Stories vs Experience

 Stories vs Experience

I was recently at a dinner with some professional new age people, meaning people who make a living promoting new age type of skills and information. Sort of like being a pastor without needing to be accountable to anyone else except their “guides”, and since their guides are in their head, invisible, and only talk to the “gifted” person (no one else can hear them) there is no way to question what you hear from these folks. I personally like asking questions and like Leah Remini says in her expose on Scientology if people or an organization are offering information that proclaims to help people (or save the world), it should hold up to some questioning and in fact the process of question and answer should make the information stronger.  In the new age, typically the problem is often no one asks questions. It is not cool to question a so called spirit that talks to only one person. It is too embarrassing to question someone who appears more “advanced” than you because they hear a guide (so called) and you do not, etc. The second problem is that the answer is often “my guides told me so” and since only one person can hear the other’s “guide” there is no place to go from there.  Again, typically, one does not want to appear uncool or not spiritually advanced so there will be no questioning of the so called guide, or of the person claiming to hear this guide.  To make the situation more complex, Spirit is the world of the invisible, the world of perception, and faith is a practice of moving into the unknown with no evidence.

Back to the dinner. After drinking, people decided to do “readings”…. after drinking. Sorry, I do not go with that. And, Readings, for me, are not a party activity, it is a sacred encounter.  Some people like orgies, public sex, casual sex etc. Nothing wrong with those, it is all a choice. Some prefer only sacred sex, making love, tantra.  Another choice.  This was an opportunity.  Whenever I don’t “like” something I have two choices: leave, or stay and learn. I chose to stay. When I get with new agers, I put on my mosquito net. My mosquito net for new agers is I bring up Shadow Work because most new agers want to be the butterfly that brings the “good news”, the “healing”, the “sunshine” to someone else. That way they get the gratification of seeing the person “feel better” and they get showered with thanks, gratitude, and often more. There is a reason new agers call themselves light workers rather than say Spiritual Servants. Bring in the Shadow Work and here is what happens. You will be told a story that makes it all better. This is called a reading, a message from a guide (that you cannot hear), reframing, a prediction (a positive one of course) that “this “will all be over soon and you will marry the prince etc. Then, if you do not believe the story you will be told you are blocked and that is why bad things are happening to you. In other words, if you do not believe my story, you will be causing more bad things to happen to you. If you actually have the nerve to point this out, you will be told oh no, I am not judging, you are twisting my words, which makes no sense at all and typically confuses the person enough that they stop asking questions, or even talking.  Finally the (generally narcissistic) new ager will now revel you in a story from their life of how they got through some similar bad time and now all is a miracle, therefore since it happened to them, it is somehow proof that 1) they are right  2) it will happen to you.  This kind of faulty magical thinking is an earmark of a narcissistic personality, not a full blown personality disorder, but definitely a tendency.  Dig deeper, you will find these kinds of new agers have not done any work on their childhood issues or traumas, instead you will hear that they are walk-ins or extra terrestials etc. My year in Sedona, running a school, kept me around the town’s new agers who talked to the mother ship while each one was a food addict, a sexual abuse victim (not a survivor), co–dependant, etc. and other than their “broadcasts”, they were not having a good life. They were having a good time escaping, or compensating by losing themselves in new age stories while neglecting the work of this current life.

Understand that this is a short article meant to make a point. Therefore you are reading generalizations and material that is exaggerated (rarely but somewhat) to make a point, to make you want to learn more. If you think these short articles (I don’t like the label blog or some reason. It sounds like a swamp to me) “teach” you, you are wrong. They are simple arrows pointing to a direction of travel should you find the information relevant. The pursuit of more in-depth knowledge is then up to you, your efforts and your actions.  The new age loves to tell stories and give stories as knowledge, or wisdom when it is only information, and often not even valid information. Telling stories can be a tool to stimulate the attainment of wisdom, but, in this country stories are used more to prove one (or one’s ideas or information) is right, to try and motivate people (rather than teaching people to self-motivate).  Sufi teaching stories, Zen koans, vision stories of the Native Americans and other indigenous cultures, these are stories meant to send one into deep contemplation, to give you an experience that needs time to sink in and if you let it sink in, will shift you and your energy field through the experience of contemplation. So, to again get back to the new age dinner, share an experience that is not butterflies and rainbows and new age folks will jump all over you to “fix” you , push you into a “positive” outlook. And you will be told a story. If you do not believe the story, jump on their bandwagon, you will be told in so many words that you are cursing yourself with bad luck because you are not believer (in their bright and sunny story). Just like big Christian television shows filled with “stories” which then ask you to jump on their bandwagon (and give money). The only thing that has changed is it is now the use of the word “guides” instead of Jesus and instead of money  the narcissists seek only accolades (not as canny as the Christians that way). But it is still, stories, still someone else working hard to get you to believe his/her story about you and your life, and beliefs and sometimes even emotions (you “shouldn’t” feel that way says your so-called unhealed healer…. you are creating bad karma…etc.)

Now what?  Stories can offer experience and they can motivate. Offering a person a teaching story, one that takes some thinking, some contemplation, some work, to shift yourself (!) to a different perspective, a learning by working through a challenge to your current thinking is one alternative. This also means, the person will not “get it” until they can handle the shift, on an energetic level. This also means, the new ager will not get accolades in the moment, or perhaps (gasp) ever. Teaching stories take time to sink in. Teaching stories take work, by the listener. You, as a seeker, have a choice. Study with people who make you work for your gains, or align with those who have great stories. Go to a new ager who will tell you about a past life where you and a friend were lovers (and how exactly does this information help you? It only makes you feel better and/or makes the new ager seem amazing), or do a regression to discover one of your past lives for yourself, and do the work to actually feel for yourself the importance of that life and that relationship at that time and the implications in this life. When you get an experience versus a story from a new ager, you thank Spirit for giving you what you can handle and the new ager will not get much in the way of applause or worship. When a Spirit Worker offers another an experience, the Spiritual Worker is only the facilitator of Spirit. There is little to no grandiosity in that role. When Spirit gives you what you need, rather than what you (your ego/left brain) desires there is typically less drama which many resent, as “drama” with no effort is “in” and drama with no effort  is what most people currently crave.

Seek out Spirit Workers who let you have your experiences, who offer you a ladder that you can use to climb out of a hole. Who offer you a hammer and nails so you can build a new reality for yourself, whose stories move you to think, contemplate and make new choices, those who help you on such a deep level that you don’t think to thank them until often years later if ever.  Be wary of those who seek to seduce you with wondrous stories of their new age “gifts”, stories of miracles in their life. Those miracles are theirs and will not rub off on you, nor are they proof they will happen to you.   Does this article irritate you?  So be it. For most people thinking, these days, is an irritation.  For many, they welcome the chance to think, contemplate, experience and learn.  I have always chosen Teachers that will let me learn, who will not rescue me or do my thinking for me,  who motivate me with stories to continue to work and evolve, and do not motivate me with stories of  that “explain” how I should see, understand, believe or experience things (telling you a past life for example), and most of all, are there for me as I come out of the tunnel often dirty and tired but “new.”  Viable research on educational theory has shown that learning via experience is the most powerful and permanent kind of learning. Not movies, not stories, not reading. Those all have their place but there is a hierarchy of learning. Learning through experience is challenging. Life will present you with challenges and you will learn, like it or not, you will learn. I prefer to be confronted by a Teacher, challenged by a Teacher who offers experiences for me to work through. And when I  emerge from each challenge, there is my Teacher (who often at times looked like the challenge when really it was all inside of me), smiling, embracing, celebrating with me acknowledging, profoundly acknowledging this part of the Journey I just accomplished by willingly taking on the work of this lifetime and by allowing the deep intimate connection of working with a Teacher guide me. Either way you will learn. You will learn, either way.  Choices.

Journey On