New Age Misinterpretations of Metaphysical Truth

To give out shame bearing black and white messages in the name of teaching love, is to me, just as destructive as a parent shaming a child to try to control them. Our society teaches us to be shaming, manipulative, and controlling in the name of love and I find it just as screwed up and dysfunctional as fighting war in the name of God.

It is very attractive for people to believe that they can evolve spiritually without doing their grief work. Emotions are messy, especially the old repressed ones that can feel so overwhelming. It is natural and normal for human beings to want to do things the easier, softer way. So, many people want to hear someone tell them that it is possible to become enlightened without healing emotionally. Many of those so called experts will even teach that if one is feeling the emotions then one is doing something wrong.

Many people who are drawn to the New Age movement are still looking for the right way to do things, for the source outside of themselves that will give them the answers, for the aliens in space ships who will save them from the pain of this human experience. The goal in this Age of Healing and Joy, in my understanding, is to learn to look within to find The Source. To own our Spiritual Essence and our humanity - and to integrate Spirituality into the human experience so that we can achieve some balance in this human dance we are doing.

One does not have to be perfect to be a channel. One of the most important best selling books - a book that introduced millions of people to seeing life from a spiritual perspective - was written by a practicing alcoholic. Some of the greatest spiritual teachers have a marvelous gift for communicating Truth - but have a problem with applying that Truth in relationship to themselves.

Anyone who teaches that there is a right and wrong way to heal, is trapped in the black and white, polarized thinking of the disease of codependence. Anyone who gives the message that there is a destination to be reached is empowering the concept of conditional love. Anyone who gives shaming messages is projecting their own unhealed wounds outward.

This is an important issue to me, because black and white misinterpretations of Metaphysical law cause codependents to judge and shame themselves - which is not aligned with the ultimate Metaphysical Truth of Love.

We have now entered a very special time in human history. An Age of Healing and Joy has dawned in human consciousness on this planet. We now have tools, knowledge, and most importantly, clearer access to healing energy and Spiritual guidance than has ever before been available in recorded human history on this planet.

One of the perfect things that came into my path to stimulate me was a quote that I saw in a post to a mailing list I am on. This was the quote:

What is not love is fear.
Anger is one of fear's most potent faces.
And it does exactly what fear wants it to do.
It keeps us from receiving love at exactly
the moment when we need it most.
-- Marianne Williamson

This is an emotional trigger for me. It really makes me angry. And it was, of course, perfect since right at that time I was writing my article about finding emotional balance through inner child healing - the article that was focused on "through the fear." The message that there is only love and fear, is one that I have seen in quite a few places - from various authors, belief systems, Spiritual teachers. It is a message that in my opinion is not only inaccurate, but is also abusive and shaming.

I will talk first about why it is an emotional trigger for me, and then why I think it is inaccurate.

It is an emotional trigger for me because I interpret statements like this one to be saying that fear - and anger - are negative things that one should not experience if one is evolved enough. That one who is enlightened should be in love all the time and not experience these negative emotions. It feels to me like what is being said is that if I am experiencing fear I am doing something wrong - that I haven't gotten "there" yet.

The reason that I have an emotional trigger around this kind of statement, that I give it power, is because I am judging myself on some level. My disease is still in there giving me the message that something is wrong with me, that I am defective, that I am not doing it "right." Other people's judgments have no power over me unless there is a level within me where I am judging myself. And I believe that as long as I am in this body, on this plane, in this lifetime, that old programming will not go away completely. It does not have anywhere near the power it used to possess. Where is used to be a big monster screaming at me, now it is like a cricket in the corner chirping at me. But even a little cricket chirping can get real annoying at times.

Because I teach best what I need most to learn, and I am trying to learn how to Love myself - I am sensitive about messages like this, because I know how much power they can carry. As a recovering codependent, I know how long and hard I have had to work to learn to honor my own Truth and my own feelings, instead of giving power to "experts." I have also learned on my path, how many of the so called experts were giving out shaming, judgmental messages because of their own wounds. I have empathy and compassion for them, but I also hold them responsible for the messages they convey. (Which are of course perfect for wherever they are on their own path.)

In working with codependents trying to overcome the power of the shame, I have often said, "You can't tell a shame based codependent enough that it was not their fault - that they were powerless to change until it was time to change." When people who are healers reinforce the judgment and shame of the disease through making black and white statements like the one above, I get angry because I have used such statements in the past to beat myself up. Until I learned how to have internal boundaries, and trust my own Truth, I took in statements from experts (whether they were authors or people with more recovery than I had or anyone that I saw as knowing more than defective me) and allowed it to fuel and feed my disease in shaming and judging and beating myself up. I am constantly needing to tell clients that such messages are not necessarily the Truth.

And of course, I have been going through a time of great fear, so I took the quote as a personal assault on me. At a time when I have been recently struggling to be Loving to myself, this type of message is not one that reinforces the belief that I am Lovable and worthy. To give out shame bearing black and white messages in the name of teaching love, is to me, just as destructive as a parent shaming a child to try to control them. Our society teaches us to be shaming, manipulative, and controlling in the name of love and I find it just as screwed up and dysfunctional as fighting war in the name of God.

Metaphysical

Now, to get into why I believe such statements are inaccurate. I am going to be responding out of my personal Spiritual Belief System, out of my own understanding of Metaphysical Truth.

On the Highest level, the Absolute Truth - the only True Reality of the God-Force, Goddess Energy, Great Spirit, what I call in my Trilogy, The Holy Mother Source Energy - is the ONENESS of the energy of ALL THAT IS vibrating at the frequency of Absolute Harmony, which is LOVE. At that level, there is only LOVE. We are all part of that ONENESS, of that LOVE.

The reality in which we are experiencing being separate, individual entities called human beings in a linear three-dimensional time/space reality is an illusion, a dream, a figment of the Great Spirit's imagination. It is a holographic illusion caused by the illusion that energy can exist separate from The Universal Source. Within this Illusion, there exist many other illusions - death, suffering, fear, anger, polarity, scarcity and lack, etc. There are many levels to that Illusion.

It is very difficult to communicate about multiple levels of reality in polarized, three-dimensional language. In my writing I try to differentiate by using LOVE to refer to the vibrational frequency of The Goddess, Love to refer to the Transcendent (transcendent through multiple levels within the Illusion) vibrational frequency which we humans can tune into, and love to identify the manifestation that occurs on the human level of experience.

In my understanding, we cannot experience LOVE as long as we are experiencing being separate individual entities - because in LOVE we are part of ALL, of the ONENESS. We can experience Love when our internal channel is clear enough - or in some cases, we can experience something very close to that Transcendent emotion through temporary artificial means. The goal in healing and recovery is to align ourselves with Truth to a degree that allows us to tune into Love as much of the time as is possible in a natural way. It is not possible to be tuned into that Love all of the time. In the times we are not tuned into Love, there will be times when we feel fear.

The Absolute Truth of God is Love, Joy, and Abundance. It can be said that Love is all there is. It could be said that fear and anger are a result of not being in tune with Love. But to say that, is to deny that while in human body, it is not possible to be tuned into Love in every moment of the day. The most enlightened person on the planet will experience a moment of visceral, instinctive fear when a plane they are riding in takes a sudden plunge or a car swerves in front of them or some such thing. That fear of the unknown, that survival supporting programming, is something that is inherent in being human. The more enlightened someone is, the sooner they let go of that fear and move back into an enlightened state of being - but they still feel it.

That kind of fear is not bad or wrong or the result of not being evolved enough. What is dysfunctional are layers of fear that are a result of the trauma and programming of the disease. As I said in the article about fear, most of the levels of fear we experience are dysfunctional and silly. I believe that people who say that there is only fear and love, are talking about those dysfunctional levels of fear. But to make a statement in black and white terms that convey the message that fear is negative - is in my opinion, not only inaccurate but also shaming.

It is also directly related to the reality that not only does traditional science, medicine, and psychology discount emotions - treat them as a chemical reaction or an extension of thought, but many of the so called New Age teachers do the same. Emotions are, on one level, chemical reactions - just as on another level, our emotional reactions are very much influenced by our mental attitudes. But emotions are also energy that exists in a very real way on the etheric plane in the emotional body. To discount the level in which emotions are energy is very dysfunctional in my belief. To discount the emotional energy that was generated in our childhood, and still exists in our being, is to discount our own experiences and being - to say nothing of being very dangerous to our physical and mental health.

It is very attractive for people to believe that they can evolve spiritually without doing their grief work. Emotions are messy, especially the old repressed ones that can feel so overwhelming. It is natural and normal for human beings to want to do things the easier, softer way. So, many people want to hear someone tell them that it is possible to become enlightened without healing emotionally. Many of those so called experts will even teach that if one is feeling the emotions then one is doing something wrong.

I believe that such teachings are inaccurate. I believe that our emotions are an important and vital part of our being that needs to be owned and honored. I believe that fear is a teacher that helps us move toward Love, that helps us to learn how to love ourselves. I do not believe that, in and of itself, it is wrong or bad or the opposite of love. Our relationship with it can cause it to be very dysfunctional - which is why we need to own it so we can change our relationship with it. The reality of being human is that this experience is really scary sometime. I am saying that is OK - that it is not shameful or unevolved to feel fear.

This is getting way too long here, so I am just going to mention quickly some of the other messages that I find disturbing - especially coming from people who are supposed to be teachers.

Free Will - free will is an illusion that exists within certain levels of the illusion. On the highest level, we are all part of the ONENESS and nothing any of us do can change that - because ONENESS is the highest Truth. On Lower levels we have free will to a certain extent. All of our actions on the physical plane however are governed by the Law of Karma - so that free will exists within the context of Karmic settlement.

Choosing your parents - this is another one that is governed by Karma. We did not have the choice of any parents in the world to be born to - we had limited choices that were aligned with settling the Karma we needed to settle.

Abundance - as long as we are in the Karmic realm, let me address abundance. Some of us came into this lifetime with issues to heal around money and financial abundance. Other people had already done their healing around abundance issues - or will do it in some future life. People that have a very easy time manifesting financial abundance are not better than, or more evolved than, people who have struggled financially in this lifetime. It is just about having different types of paths - it is not something that rich people are justified in judging other people for (or vice versa), or that anyone needs to feel ashamed of because it means you are doing something wrong.

Now, all of us have childhood experiences that are reflections of the Karmic debts we need to settle. That means, that things in childhood wounded us around the issues we are here to work on and heal. So, like any other issues, abundance is an area that many people need to work on - to remove the dysfunctional, self sabotaging programming that comes from our childhood. As long as we are working on uncovering our wounds and healing them, we are doing our part in the process. It is important to learn to accept and Love ourselves no matter where we are in regard to any issue, and not give any issue (such as not having money) the power to affect our sense of self worth - or set us up to think that we are doing something wrong if we have not reached "there" yet. We may never get "there" in this lifetime - it is important not to buy into being the victim of ourselves in relationship to any issue.

Being Creators of our life - this is one that I run into in Metaphysical New Thought Churches sometimes, as well as in other New Age type associations. The law of mind action which states that what we focus on is what we create - is True. The problem is that isn't the whole Truth. There are other factors involved - including Karma. We are co-creators in our life - not the sole creator.

It is also, one of the black and white statements that are sometimes made that can convey shaming messages if not qualified. Telling someone they are creating their own reality without also telling them that they were programmed to come from fear and negativity - and that they were powerless over that programming until they learned they can change it - can cause codependents to feel ashamed. It is a Truth but not the whole Truth.

Polarity - polarization of the energy field of Collective Human Intellectual Consciousness - the Lower Mind - is what set up the dysfunction in human existence. It is what empowered the illusion of separation. Polarity is not only part of the problem, it was causal in creating the problem - the human dilemma. To empower polarity, by making black and white statements is to me, a sign that someone is not looking at the human experience from a large enough paradigm. As wonderful a person as I am sure Marianne Williamson is - and she is a wonderful teacher who has brought enlightenment and a new perspective on Love to many, many people - I deduce from statements like the one above, that she still has some black and white judgments going on in her relationship with herself. That is not bad or wrong - just human.

Statements such as hers above, give the message that fear and anger are negative and shameful. I very much disagree. The dysfunction in our relationships with ourselves have resulted in fear and anger being manifested in some really awful ways - but that does not impart negative value to the emotions themselves. Our planet was stuck in a negative paradigm, one that was reversed to the Truth of Love, for thousands of years. The whole human race was the victim of planetary conditions that caused humans to react to this human experience from a place of fear and survival, from a paradigm that empowered belief in lack, scarcity, and negativity. It was the human condition - not something that any individual human being should judge them self for.

This is a New Age, as I explain in my book. The energy field of Collective Human Emotional Consciousness has reversed to a place in alignment with Love instead of opposing it. That is why there is a Transformational Healing Movement happening on this planet. We are learning to Love - and that needs to start with Loving our self enough to stop shaming and judging our self for being wounded humans. It is really helpful if the people who are at the forefront of the movement are not giving out shaming, judgmental messages.

But, of course, everything is unfolding perfectly. And the reason I react to such things is because of my own emotional wounds that I am working on healing. Marianne is perfectly where she is supposed to be, just as I am - just as we all are. There are just a lot of times when it doesn't feel like it. In my belief, we are Spiritual Beings who are extensions of the God-Force, Great Spirit, Goddess Energy - having a human experience that is a form of boarding school. We are all going to get to go Home. We are all in Truth Home already on some level of our being. We are waking up and remembering that. It is a joyous and exciting time to be alive.

next: Old Souls and Karma