come to characterize most religions, without necessarily forcing you to give those up if you don't really want to... you just come to realize that those things are what they are and that they have no bearing on the spiritual reality but rather are about personal preferences and society structures (fluff and dogma I mean).
Hope that made some sense
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