How 'New Age' Failed Me | Teal Swan Cult

Crosspost from Andey Fellowes

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Empty Promises

In 2012, I was going through the gradual process of self-indoctrination. It’s a process many who have found themselves listening to Teal Swan have been through. Depressed and suicidal people are intentionally targeted by Teal and her inner circle – a fact Teal herself states proudly. These struggling, suffering people find solace in Teal’s words. They find respite in her confidence and in her charm. But it’s all too thin.

Superficially, Teal’s “teachings” sound good. They sound true to the innocent, the struggling and the lonely. They sell a sense of connectedness, a story of how everything fits together, and a promise that the painful chaos these grieving, depressed and suicidal people see all around them everyday can, one day, make sense. But it’s a lie. Bold-faced and unapologetic.

This is just one of the ways New Age failed me.

The Enemy Within the Codependent Heart

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

BBC America has been celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek by playing full, uncut episodes of the original show. I must confess that it dominated my television screen for an entire weekend. I think I may have even begun to convince my teenage daughter of its genius.

A standout episode for me is "The Enemy Within." Captain Kirk is split in two after a transporter accident. His "strange alter-ego," his dark half, becomes a sentient Kirk look-alike. But, no one sees this Mr. Hyde materialize on the platform moments after a very normal appearing Kirk has left the transporter room. He goes about functioning much as our internal shadow does, with neither Kirk, nor anyone else aware of his existence. Yet, a drunken, rampaging lout, who looks a lot like Captain Kirk, begins acting out his worst impulses.

Kirk's better half seems at first to be in every way the Kirk they all know – the split-off shadow like some foreign monster, "a thoughtless brutal animal" that the apparently normal Kirk would rather live without. But, it rapidly becomes clear that this calm, reasonable Kirk has lost some key components of his personality. He's indecisive. His instincts are dulled. "Good" Kirk is unqualified for command.

Eventually, the disowned shadow does what it will do. It overpowers the weakened, good-natured Kirk and takes command. It takes all that's left of his strength and support from his crew for the saner Kirk to confront and embrace his dark nature and reintegrate it.

"I've seen a part of myself no man should ever see."  ~ Capt. James T. Kirk

The Vatican: Still Tone Deaf After All These Years

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Just when you think Pope Benedict might be getting it, he dismisses generations of abuse at the hands of clergy as "a mystery." Understandably, this has angered survivor groups. SNAP's Barbara Dorris decried the comments as "platitudes, refusing to even accurately name the crisis."

" The pontiff's wrong: there's little mystery here," said Dorris in an emailed statement.

She cited priests' having `'sometimes almost absolute power, over devout and defenseless kids," as well as bishops who abuse power and `'ignore, hide and enable heinous crimes against kids."

The pontiff's unintentionally incendiary statements came in a pre-recorded address played during the grand finale of the previously discussed Eucharistic Congress in Ireland. And this was the event that was supposed to stop the Church's hemorrhaging in that country. I don't think this will help.

I will say this. His Holiness seems genuinely mystified.

Paul Levy on the Collective Shadow

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I've referenced Tibetan Buddhist and healer Paul Levy before -- notably in my review of The Secret. Levy's essays are available on his site Awaken in the Dream and in his book The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis. In his newest book Wetiko, Levy continues to explore the projected shadow as a collective phenomenon and the Native American mythical embodiment of it known as wetiko to the Cree. Years ago, I watched a movie called Wendigo, another Algonquian name for the same phenomenon. It's a haunting film that brilliantly captures the sense of doom we experience at those times when life is turned upside down leaving us at the mercy of an unfolding fate that seems to have its own agenda. As Levy explains, we actually animate this darkness run amok from our suppressed shadow. The more in denial of our shadow we are, the more inevitably we will confront it as a seemingly alien entity in our reflective world.

One of the things that struck me in this Red Ice Radio interview is Levy's anecdote about a New Age bookstore that wanted him to appear but not talk about all that shadow stuff. They wanted it to be "positive." It put me in mind of another author who dared to write about the painful side of spiritual growth; Rabbi Yonassan Gershom who wrote about Holocaust reincarnates.  Said Gershom:

Then in 1984 I was invited to speak on Jewish mysticism at the annual Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship (SFF) retreat at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. SFF is an eclectic group of spiritually oriented people who are interested in psychic phenomena, and most believe in reincarnation. Here, I thought, would be a receptive audience for these case histories that I had been gathering. So I suggested "Cases of Holocaust Reincarnation" as my topic.

I was turned down flat. The SFF representative explained that the theme of the retreat would be "I Am the Light," and they wanted to focus on uplifting, positive material because that's what people expected. The Holocaust was just too heavy and depressing, and might upset people, even if I were talking about reincarnation. Couldn't I do something more inspiring, like a Sabbath liturgy?

This relentless focus on the upbeat and cheerful is not just naive. It's dangerous -- something I've written about ad nauseam, ad infinitum. And as Levy has been explaining brilliantly for years, it can unleash terrors beyond our conscious imagining.

Wesley Crusher's Dark Night of the Soul

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I just watched, for the umpteenth time, Star Trek Next Generation's "Journey's End." Despite some rather sappy, idealized attempts to depict Native American culture, it's a good episode. One of the things that strikes me, not for the first time, is its depiction of Wesley Crusher's spiritual growing pains. From the Wiki:

Meanwhile, Wesley has returned from Starfleet Academy for a vacation. He's out-of-character though, snappish and depressed and he appears even slightly ill, which really worries Dr. Crusher. He is rude to La Forge in the engine room. Dr. Crusher tries to talk to her son, but initially gets nowhere.

On the planet, Wesley comes in contact with Lakanta, an Indian holy man of sorts. He guides Wesley on a journey of self-discovery, in which he talks to his long-dead father, who tells Wesley that he is destined to go down a path different from his own.

Sharon Osbourne, Susan Boyle, and Facing Our Shadow

Crossposted from Celestial Reflections.




I have this theory that celebrity news stories pull our eyes away from news of far more important, world changing events, because celebrities are, at bottom, just people whose very human foibles we can we relate to. Despite all their money and fame, the vicissitudes of their relationships and their little human dramas reflect the best and the worst in all of us. I was reminded of this recently, when news broke of a very unfortunate incident involving Sharon Osbourne and a microphone. I have posted the video of Osbourne's interview on Sirius Radio above, but I warn you, gentle reader, that it is not for the faint of heart.

Osbourne, who is a judge on 'America's Got Talent,' slammed the 'Britain's Got Talent' superstar's looks on Sirius XM's 'The Opie & Anthony Show.' She says Boyle was "hit with the f***ing ugly stick"....as opposed to the surgeon's scalpel?

Here is a partial transcript of her expletive-laced tirade. You can watch the entire thing below.

"I like everybody to do well. Even somebody that looks like a slapped arse. God bless her. It's like, 'You go girl'. She does look like a hairy arsehole. She is a lovely lady. You just want to say 'god bless' and here's a Gillette razor."