Welcome to the Delicious Dignity Podcast. Let's settle in securely and ever so nicely into the brilliance of our own dignity. This episode is all about the New Age culture and how I engaged with it and why I left it. But you can apply this to really any culture you're part of, whether it's a religion, whether it's some kind of patriarchal system, whether it's a true culture culture, whether it's a corporate culture, whether it's whatever sort of system that you're part of, that you're sort of questioning. And this is sort of similar to, I believe, episode two is when I talked about leaving the system of dating and marriage and all these things. And so if you're in this space where you are questioning a system, and for the purposes of this episode, I'm focusing on the new age system, this episode is for you. Because I think everything is related, whether we're talking about religion, whether talking about any other system, we're still talking about the same fundamental things that are wrong, or that are just not quite in balance with what we were hoping for from said system. You can even take this to a medical system you've been part of. You can take this to... Anyway, you get my point, right? I don't have to give you more examples. But for the purposes of just honing down the context, I'm going to talk a lot about the New Age culture. And I know I said why I left the New Age culture. I was never fully enmeshed with it, but I was always sort of dating it, you know, off and on. I would sort of engage with it for a few hours and then back off, or a few days and then back off for like a few months. Every time I would engage with this new age culture, the only words that would go through my head was, you know, the scene from The Friends where Ross Chandler and Jennifer Aniston, I forgot her name, oh, Rachel, Ross Chandler and Rachel are moving the couch up the stairs. And Ross just keeps saying, pivot, pivot. Those were the words that would keep ringing in my head. It was... My whole body and my whole being never wanted to fully jump in to the culture completely. And it was because I was seeing all these things and I couldn't quite wrap my head around them. And for a while, I thought it made me wrong or bad inside because I was seeing these things and critiquing them or just feeling like something's not quite right with them. But as it turns out, it wasn't me. It wasn't me. So this episode is for those folks who are thinking that something is not right, but you don't have a language for it. You just feel off or you're confused by a certain system. If you're comfortable in your existing system, then that's totally fine. I'm not trying to rip away something that's comforting to you. So maybe don't listen to this episode if you know you're the type of person who's going to feel like you're being criticized because you're not. Nobody's criticizing you for loving the system you're in. It is just that this episode is sort of an aid or a help to those who need something, need a language, need someone else to sort of package it for them so that they can see it properly. Because a lot of times, sometimes we just don't have the language to describe what it is we're feeling and what it is we're seeing. Okay, so without further ado, I'm going to go into nine things about new age culture specifically that I found alarming and that made me sort of not engage with it. and then completely leave it altogether. And I'll talk about what made me completely leave it altogether. And you'll see how much of this applies to any pervasive system you're part of. These are all the things, these are the nine things that made me go, something isn't right here, and this is just not what I want. And no matter how much I force myself to be part of the system, I just cannot make it happen. So here we go. My first experience with the new age culture, it just felt like, there was a cruelty, a judgmental weaponizing sort of attitude in the so-called new age culture. This was supposed to be a spiritual place or spiritual things that I was doing was supposed to be about connecting with spirit and connecting with the deeper aspects of you, the more intelligent aspects of you, your intuition, your soul, and all of these things. But instead, what I was seeing is just a blanket lack of common decency and Everything seemed to be a pathology. Everything was a problem or a diagnosis. Nothing was just allowed to be what it is. Everything had to mean something much bigger than it actually was. Everything was pathologized. I'll give you an example. If, you know, one day I might have a stomach upset, the pathology or the diagnosis would be like, oh my God, your root chakra. No, I'm sorry. They would say it like this. Your root chakra is out of balance, which would just... it would just blow my mind. It was never about, oh, you just have a stomach upset. It was always, oh, you have a root chakra imbalance. And that's just a small example, but there were so many examples of this where I just couldn't be human. And I couldn't just have little things that were just sort of out of balance and quickly corrected, but it always had to be a big problem. And that problem would be used to sort of poke at me or poke at other people and use it to mean that there's something not quite right about them or something about them is less than the person making the judgment about them. I had this extremely critical mentor, you know, and on the surface, well, she was a very intelligent woman and she articulated things very well. And I learned a lot from her for sure. I even did a retreat with her. I did a lot of things with her and I really appreciated the wisdom that she gave. So there was that side of her, but then this other side of her was extremely controlling, very self-righteous. Every time I spoke, it felt like I was being tested and graded for whether I spoke the right words or said it in the right way. Anger has no place in the new age community. There's no space for anger. There's no space for just being human. And if you are human, people will judge you, be cruel to you, or just weaponize you. new age spiritual tropes to use against you to show you why you are inferior to them they even a lot of them even use these words they use the word muggle which is a harry potter term to describe normal people so a lot of spiritual people will so-called spiritual people will use that term to show how normal people are just the ones without magic and they don't know any better It's funny if you do it like as a joke, but they would mean it. They would be very serious about it. There was all this repressed anger and rage that would come out in these sort of judgmental, mean girl, cruel, weaponizing way. And that really made me sort of take a step back and ask myself, what is really going on here? And why do I feel so bad every time I went to to be part of a circle or part of a community or part of whatever event was happening? Why would I always feel like I came out of an event with wanting to take a shower and go to sleep for a week? And it was because of that sort of feeling that I had where everybody was just engaging in blanket cruelty and weaponizing new age terms to make themselves feel superior, which leads me to my next observation. which is there was a kind of specialness that everybody wanted to feel and everybody would sort of present themselves as. It's a lot of fantastical thinking. Nowhere is this more clear than in the desire to manifest things or manifesting, which, you know, manifestation is a beautiful concept, but it's actually the law of attraction, not the law of manifestation, right? But the law of attraction and manifestation are beautiful concepts when done correctly. But there was a lot of fantastical thinking that would make people engage in these fantasies and not have any kind of grip on reality. It was very performative and a sort of childish and emotionality to it. Like, for example, there was... these labels of starseed, Lemurian, Atlantis, Arcturian, Pleiadian, which are just all these terms to describe how an individual was special or from an alien race that made them the way that they are. And they used that specialness and weaponized it in a lot of ways. There was that childishness. It's very childish. If you think about it, it's like kids playing on the playground. And That, of course, leads to a lot of predatory behavior because a lot of so-called gurus would make themselves seem special because for whatever reason. And that so-called guru would use their seat of specialness to just weaponize new age culture, whether to sexually prey on women or men or even, but mostly women, to be honest, or just to get money or or just to get popular and get attention. And that was another aspect that I just couldn't tolerate because these people who would often tell me how they were, whatever they said that they were, I would see them as some of the worst people I'd ever met. And that made me feel really strange because on one hand, you're telling me you're this angel in disguise, but on the other hand, you have no integrity, you're not an honest person, you're mean to other people. for no reason. I can understand if you are mean for a reason. I can understand that. We all get angry at people and we all fumble through life. But just to be mean for the sake of wanting to feel superior, that I could not understand. And again, like I said, this isn't just in the new age culture. You can see it even in the corporate culture, for example. But yeah, they always had to make themselves larger than they were. And that leads me to the next part, which is because they wanted to seem better than they were, they would abuse the concept of compassion. So either they would be either very over-compliant with things that they shouldn't be and let a lot of evil go unpunished or unaddressed in the name of compassion, or they would simply just go around telling other people how they should have more compassion. It's almost as if like this basic understanding of right and wrong, which is so basic, such basic understanding of right and wrong is just skewed. They would become doormats to other people, or they would say they're being compassionate, but really they're being enablers. And in that, I saw a lot of weakness and fragility and just unreliable people who had really, their nervous system was destroyed, which is why they could never stand up for what they believed in. And some of them, they were genuinely strong people who were made weak by being forced to fit this mold of compassion when really these are the fighters and warriors. They were being told to not stand up for other people, not speak what's on their mind, not call out indecent behaviors because that's not compassionate. And again, you can see this same thing in other systems too, but I saw this in the New Age community. which was supposed to be this very spiritual place. But when good people do nothing, when good people don't stand up, that's when real evil starts to sink in. That's my opinion. And I just felt like the new age community almost encouraged that. They encouraged evil by stopping good people from saying something, by removing the claws and fangs that every animal has. You don't make them better animals. You kill their spirit. And that's what it felt like the new age community would do a lot. I feel like I'm going to do a whole episode on what's real compassion and what isn't, but that was something I saw a lot of too. The fourth thing, this is really funny because I think this was what made me really think to myself, I don't even care what's right and wrong anymore. If this is not present wherever I'm going, I don't want it. I don't care. I'd rather be wrong. then be right, you know? That thing was a lack of humor. Oh my gosh. Some of the most miserable people I've ever met are part of the new age community. They're always in crisis. There's always some drama. And what they do is that they justify it by saying that this is just what enlightened people go through. This is just what woke people go through, which again goes back to my second point of wanting to be special. They almost... justify their suffering by saying that it makes them special. And they're always, always, always, they are always the victim. And because they're always the victim, and this goes back to the ninth episode where I say this very clearly, because they're always the victim, they're always looking for someone to victimize them. They're always looking for a predator. And if there isn't one, they will invent one. And that lack of humor, that lack of lightness, this constant crisis and drama, I just couldn't be around that anymore. I had this one friend who was very much part of the New Age community, and it just felt like every single day I talked to her, there was something difficult that had happened in her life that was entirely of her own making, but she wouldn't see it that way. She would demonize everyone around her, but she would never take responsibility for her part in it, which was less of a part and more completely her responsibility. It got really tiring and stressful after a while. And that was, of all the things, it was the lack of humor that just made me go, oh no, I am not doing this. Just to give you an example outside of the new age community, there was this interview that I did with a very well-known corporate company. Part of the interview was I had to do this demo, this demonstration of the software that Thank you so much for having me. So I sat down with him and I was talking, I was like, so how did you like the demo? Wasn't it great? How did you enjoy that? And the guy who would have been my manager, his first point of what he called feedback to me was, well, you know, yeah, it was good. And I was like, okay, but where did I make a mistake? Like, what did I not get? Did I not give you the requirements that you asked for for the interview? And he was like, no, no, you know, you met all the requirements, but you laugh too much. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I was so stunned that this was the feedback where humor and lightness, God forbid I enjoy the job that you're hiring me for. Oh my God. It wasn't that I was a clown during the interview either. I was just clicking on things and I'm like, hey, what would you like to see? And I was having a good time as I do everywhere I go. And to him, that humor, meant that I was unprofessional. That lightness of being meant that I was unprofessional. Needless to say, I didn't get the job. I didn't even go for the next round of interviews, I think. And that was it. So anyway, I was just trying to give you another example that's not from the new age culture, but I really don't trust this attitude of we all suffer and then we die. I don't trust people who are always in crisis or who think that being miserable is just a fact of life. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of painful things happening and we all know what those things are, but choosing to actively not have humor and always being in some crisis or another, that is something that to me is the absolute opposite of what spirituality is about. In the Zoroastrian context, we have this concept called frasokareti. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. I'm probably not. But frasokareti means making wonderful. And that's one of the core tenets of Zoroastrianism and well, one of many. It's about making wonderful. And if the spirituality that I'm being fed or the new age, which is the new age culture that I'm being fed is not about that, then I didn't want to hear it. I was so tired of the woe is me story. So tired of it. I wanted to be around people who had been through a lot of difficult things for sure, because life can be very difficult. But who had an attitude of, well, we're going to get through this, who will find the funny in everything, and who will get past it and have come out on the other side, or who at least want to come out on the other side. And I just wasn't seeing a lot of that around the new age community. The fifth thing I saw, and I think this was the second thing that made me go, oh my God, I don't want to be part of this community, is abusing the concept of intuition. They would use the word intuition to justify all kinds of projections. What they would do is that they would confuse fear and anxiety for intuition. And this is why I've said, and I'll scream it from the rooftops, if you are not mentally at a certain level, going into the spiritual world is going to make everything topsy-turvy for you. That's why so many people in the new age community, because they haven't done their inner work, they would use intuition and confuse it with anxiety because they had such high anxiety. They had such high unaddressed trauma and so much fear in them that they hadn't addressed. They would confuse it for intuition and they would share this intuition with people without their consent. And that was something that felt very violating to me. And I don't use this word lightly by any means, but it felt like a form of psychic rape. And I just did not want to be part of that because these people who would share their intuition had no training and they had no proof of intuition. Just because you walk into a bookstore and pick up a set of tarot cards, that does not mean you are suddenly intuitive. You have to be skilled at understanding the differences between what is fear, what is anxiety, what is conditioning, and what is intuition. And to me, there wasn't a lot of that in the community. There wasn't that basic integrity of doing the work, practicing, experimenting, practicing every day and making sure that you know the differences between those things. There wasn't any of that. There was just, I'm going to have a feeling and I'm going to say that that's intuition. And that's 99% of the time when people have told me without their consent that it is their intuition, it was not intuition. 99% of the time. And I just got really tired of having people dump on me, but do it with a sense of superiority because it was their intuition talking. That would be really strange. And you can apply this to any system, by the way, because people claim to have a certain title or a certain position in the hierarchy of an organization. They will say all sorts of things. and expect it to be true or expect it to be understood or expect it to be heard as valid when it isn't. The way they do that in the New Age community is by using the word intuition. And nowhere is this more true when it comes to predicting futures. For some reason, intuition and prediction mean the same thing in the New Age community or even people who interact with the New Age community. And Those two things are completely separate concepts. They're not the same thing. Predictions are not the point of having intuition. And I would see a lot of people who would sort of try to get their way into the New Age community by looking at their horoscopes. And horoscopes don't tell you anything. And a lot of people who claim to say that they do tell you quite a bit, I feel like it was more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than it was true prophecy. intuitive work that was presented to them that they benefited from. All these things that got marketed as intuition, I just couldn't unsee it anymore and I couldn't ignore it anymore. So yeah, that just made me take a pause and go, I don't like what is getting passed off as valid or intuitive advice just because you label it as intuitive. That does not make it so. One of the things I do now is that When I'm talking to people and let's say that I have an intuition or whatever, I don't even say that it's intuition anymore. I just present it like a normal conversation. I don't have to make my words get some kind of specialness to them by calling it intuition. I don't use the word intuition. I just present my case. Like if you ever talk to me, I talk like a normal person. I don't do this big performance for people. Oh, my spirit guides are telling me my crystal ball is like, that's just performance. If you can't talk like a normal person when you're giving intuitive advice, then it's not real intuition. If you feel the need to put intuition on top of everything you say, then to me, that's At some point, the goal is to get to the point where every word that comes out of your mouth is intuition. Now, I'm not there yet. I mean, I feel like I'm close, but I'm not there yet. But that's the whole point, is it not? Is to live from spirit, in spirit, with spirit. That was the thing that just made me go, oh, I don't want this, you know? The next part is money. This is the sixth thing that I saw. is money and spirituality and the new age community. Oh my goodness. Yeah, this is where I really was stunned by the hypocrisy. They would blame everyone for not having money. They would blame capitalism. They would blame pretty much everybody for them not having financial literacy. They would be very... bit too free with how they spent their money, and they would spend their money on things that actually didn't support them or help them. Instead of buying some delicious groceries, they would go buy an oracle deck or a crystal. And a lot of people who interacted with the New Age community would believe spiritual work should be free, because there's this idea that somehow this specialness, right? If you are a special person, you're a special child, you're the chosen one, then God will provide for you because true chosen one's are just chosen ones. They've never had to develop their skills. They've never had to study. They've never had to learn. So why would you have to pay for their services? So there was that prevailing notion of like, oh, you know, money is not important. We'll do everything for free or we'll do things by donation-based. This is another thing I used to see is they would do things by donation-based, which, you know what? I love the concept and it's a beautiful concept, but what I had a problem with is what they did after. And because I got to see the after, right? The clients didn't get to see the after. I got to see it because these people would talk to me. And this is what would happen. They wouldn't charge enough to pay their bills. They would do things donation-based. And what would happen after the session was over, or even during the session, they would get resentful of their clients because their clients wouldn't pay them enough. And then they would pass their resentment off as specialness. Oh, you know, people don't pay me money because God takes care of me. Or they would say, oh, you know, I am not being looked after. I'm really being tested right now. And I'm like, no, you're not being tested. Just set your price for what you want to be paid so people can pay you that. And then they would go on saying, oh, you know, but there are so many people in need and we all have to support them. And then they would do that. They would support these so-called needy people. And then they would turn around and have resentment and then turn around and not be able to pay their bills and then turn around and engage in all these false marketing and really sleazy, cheesy sales tactics just to get money. And so their integrity would be compromised because they wouldn't look after themselves. They would even say things like, I'm so poor because I'm such a giver. I'm such a giver, so I'm poor. In Sedona, I see this so much. I'll see people with their cars and on the back of their car, they'll say things like traveling on kindness and they'll have their Venmo on the car, which you're not really traveling on kindness. You're traveling on somebody else's hard-earned money. And these same people would come to events where they would criticize capitalism. They would criticize other people for having money, but yet they wouldn't have no problem putting that on their car and saying, traveling with kindness, Venmo me. There is so much hypocrisy in the new age community with money. There was a point to which I just couldn't handle it because I've been poor and I understand. I mean, I haven't been poor on the streets poor, but I've had very little money myself and I cannot understand that behavior where you would not help yourself to get the money that you need in order to do the work you want to do. And so that just made me feel really yucky because I didn't want to be around people like that. I didn't want to be around people who would blame other people for the very hypocritical things that they themselves would do. Money was a big thing that I saw with the new age community. The seventh thing I saw, which, oh my gosh, I just know how much controversy there is around this, is cultural appropriation and oversimplification of other cultures. And nowhere have I seen this more abused than with the yoga industry. Oh my goodness. You know, I tried doing yoga and I would feel awful after doing it and I couldn't understand why. But I would always go to these, you know, gyms and classes that were taught by people who did not grow up in Indian culture and they don't understand Indian culture and they don't pronounce the words correctly and the sequences are all off. It just felt like it became a cartoon. You know, for a while, it was this whole yoga legging industry. And people still think of yoga as an exercise. And it's not. Also see this with the chakra system and how oversimplified the chakra system is. And so much complexity, especially from the Indian culture. And I know, I mean, I would know the Indian culture is a huge, it's such a small term for such a big variety of cultures within India. But There's so much of Indian culture that has just been destroyed in the name of oversimplifying things for a Western audience. And this is something I'm personally still struggling with a lot, actually, much more than I thought I would. It's hard not to be angry, really, really angry at the way Indian culture is being watered down or just propagated in a way that all the sacredness has been taken out of it. And I saw this so much in the New Age community, you know, so much. I would see people not of Indian origin wearing Indian clothes, speaking about Indian texts and talking about this and that. But then when it came to actually talking to Indian people or being friends with them or just being normal people, their inherent racism would come out. And I would just sit there and say, you have taken, you've built entire businesses on Indian culture. But when you meet Indian people, you're incredibly racist towards them. And they don't even know that they're doing it too, but they would. And it would be really alarming to me. And now I'm seeing this, a lot of Indian culture appropriation in the fashion industry right now. And that's also really bothering me. But at the same time, there is a part of me that understands that I have appreciated Indian culture so much more after coming to the United States because I needed the contrast. So there's that paradox. And this is just something personal that I've been struggling with. And I don't know how to feel about it. I don't know how to think about it. And I'm working through it little by little. And I feel like one day I'll be able to do an episode where I talk about how I handle the anger that comes with cultural appropriation. But I also saw this with the Native American culture. And again, Native American culture is an oversimplified term for so many things. But I don't feel like I have the authority to talk about that, but I just saw it even with the Native American culture. And one of the things, and I'm going to do an episode on this, is I just wish people would stick to their own culture. And just hear me out on this, okay? I don't think it's a bad thing to appreciate other cultures, love on other cultures, whatever, marry into other cultures, but also bring your culture to the mix. What I would see is that people from... the culture that they were appropriating, completely dishonoring their own culture. They never brought in their ancestry. They never brought in their clothing from their ancestry, their foods from their ancestry, the stories from their ancestry. Instead, they would just sort of co-opt the traditional Indian cultures or Asian cultures and Native American cultures instead. And again, I don't know how to explain this, but I never saw them bringing their own culture in. It just felt like there was only one culture that was constantly being taken from over and over and over again, and then oversimplified and oversimplified. And then there would be echo chambers of them thinking that this is how Indian culture is, or this is what Indian culture is. I remember this guy started this argument on a group chat in Sedona. Saying that, you know, he doesn't understand why this guy was charging $10 for a kirtan. A kirtan is where people come together and sing devotional songs. And he didn't understand why the organizer was charging $10. $10 for a multiple hour event. $10, okay, it's nothing. For a multiple hour event in Sedona. And he was complaining about that. And this is what he said. And he's a white male. And he said the words, in India, they don't charge anything for kirtans and devotional singing. And this is not what the true spirit of kirtan is. Meanwhile, I'm sitting there and looking at this, and I don't think he'd ever even been to India, first of all. And he's bemoaning $10 to be paid for a kirtan. And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, I know so many musicians in India who are not paid well, who can barely pay their bills because people think that just because they play in kirtans, that they shouldn't be paid money. Like, okay, just giving them some food is enough. I know so many spiritual people in India, including a very close friend of mine at the time, who wouldn't get paid for her services and they would instead just give her some food as a thank you. And I feel like we have this problem all over the world where we don't pay artists for their talent. Sitars are very heavy. They require a lot of care. They require a lot of investment. Tablas too. These things cost money and it takes a lot of practice and training to get to a certain level to play these kirtans. And just because this is how he interpreted what happens in India, I mean, maybe he's right from one small perspective, but he hasn't seen it in the larger context of what's happening with kirtans. You see what I'm saying? So What he didn't want to say was, is that, hey, I don't want to pay $10 because he was living out of his car. He didn't even have a place to stay and he would keep asking for free food on the Sedona chat. So he decided to go after and make a statement about Indian culture and say that he shouldn't have to pay $10 to attend a kirtan. Do you see what I'm saying? And right there, you see everything, right? You see... culture appropriation you see misunderstanding things taken out of context not understanding political social climate not being part of a culture not knowing what's going on in present moment time and still commenting as though you know what it's about and this is just a small example and that was the most recent example that I could think of but this is just to show you that I just didn't understand why people can't bring their own culture to the mix And maybe you're seeing that too, right? Because I would like to learn about Nordic culture. I would love to listen to more studies about Celtic shamanism and Celtic medicine wheels. I would love to see that. I would love to see more, oh my God, take your pick, any culture in the world, like share their medicine. There was this Siberian throat singer that came and sang at a concert in Sedona. And I thought, I had been hit by God. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever heard or seen or witnessed in my entire life. I thought I was in the presence of the goddess herself. And she brought her culture and she mastered it. And she's very well known globally. But she didn't take Indian culture. She didn't have to because she cemented herself in her own culture. She made an effort to understand her own culture and master it. That's what made her so great. And I have this thing that We have our bodies for a reason and our blood and our bones sing with the medicine of our ancestors. This ancestral working into our daily practice in the new age community is just not there. It's all about oversimplifying primarily the Indian culture and some other cultures, wrapping it up in a new age bow and calling it spirituality. That is something that it just bothered me a lot. Still bothers me to this day, but I'm working through it. Anyway, that's enough about that. In case you're seeing this too, I just want to say, I see you and I get it. And I understand. And we're all in this together. The eighth thing that I saw in the new age community is that they just never seem to have enough crystals, bracelets, malas, Oracle decks, books, yoga leggings. It's just so much consumerism marketed as I don't even know what it's marketed as. And Or even statues too, statues of deities and stuff. And I just, I kept wondering at what point will that stop? How many crystals are enough for you? Because the ones that you have are collecting dust in the corner, which is not the point of having crystals. So what is the point of having them? And then the ninth thing I noticed was hyper individualism and false community. This is It just felt like everything in the new age community was all about self-development, self-care, self, self, self. Everything was about self. There was so much ignoring of just common decency, manners, just being neighborly. I'm not saying you got to go out and do service or volunteer. That maybe is your thing. Maybe it isn't. But just basic acts of service that everybody does. For example, if you're taking your dog out, do you pick up his poop? And do you throw it away in the trash bin? Basic things like this, basic acts of service were just not encouraged. It was always these huge acts and displays of service, like feeding the hungry and all these things. And I understand that has its place, but everyday service was always ignored in the favor of self-care, self-development, self-love, and all these things. They just took it to an extreme that I couldn't handle. And then the flip side of that is that because they would create this hyper individualistic environment, alongside it would come false community. What the new age culture would do is create these women's circles or these, I don't know how to describe it, but they would just be the false community. So they would bring these people together to talk about their pain, their suffering. It was false community because you're only gathering people together to talk about how awful their lives are. And they would call it a community. And it didn't feel like a community at all, because to me, to me personally, community means everybody has their own perspectives. Everybody has their own stuff. Everybody has their own things that they're dealing with. But we also have good things to share. And we also have skills that we share with one another. That's community. Being neighborly, having basic common decency and manners. That to me is community. Community is not bringing together a whole bunch of people, putting them in a room for a few hours and making them go around the circle telling your sob story. That just didn't feel like it fostered a community for me personally. Maybe it does for you and that's okay. But this is for people who are trying to have language around what they're feeling and thinking. So anyway, I hope those nine things that I shared give you some language around what you're feeling and what you're thinking. This was not to criticize the new age community or any system. It's mostly to show you that this is what I noticed because now I want to tell you what I took. And this is going to be a very long episode. I apologize. But now I want to tell you what I took away from the new age community because there were good things that I took away from it and what I left behind. So what I took from the new age community is the concept of energy cleansing and energy releasing. To me, That saved me, you know, because it was all about how to release energy, how to drop the weight of all this psychic stuff that would come at me. And I would just feel by psychic stuff. I just mean other people's thoughts, other people's projections, how to drop it all off. If I was feeling anything in the air that made me feel tender or vulnerable, how to like ease that out of my body, how to just work with energy in general. I just loved it. I took to it like a fish to water and I use it every day, every minute to this day. Surprisingly, the New Age community also really built my bond with nature because I started to learn a whole lot of, shall we say, more pagan traditions. So times before religion was a thing and how close we were to nature and nature-based practices. The New Age really brought me to that. And I really love it for that. The other concept it introduced me to was channeling, which is basically channeling having conversations with your intuition or your particular deity or whatever your choice is. But just basically being able to form a dialogue with all there is with the divine is just a skill that I use to this day. And I so appreciate that it was introduced to me. Shamanic journeying was another. I used to do a lot of that when I first started out in my spiritual journey. I learned about how to work with animals and plants and again, nature-based practices. but the practice of shamanic journey work. And this is where you're working with animal spirit guides and plant spirit guides and other spirit guides just to work on something, work on a problem or just work with them in general. I loved doing that. I used to do it regularly, almost every day for years. The chakra system, I wouldn't say the new age community introduced me to it, but because it oversimplified so much of the chakra system, I decided to go off and learn it on my own. So it was the inspiration for me to get deeper into it. And I have a lot of respect for the chakra system and how organized and how biologically sound the chakra system is. It's so beautifully rich with so many aspects to it. I just love the chakra system. And I thank the New Age for pushing me to learn more about it in a way that wasn't being taught to me. Thank you so much. Sometimes we need a villain in order to be a hero. So that's what that did for me. Because I was only hearing about one tradition or a few cultures you're there, I would push myself to learn about other traditions. And it was just fun. I don't necessarily use it or profit off it in my business, but I just love learning about them and the spiritual traditions from different cultures. I loved learning about oracle cards, tarot cards, pendulums, all of the props for learning intuition and honing your intuition. I loved learning about those things. And I think the new age culture really helped me with understanding health as a holistic system. So thoughts, emotions, and how they affect your physicality, as opposed to just popping a pill. I always ask myself if I feel any pain in my body or I'm going through anything physical, my first ask to myself is, What is the thought behind this? What is the stuck energy behind this? What is the emotion behind this? And I can't tell you how important that has been for me in just managing my overall health. Intuition, just the concept being introduced to me was absolutely amazing. I just, I don't know where I'd be without intuition. So I'm just going to leave it at that. It's a very complex topic, but just the concept being introduced to me and me taking it and running with it was just incredible for my growth and my Just my sanity living in this world. I don't know where I'd be without my intuition, honestly. Crystals. While I didn't appreciate the crystal over mining and all these things and hyper-consumerism, crystals brought me to, just like the study of crystals brought me to my favorite two crystals in the world. And these are just the two beings in my life that I absolutely love. It's pink amethyst and pyrite. They are my favorite patron crystals. Oh, and garnet too sometimes. But the world of New Age introduced me to the concept of crystals, introduced me to working with them. And I really appreciated being introduced to these three crystals. And the last thing of what I took from the New Age culture is really being able to define and see clearly what is a spiritual issue and what is a psychological one. And I have seen both happen, that psychological issues are denounced as spiritual issues and spiritual issues are denounced as psychological ones. But I feel I have a really in-depth understanding now of what the line is and whether there even is a line sometimes. I have a lot of rich appreciation for the spiritual invisible world. I really have a lot. Anyway, those are the 10 things that I feel like the new age community really helped me sink into that I then took and then ran with it on my own. Sometimes all we need is an introduction. We don't need something to be everything. And in that spirit, I want to tell you what I do now instead of all the things I told you that the new age culture used to do. So what I do now instead is that I don't follow or listen to anybody other than my own intuition. Sometimes I will follow certain one or two leaders that I really like on Instagram or I'll subscribe to their newsletters, but no more. Right now, I only have subscribed to two. I don't listen to a lot of people anymore. It's just mostly my intuition and I dialogue with it. And that's kind of like my guru, if you will. I only trust people whose lives I like. If I don't like somebody's life, and how they're living, I don't learn from them no matter how spiritual or how great that they are. Because I want you to teach me based on whether I like your life. I don't want you to teach me based on, like, if I don't like your life, I won't like your teachings. And that's been so true for me. I always look at how people treat other people. And if a guru or a teacher goes overboard, As in, you know, they're doormatting with their clients or they're just being doormats to people or they're being overly compassionate or overly nice. I don't trust those people at all. And I also watch for whether they're going overboard, whether they treat people cruelly or with some kind of disdain or they have a superiority complex. Then I just sort of back away from them. And that's how I've been analyzing who I want to follow and who I want to learn from and who I want to be inspired by. And I've just been going deeper in what I've already been taught, just deeper and deeper and deeper. I don't feel like I need to learn more things anymore. I just feel like I need to go deeper in what I already have learned. And my favorite thing that I have done after leaving the new age culture and sort of just shutting the door on it is making my own oracle cards, making my own prayers, my own mantras, my own, just making it my own. Whatever it is that I have learned, Instead of using what other systems have taught me, I'm using the concept, but I'm making it my own. So I'm using the concept of Oracle cards, but I use my own Oracle cards that I've designed, that I have created. And they're just for me. I'm not sharing it with anyone. They're just mine. And I just absolutely love using them because they speak to me in a way that no other deck of Oracle cards can speak to me as. It's a long episode, but I like to be detailed. Anyway, this is the ritual part of the episode. And this is going to be similar to the ritual of not wanting the tea, which I think was episode two, where I talked about how I am moving away from the system of what people expect a woman to be in a relationship and marriage and dating and all those things. This is a similar ritual to that. And this is just about understanding your current system and what you would like to take from it and what would you like to leave behind. And the questions are just that. So identify the system you're in that you are sort of questioning. You find yourself questioning it. You're not trying to question it, but you find yourself questioning it. For example, maybe the system is marriage. Maybe it's religion. Maybe it's a corporate culture, whatever it is. And it scares you to question these big systems. Maybe it scares you. Maybe you think you're bad or wrong person for questioning these systems, whatever it is. That's totally fine. That's the system. Just for the sake of this exercise, just pick one. So you'll pick that system. And you're just going to give yourself, and your second question is, You're just going to give yourself space to identify what you like about the system you're in and what you can take away for life. Obviously, this system has provided you with something that you like about it. Identify that. Give that room. Give that space. Then identify in the third question, what can you leave behind? For example, something about religion that I love and that I can take away is that, especially the religion that I grew up in, is its connection to nature. That is something that And specifically, it's connection to fire. And I love that. So I'm taking that with me. But what can I leave behind is that I don't want to be told as a woman what I can and cannot do, where I can and cannot go. And the fact that my menstruation makes me somehow dirty or not sacred enough or not able to attend a temple, these are things I'm going to leave that behind. People always like to argue that the reason they said that was to give women a break and therefore women were not allowed in the temples. I call BS on that. And maybe that was true for then, but I want to be able to go to a temple whenever I want to be in a temple. And I don't want to be told as a woman that I cannot go to a temple just because I'm menstruating. So that is something I can leave behind as an example. And the fourth question is, what can you master from the system you're currently in? What would you like to master? So for example, if you're in corporate America, as an example, One of the things you can master, depending upon your role, of course, but let's just say you're in a role that requires presentations and public speaking. You can master that. You can seek opportunities to present and public speak, even if it's for five minutes, even if it's for 30 minutes. You can find more creative ways to tell a story and you can master the art of presenting and public speaking. But you don't have to look at everything else. But you're choosing one thing from the current system you're in to master. So again, Identify the system you're in, identify what you like and what you can take away, identify what you can leave behind and identify what you can master. What would you like to master? For me in the new age community, it was intuition. I wanted to master intuition and that's what I did. You know, there were a bunch of other things, but intuition was my thing and being connected to the divine at all times. And so, yeah, we're giving space. We're not trying to pull the rug from underneath you and say, let's reject the system entirely. Maybe in a few years, we might have to do that. But for now, let's just not throw the baby out with the bathwater, as they say. And let's acknowledge what you do love about this. And let's acknowledge what you can master and what you can like and take away with you for life. And that, I think, if nothing else, brings you closer to your dignity than anything. And so, my friends... Actually, before I end, can you please tell me if you mind having such a long episode or would you rather I chunked it out for you? So half an hour and half an hour and made this two episodes rather than one long episode. If you can tell me that over at Delicious Dignity, I'd very much love that because I was thinking of doing two episodes on this and chunking them out. But I don't know. I thought, what the hell? We can just go for one whole episode. So anyway, let me know. And let's see. How would I want to bless you? Okay, may you allow your beautiful dignity to expand beyond the confines of any system. All right, my friends, much love to you. Bye.