Critical Thinking: Has ‘Spirituality’ Become Another Escape?

The new age movement is said to have exploded during the 1970s and, since then, it has continued to grow. When the term ‘new age’ is mentioned, it usually relates to different spiritual or religious beliefs and practices.

When it comes to these beliefs, they include the view that everything in the universe is connected and everything is made up of the same energy, different beings exist and will provide guidance, and that human beings have the power to create their own reality. As for the practices, these include yoga, meditation, astrology, reiki and chanting.

A Number of Similarities

Therefore, although someone might not feel a connection to a god in the sky if they are spiritual, they might feel a connection to something else. In addition, there can be certain things that they do each day.

To someone like this, spirituality is going to be a far better fit and it won’t have all of the weight or the negative associations that are part of organised religion. While organised religion can feel restrictive, spirituality can feel liberating.

The Same Story

However, even though there appeared to be this mass awakening during the 1970s and there are now millions of people on the planet that could be seen as being part of this movement, some people have argued that not a lot has changed. According to this view, there are more people than ever for who are ‘awake’ and yet, it is pretty much business as usual.

It can be hard to comprehend what is going on as if so many people are ‘awake’; surely the world should be different? How can there still be so much dysfunction in the world?

Another Angle

If someone has taken this stance, they may even believe that the new age movement didn’t just randomly grow in the 1970s. Instead, they could believe that there was a reason why this took place and it wasn’t purely due to the fact that people’s consciousness was changing.

This could be seen as something that took place because the elites needed a new way to control the masses. So many people had turned their back on the old form of control – organised religion - and now they needed something else, something far more appealing.

Pacifying the Masses

In this case, the new age movement was there to keep people distracted and to make them more tolerant of what was going on around them. If this was the plan back then, it could be said that it’s still the plan now.
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A lot has changed since that time, though, and one example of this is that corporations now have rooms where people can meditate. On the surface, this can seem like a great idea and a sign that peoples wellbeing is being taken seriously.

Looking Deeper

Another way of looking at this would be to say that this is purely about making workers more productive, while not having to change anything. There is then no need to look into why they would be so stressed and actually make real changes.

This is no different to how so many people are simply given drugs to handle their mental and emotional problems as opposed to real changes taking place in society. Again, it’s a case of treating the symptoms as opposed to the cause – people are seen as the problem, not the society that they live in.

Back To the Main Point

Thus, the new age movement was and still is something that can serve those that want to keep everything the same. With that aside, the big question is: how could so little change if so many people are ‘awake’?

One way to look at this would be to say that being ‘awake’ is just an identity that so many people have created for themselves and that very few people in comparison do the work that is needed to actually be awake. Someone can then do all the ‘right’ things and have the ‘right’ image, but their inner world could be just as toxic as someone who appears to be ‘asleep’.

The Spiritual Ego

In other words, being ‘awake’ will just be a false-self their ego-mind has created that will enable them to avoid their own pain. This part of them, through having a dual nature, can give them the need to be seen as better and more ‘evolved’ than others.

Social media, for instance, provides the ego-mind with a platform where it can prove how ‘spiritual’ and ‘evolved’ it is. Only when the dual nature of the ego-mind is put to one side is it possible to realise that there is no such thing as being better or more evolved – each person on this earth is simply on their own path.

No More Running

Another term that has been used to describe a lot of the practices and beliefs that are connected to the new age is ‘spiritual bypassing’. This illustrates how the ego-mind will hide behind any identity and use anything to avoid having to face pain.

This doesn’t mean that the ego-mind is bad and needs to be ‘killed off’; it enables one to have their own experience on this earth and it simply wants to keep them alive. So, the defences that it utilises to keep pain at bay can cause a lot of harm, but that is not their intention.

Awareness

If so many people have created an identity that allows them to see themselves as being ‘awake’ but their body is filled with emotional baggage, it is not going to be a surprise if the world doesn’t really change. What is taking place at a deeper level will help to sustain what is taking place externally.

For their resonance to really change, and for them to no longer support what is going on externally, they will need to deal with their inner wounds. This won’t be a time when it is all about ‘love and light’, far from it; there will be moments when it is the complete opposite.