New age fraud and critical thinking

[Minarvia]

Welcome, torsprings! I once believed in religion and Sylvia Browne and such things, too. But I was questioning everything right around the time I came here. After I came here it was easy to see how wrong I had been. I went thru a short period of depression after shedding all those old beliefs, but I came out of it much happier, and, I hope, a better person for it.
I didn't know about the podcast! I'll check into it - not to be on it, but to hear other stories. So, thank you for mentioning that, krelnik.

 

[Apathia]

A warm welcome, Torsprings!

I got all the way into Reiki to the master level and practiced a combination of other "Energy Healing" modalities. It was wonderful placebo!
I began shying away from all that because of the bogus claims attached to it and a desire to respect others personal space. I refused to be a "healer."

Glastonbury is on my list of places I'd like to visit but falls short of the bucket list.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Welcome Torsprings,

Someone who can break the ties of woo in an environment like Glastonbury is very impressive, it must have been incredibly hard to break through that level of peer re-enforcement. Well done to you!

 

[torsprings]

Welcome Torsprings,

Someone who can break the ties of woo in an environment like Glastonbury is very impressive, it must have been incredibly hard to break through that level of peer re-enforcement. Well done to you!

Yes it was scary and viewed more like having a breakdown at the time ! Glastonbury is woo central and woo people do indeed re-enforce each other
especially if someone starts to question things. I ditched woo and left Glastonbury in December 2004.
When I left the woo consensus was
'Glastonbury is the heart chakra of the World. The Earth energy here is strong and it is sending you into exile as you are not ready for enlightenment'
Looking back now it seems hilarious but at the time it was the start of a difficult couple of years before I found my feet back in reality.

 

[dudalb]

Glastonbury. The UK's Answer to Sedonia, New Mexico,which is the big New Age Nonsense Site in the US.

 

[CORed]

Glastonbury. The UK's Answer to Sedonia, New Mexico,which is the big New Age Nonsense Site in the US.

Are you sure you don't mean Sedona, Arizona?.

 

[ExMinister]

Sylvia Browne once told me I was going to be a spiritual healer in Sedona, New Mexico.

Probably because Sedona, Arizona and Santa Fe, New Mexico were (are?) the trendy New Age places to be so they're easy to mix up.

Now I'll add Glastonbury to the list.

It took me a long time to work my way free of my New Age beliefs. It was more like a slow process of removing a card at a time until the whole house collapsed.

 

[slyjoe]

Sedona still is ExMinister.

And welcome torsprings.

 

[pakeha]

...It took me a long time to work my way free of my New Age beliefs. It was more like a slow process of removing a card at a time until the whole house collapsed.

A nice description, ExMinister.

 

[Soapy Sam]

I always felt Reiki, with it's claimed ability to send energy to any spot on Earth and even to find an individual person, would have made the ideal assassination weapon for the Men Who Stare at Goats. If it existed.

The response of Reiki "masters" to this suggestion is that Reiki obviously can't do harm, as it only uses good energy.

Which I guess, explains everything.

Glastonbury is nice. I wonder what the Somerset Levels will look like after another century of changing climate.

 

[Ellen Travis]

Hello and welcome torspings

 

[sophia8]

Hi Torspring - while I don't want to rain your your parade, you seem to have a very wide and fuzzy definition of "cult". Isaac Bonewits formulated a Cult Danger Evaluation Frame, which serves as a pretty good guide for recognising cults. How does your Reiki Master's group do on that scale? You're in danger of sounding like that particular type of religious convert who does their best to emphasise the awfullness of their former way of life.
And Glastonbury may be 'woo central' to some folks here, but they've clearly never visited the place. Yes, it's got New Age shops and people galore, but it also has slum housing estates, drunks, homeless people with dogs on strings, takeaways, charity shops etc just like any other British town.
I've visited the town, and I have friends there. Just coincidentally, one of them posted on Facebook this morning: "Glastonbury - The only town in the world where you get someone carrying a fully functional, unsheathed scimitar in one hand, and a Cornish pasty from Burns the Bread in the other....."

 

[torsprings]

Hi sophia8
I respect your opinion and your experience of Glastonbury.
Of course not everyone will have the same experience and opinion.
In my OP I quite clearly stated it was my experience of living in Glastonbury as a New age student and how I started to question things with critical thinking.

I have experience of being taken in by New Age fraud and how easy it is to follow cult behaviour. I lived in Glastonbury UK for five years, dropped out and became very new age. I learnt Reiki and 'qualified' and got Reiki I and Reiki II. I also learnt other 'energy' healing things about chakras and auras. I followed a guru. At the time it all seemed quite reasonable and I was swept along with it. I then started to question things

As to woo central it is not me making the original claims.
Search Glastonbury New Age and check out what the New age community themselves claim.
I do believe I was following cult behavior at times but having read your link
I was wrong to say the ashram ticked all the cult boxes. So thanks for that.
So have you ever lived in Glastonbury ?
Do you have Glastonbury new age experiences yourself to share ?

 

[quarky]

I am a master of rakey. It's similar to reiki but is used to organize mostly organic material lying around my lawn. I think we all make errors in thinking. Hopefully we learn and move on.

I have a brown belt in Broomati.
It's an ancient defense system in the marital arts.

(Oops, gotta go sweep up something now. The little woman calls.)

 

[lkepress]

I too trained in Reiki(level II) and got involved in chakras and auras and such. At the time it was fun and exciting to learn such exotic and strange things but then I began to get into even stranger aspects of it and it started to really mess with my mind to an extent.

I would think(through the lenses of all this stuff I was taking in) that I could, and actually thought, that I left my body once and that on occasion that demons were attacking me. I had such experiences since I've been a teen, and I guess in a quest for answers, I assumed that what I was experiencing for most of my life was supernatural.

But later on(long after I moved on from such new age things) I discovered what was going on and it was a relief because for years afterwards those events still troubled me even though I convinced myself that they were all just the products of my mind.

 

[dudalb]

Are you sure you don't mean Sedona, Arizona?.

God, you are right. And I have been there a few times. No excuse except a mind fart.

 

[krelnik]

Well done, torsprings! Are you aware of the JREF's podcast CONsequence? In it, we try to interview people who have had experiences like yours. It sounds like your story would make a fascinating episode if you would like to be interviewed. (You don't have to use your real name on the podcast if you don't desire to).

Email Brian Thompson at [email protected], he is the producer and host of the podcast.

Might just do that. Thanks for the email.

Reminder: Brian is still awaiting your email, he's very interested!

 

[EHocking]

I am a master of rakey. It's similar to reiki but is used to organize mostly organic material lying around my lawn. I think we all make errors in thinking. Hopefully we learn and move on.

I myself do rakey as well, but I use the cyclone rakey it sucks even better than rakei.

Because I am not qualified, I have a master come in once a fortnight.

The ultimate in universal energy transferral in my opinion.

 

[torsprings]

Reminder: Brian is still awaiting your email, he's very interested!

I haven't forgotten krelnick. I'm still thinking about it I'm afraid. A podcast is a bit scary and putting myself out there more. I might find my feet more here first.

 

[s_pepys]

I haven't forgotten krelnick. I'm still thinking about it I'm afraid. A podcast is a bit scary and putting myself out there more. I might find my feet more here first.

good on you torsprings.

i love glasto (town and festival). pretty much all my friends are into all the new age stuff and i have to regularly bite my lip on a night out just to keep the peace.

its a very lonely and difficult existence most of the time. i sometimes find myself wishing i did beleive some of the ridiculous crap just to fit in. i suppose thats partly how they get to you. luckily im just not built to be a beleiver as hitchens would say.

you are stronger and more enlightened than any of these so called gurus.

my life in a nutshell (minus the wife for backup):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0W7Jbc_Vhw

lxxx