Shallowness of New Age Spirituality

Finding depth beyond just "love and light"

Love and light aren’t enough, you must go deeper.

The New Age, like all spiritual practices, has universal truths and distortions. One of the main themes I have witnessed play out is the false light.

Inside the new age, the false light is like wearing an LED bulb, a mask of love and light hiding a soul unwilling to let itself experience the full human expression and render the true love and light, a light that can see and feel the beauty and experience of being human. The depth of emotions clawing to get out, be felt, be permitted in a world where you are only supposed to be positive at all costs, including the cost of yourself and your own authenticity, awaits discovery.

Because of this pressure to outwardly only ever think positive, be positive, the inner world is dulled, feelings hidden, walls built.  How can one truly be in love and light if unwilling to express the wholeness of being? How can one truly grow in joy if never given permission (by self or others) to invite in useful and purposeful emotions that have a place in serving our Divine purpose like anger, sadness, shame and grief. Yes, many of these emotions are disproportionate or stem from trauma, yet often arise to give us profound messages that serve us if we’re willing to really look at them and explore what is being revealed.

The New Age movement often steers people away from genuine spiritual growth. It’s easy to see when someone is avoiding the depth of their shadows and wearing this love and light mask pretending to be extra spiritual behind the idea of who they think they should be in order to fit the label of “spiritual.”

Because of this distortion, people often think they are more self-realized than they actually are and become shrouded in a veil of the illusion that they have transcended their responsibilities of real life and over-played their hand in regard to the nature of their spiritual gifts.

This attitude inside the spiritual movement stalls real growth because real growth isn’t love and light, it isn’t rainbows and butterflies, it isn’t pretty. It is the true shadow work, the acknowledgement of what hides in the shadows and a willingness to see it, experience it, integrate it.

Bringing your true light, not the false one created by the ego, into real life, into the messiness of day-to-day living, of finding beauty in the mundane – the challenges – the ugly things that are an inevitable part of life, of living, is freeing, enlivening and empowering.

 How deep are you willing to go into the cave determines the depth of commitment you have to knowing yourself in a way that might not be fun, that might mean meetings parts of yourself you never wanted to meet, that means getting really honest, yet will bring greater clarity, peace and love. Going into the trenches means being willing to love so much that you will be honest with another even if it is hard, even if it means losing them, because you have been willing to be brutally honest with yourself. Going into the trenches means loving so much that you don’t run from conflict or challenges that has the potential to deepen a bond because you have done this with yourself. You see, so much of the New Age is about apathy, passivity and avoiding all the hard things, the things that make us better, brighter, beautiful and actually closer to God. You can’t find the beauty inside the ugliness of life if you haven’t been able to see the beauty in your own ugliness. Fostering the attitude of “look what they did” instead of knowing the they can be you, too is an unwinding of another level of group-think that wants to keep everyone comfortably numb, pretending that all is good and light, when really it’s one big fat lie.

 Everyone wants to go to the light, to go higher, but it is in digging deep into the shadows where your true inner light waits for you! The deeper you go, the more radiant and expansive the light shines from the inside out instead of the false light that tries to cloud so much from the outside in.

Emerging from these depths gives you an opportunity to show up in the world without the mask that it’s only ok to be positive, that true love and light means sometimes not being liked or being kind, not polite….it gives way for discernment and an ability to see not only the light in others, not only the Divinity in another, but their pain too.  When you can do this, you need not take on their pain as many empaths do, nor fear its influence on your own energetic field, but meet them eye-to-eye with a knowing that it’s ok, it’s an invitation to be really be seen and to see someone in the depths of the soul, far beyond the superficiality of the false light persona.

Many teachers and facilitators in the New Age misguide others because they are not aware of their own distortions and have not done the shadow work necessary to bring out a more balanced, integrated and authentic approach without projecting their own unacknowledged shadows.  This type of projection often leads to an over-confidence of spiritual gifts as compensation for not looking at their shadows. This lends itself to superficiality of only wanting to “feel good” or “be positive” at the expensive of diving deeper into one’s self and deeper spiritual principles beyond the surface level of the labels and into the self-responsibility required in an initiatory unfurling of the true nature of reality, the laws that govern our Universe, the archetypes and symbols that shape our reality, and the mystery that hides inside each soul. 

The flip side of this is also revealed inside spiritual teachers who lose their heart in the despair of the dark, as in looking at it but not really dealing with what is shown, thus allowing the shadow to become the persona projecting out pain as the antidote to life’s answers instead of self contemplation, humility and heart-felt genuineness. This means the ego fully takes the reigns and the blind spot of what was initially revealed becomes re-veiled, cloaked in the suffering masked as intelligence. Though less common than the lure and sparkliness of the love and light followers, this is the mask of self-denial hiding behind the label of spirituality in the other extreme.

As Jung said: “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness's of other people. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely. Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

I’m not telling you to abandon the New Age or any spiritual practice, as all has its place on each individual’s journey, but to simply stop and take note of what is NOT being said or allowed or embodied or accepted, because in essence, to become whole and healthy we must face the shadows. When the shadow is not faced it grows until eventually it becomes too much to bear and will manifest in incredulous and/or monumental ways.  You are not here to be perfect; you are here to be you in all your imperfection, (w)holiness and Divine grace, let your life be fully expressed and lived! Give yourself permission to look at scary things, feel all your emotions and embrace the gift of life and the fullness of experiences available to you.

I always say, remember to leave a light on when diving into the unconscious nature of the shadow, because this isn’t about torturing yourself or going all the way into yet another extreme, it’s just about being willing to allow what is to be what it really is, to seek for the harmony, the balance, while knowing the waves will crash and life will ebb and flow. Sometimes that ebb and flow means going against the tide and sometimes it’s finding flow, but the ultimate test of being centered is when you can flow while in the middle of strong tides, forceful winds and the turbulence of life. It is those that do not run when faced with this that remain unswept and unwavering because they were went deep…. below the surface…into the well. It is inside the well where an inner nourishment lives that can be brought up to the surface, where joy can “spring” up and love can pour from a full cup.

The most spiritually enlightened version of you waits in the dark for discovery-uncovering-unveiling and this is the real apocalypse, the ability to see beyond the outer world and into the abyss of your own soul. The highest and best version of you is not made from avoiding the darkness and running from pain, from the shadow, from the truth. The highest and best version of you is made through relentless pursuit of knowing yourself, of diving deep head first into total committment to living your best life even though it’s scary.

No one has it all figured out, no matter how much it may seem that way on the surface, including me, so why not take off that LED mask of false light today, unburden yourself with trying to always be positive, perfect or live inside a persona and give yourself permission to shine your true light in all its glory!

~ Angela

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