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.

Sturgeon's Law of Spiritual Practice

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

A friend asked me recently if the whole new age arena was just a lot of escapism for wounded people and ultimately another trap. It's become a recurring theme. A lot of what I'm hearing lately from people is frustration, fatigue, and even disgust with all things "spiritual." Many are feeling disillusioned and even betrayed. Some of them have actually been betrayed by spiritual practitioners, so that's quite understandable.

What I said to my friend, though, is that I feel I have learned and grown a lot through my experiences and study in things that fall under the very large umbrella of "new age." I have had some excellent teachers, but Sturgeon's Law applies.

Sturgeon's revelation, commonly referred to as Sturgeon's law, is an adage commonly cited as "ninety percent of everything is crap." It is derived from quotations by Theodore Sturgeon, an American science fiction author and critic: while Sturgeon coined another adage that he termed "Sturgeon's law", it is his "revelation" that is usually referred to by that term.

The phrase was derived from Sturgeon's observation that while science fiction was often derided for its low quality by critics, it could be noted that the majority of examples of works in other fields could equally be seen to be of low quality and that science fiction was thus no different in that regard from other art forms.

Given my own fairly extensive experience in what I shall broadly call new agedom, I feel very comfortable calling roughly ninety percent of it crap. Much of that crap, I ignore. I know my assessment is subjective and that one man's trash is another man's treasure. In other cases, where I think it's destructive, or even dangerous, I am not able to ignore it in good conscience. In particular, I have criticized The Secret and related law of attraction material. I have also included new age teachers such as James Arthur Ray and Teal Bosworth Scott Swan in discussions of religious abuse.

Study Finds Consciousness Survives Clinical Death

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Results from the AWARE Study were released yesterday and the evidence of continuing consciousness is compelling.

The largest ever medical study into near-death and out-of-body experiences has discovered that some awareness may continue even after the brain has shut down completely.

It is a controversial subject which has, until recently, been treated with widespread scepticism.

But scientists at the University of Southampton have spent four years examining more than 2,000 people who suffered cardiac arrests at 15 hospitals in the UK, US and Austria.

And they found that nearly 40 per cent of people who survived described some kind of ‘awareness’ during the time when they were clinically dead before their hearts were restarted.

Chopra and Sheldrake

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Try saying that three times fast.

This is a really compelling discussion, the kind you'll want to listen to more than once just to catch all the nuances. The first focuses primarily on Sheldrake's explanation of morphic fields. The second gets more into the unproven assumptions of scientific materialism as set forth in his book Science Set Free, aka. The Science Delusion.

Deepak Chopra and Rupert Sheldrake have both been major targets of the New Atheist protectors of all things scientistic. The details of their disenfranchisement by TED and its super secret science board can be found here. So of course I find particularly delightful Chopra's recounting of a debate with Richard Dawkins at about minute 9:00 in the second video. Add that to the growing list of Dawkins's strident assertions that fall well short of the mark.

Also in the player is an interview with Sheldrake's wife Jill Purce on the power of chanting. Enchanting! More information can be found here.

Breaking the TEAL SPELL -- UPDATE: The Noncasts

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Comment overflow: page 2, page 3, page 4, page 5, page 6, page 7,
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Update: The Noncasts (See Below)

Further Update: Blake Addresses Jason Freedman Mystery (See Below)

Yet Another Update: Kicking "Tealers" Down the Memory Hole (See Below)


Some years ago, when I was doing the Flower of Life teacher training with Drunvalo Melchizedek, one of my fellow travelers shared with me that he was troubled by what he called the "Drunvalettes." The term was his own invention but there was no mistaking his meaning. He even pegged a few of our classmates with that term. He liked Drunvalo quite a bit but that there was this kind of adulation by some Flower of Life folks made him uncomfortable. He had some concern that Drunvalo might have been fostering this unquestioning sycophancy. So one day when we were enjoying a break, he asked Drunvalo very directly how he felt about his Drunvalettes.

Dru shook his head and sighed. "I just try to stay out of it," he said.

That's one approach. There's a conversation to be had, for sure, about whether ignoring the phenomenon and trying to distance oneself from it is enough. Is it necessary to more actively discourage such behavior? But I think the one thing we were all in agreement on -- Drunvalo, myself, and the gentleman who raised the concern -- was that such hero worship was not a good or healthy thing.

The term "tealer" has similarly been thrown around to describe those who've drunk the "teal-aid." Some of her more passionate and angry defenders who've posted on my blog have been quite pejoratively labeled "tealers" by other commenters. So imagine my horror when I read this in a recent TEAL post about her seminar in Atlanta.

I am struck by how much the imprint of the days of slavery still remains on some of the older buildings and railways here in town. It has soaked its way especially into the old wood that dots the brick walls. The venue for yesterday’s workshop was one such a building. It was a fitting energy, seeing as how the theme of the entire workshop was self-liberation.

This group which is being called the “Tealers” is the most open minded, eccentrically intellectual group I have ever beheld.  I think it is now my favorite part of holding these workshops.  Long-term friendships are formed.  People find their place to belong. And I get to witness the fact that this world is in good hands.  All across the globe, they form a supportive web of awakening.  They touch the lives of the people in the cities they live in.  It is like a little legion of enlightened spirits, whose practice is that of non-resistance and expansion.

You're Freeeee! Wait. Not so fast.

Who and What is Teal Scott?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Because Teal Scott speaks for God!

Comment Overflow: I can see that a number of people are having trouble finding the newest comments for this post. It's not very well marked. So if you are wondering why you can't find where a comment you've just posted has gone, it's now on Page 3. Comments 201-400 can be found on Page 2. Comments 400+ can found on Page 4.


Several weeks ago I followed a link to the blog of one Teal Scott, self-described Spiritual Catalyst. I was pulled in for a bit. At first blush it struck me as the very open, honest disclosures of a psychic sensitive in a lot of pain. I can certainly relate to the challenges of being a super-sensitive in a jagged world. Teal was writing about her latest man trouble, about repeating abusive patterns in relationships. Yea verily, sister!

But as I clicked through a few more pages and tried to trace the narrative, things became increasingly convoluted. And was she really disclosing this man's identity? Wait, was he disclosing his identity on her blog? This man she was describing as a psychopath? That seemed most peculiar. And what was she really saying about the workings of spirit? It was something of a jumble, which would be fine, if she weren't relaying it all with such authority and certainty.

My bullshit meter was blinking red. I closed the tab and forgot all about Teal Scott.

A Facebook friend put her back on my radar when he posted one of her video lectures the other day. This led to a very frank discussion about spirituality, sexuality, sexism, and whether or not Teal Scott is a total fraud.

Massive Heart Integration

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you this important message.

Breathe into your Heart

I don't usually do things like this but the system is blinking red. Over the past couple of days this has come up in multiple readings as well as in my own process. There is some sort of mass integration underway. I don't know any other details. It's not anything I've read anywhere. I just keep seeing it. It's playing out in different ways for different people, as naturally it would, but it's in every case some version of a massive influx of new energy, soul parts, previously inaccessible components of our SELVES, that can be and need to be integrated now in a new way. Grounding this energy is important but it's not enough. The important thing is to breathe into the heart center whenever we have a few free moments to focus on it.

There are also feelings of emotional and psychic overwhelm for a lot of us. Taking a few moments to breathe into the heart as well as grounding into the earth is tremendously helpful in navigating this new dynamic.

Blessings to you all.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

The Beautiful Church is Empty

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Religion is on the decline, and "nones" are on the rise. People with no religious affiliation, here in the United States is now at 20 percent -- double what it was two decades ago.

Even as the election of a new Pope in Rome dominated the day's news, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Duke University reported that Americans are increasingly "parting ways" with religion.

In 2012, one in five people surveyed claimed no religious preference -- that's double the number who said that as recently as 1990. And religious affiliation in the United States is at its lowest point since researchers began tracking it in the 1930s.

Not religious is not the same as atheist, however. Atheists are currently at 3 percent, according to the survey data. People are abandoning organized religion, not spiritual belief. As discussed, the number of those who define as spiritual but not religious is on the rise.

People are separating from religious institutions for a range of reasons, from their misalignment with changing social values, to hypocrisy about their own.

Debbie Ford Has Passed

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I am very saddened to announce that I just learned from one of my Facebook friends that Debbie Ford has passed. She fought a long battle with a rare form of cancer -- something I only knew through mutual friends and did not share for some time. She went public last year with her struggle and her reasons for keeping that part of her life private in a conversation with Oprah.

Ford was a tremendous gift to the spiritual community. She introduced the concept of shadow work to a large segment of the new age world and made it accessible; even palatable. As Jung said, making the darkness conscious is "disagreeable, and therefore, not popular."  She was an amazing teacher with the rare courage to call bullshit on herself, repeatedly. She will be profoundly missed.

Here is a little more of Ford, in her own words, on what she learned from her long struggle with illness.

A site is being set up for people to share their thoughts and feelings. It's not up yet but it will become available at rememberingdebbieford.com.

Spiritual But Not Religious

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience." ~ Teilhard de Chardin

If it were up to me, I'd retire the phrase "spiritual but not religious." I consider it effectively meaningless. To my way of thinking, we can't not be spiritual. We are spirit. But I'm not being fair to the idiomatic meaning of that phrase, which could be more fairly stated as, "searching for meaning beyond the confines of organized religion."

However problematic the phrase, it is a growing trend. This seems to rankle a number of religious authorities. A quick search through the Huffington Post religion section brings up a fair sampling of disdainful diatribes against all these dilettantes who think they can have God without the hard work of religious practice in like-minded community. I read a number of these posts when they came out, sighed, and moved on.

There's Pastor Lillian Daniel who is sick and tired of hearing from anonymous strangers on planes that God can be found in sunsets. She just wishes the nonreligious would stop boring her with their irrelevant observations. And, no, I'm not overstating her tone. "Please stop boring me," is her subtitle.

There's Alan Miller's lightning rod of a post bemoaning the religious illiteracy of a populace that can't name more than four of the ten commandments. He casts religion almost entirely in Judeo-Christian terms and dismisses all else as superstition. A good rebuttal can be found here.

The Dreaming Skin

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

New Wave It has taken years and you have learned To dream with your skin. A master now, you Discard useless pieces of this growing brain; Crumbs for the followers who stay behind. You marvel at the effect of the moon as it Guides your fluids, nourishing the ever Changing parts of your new dream skin. Your arms wither. Your bones melt together. With the dolphins you swim the oceans of Fantasy planets. But even this is a just an Initiation; a preparation for your journey To kiss the boundless belly of their sea god. And then to join the throne of a new nation. ~ Neno Perrotta

The poem comes from The Penguin Review,Youngstown State's literary magazine. It's one that I've never been able to quite dislodge from memory. It sprang to mind this evening as I read this wonderful article on the spiritual power of tattooing.

Photographer Chris Ranier has contributed more than any to our understanding of tattoos as art in the truest sense -- as a medium of cultural communication. In the documentary culminating his two-decades of photographing tattoos in indigenous cultures, "Tattoo Odyssey," Ranier contends that tattoos in all cultures arise from "that basic human desire to belong, to be appreciated, and to go through some initiation process that gains an altered state of mind that says, 'I am who I am.'" In other words, tattoos often signify one's relationships, one's movement beyond her daily existence to another plane of reality, and a new awareness of a person's being-in-the-world. Tattooing, as art on the body, presents the bearer with several experiences that are rarely matched in the world, particularly the Western world.

. . .

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When a tattoo is affixed to a significant spiritual, relational or existential moment, the indelible ink is even more profound and can be powerful enough to return one to that state of spirituality. Like most significant experiences in one's life, the event of tattooing retains a place in our memory. We remember where we were and when the event occurred. Unlike these other experiences, however, tattoos retain their significance as visible reminders of an important, spiritual experience in our lives -- like footprints unaffected by the tides of time. Tattoos are fixed in living memory and thus they can serve as monuments, allowing one to retrace one's spiritual and existential pilgrimage.

. . .

It is in vogue to be "spiritual, not religious." Spirituality tends toward the immanent, the inward-focused experience of seeking enlightenment or communing with the Spirit. Religion tends toward the transcendent, the outward extension of oneself to God and neighbor. The irony of tattooing is that ink can erase this distinction. Just as art has always conjoined the spiritual and the religious, tattoos can combine the inward and outward expressions of a spiritual or significant experience, literally, as art on the body.

Analyticial Thought Undermines Religious Belief

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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"Our intuitions can be phenomenally useful, and analytic thinking isn't some oracle of the truth," says Will Gervais, co-author of a new study demonstrating how analytical thought reduces religious faith. His phrasing is inadvertently hilarious. An oracle is, by definition, intuitive, and is the conduit for divine information. And this study bolsters earlier research showing that intuition and faith are as closely linked as the analytical is to not-faith.

The University of British Columbia study not only affirms that analytical personalities are less likely to be religious, it demonstrates that taxing the left brain decreases belief amongst more intuitive personalities.

People who are intuitive thinkers are more likely to be religious, but getting them to think analytically even in subtle ways decreases the strength of their belief, according to a new study in Science.

. . .

Analytic thinking undermines belief because, as cognitive psychologists have shown, it can override intuition. And we know from past research that religious beliefs—such as the idea that objects and events don't simply exist but have a purpose—are rooted in intuition. "Analytic processing inhibits these intuitions, which in turn discourages religious belief," [Ara] Norenzayan explains.

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.

The Year of the Heart

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." ~ C.S. Lewis

This year Valentine's Day coincides with the Chinese New Year. At our house, we'll be celebrating both; exchanging valentines over homemade Chinese food. It's fitting I think, because I decided a while back that I am calling 2010 "the year of the heart." This is not because of anything astrological. In Chinese astrology it's a tiger year, which is something different, entirely. So why am I calling this the year of the heart? Because of the massive changes I'm seeing in our heart chakras. And because it is crucial now that we begin to operate from our hearts.

Over the past month or so, I've seen these shifts in client after client. There are massive releases of energy from the heart chakra, and a feeling of expansion. In some cases those clients have been deliberately doing heart chakra work, because they have been moved to do so. In other cases, it's entirely unconscious on their parts. When I notice that many parallel experiences, I have to acknowledge the possibility that there is a larger, more general, transformation at work.

I've also noticed a number of psychics, channelers, and lightworkers talking about this pronounced shift in heart energy. Karen Bishop has reflected in some of her updates, including the most recent one, that part of the greater purpose of the horrific earthquake in Haiti was to open our hearts. Our heart chakras are opening, whether we want them to or not.