I didn’t write this, I found it back in 2019 and it resonated. The website that shared it seems to be down now, so I’m reposting below with some of my thoughts as preface.
From Jon Ray
It’s all too easy to become addicted to our own “spiritual” practices, gurus, and psychic counsel. Our spiritual practice should empower our free will, not make us a slave to ideology, consciousness devices, and ritual.
Perhaps a healthy regular dose of our “lower selves” is just the kick in the pants we need to actually make something happen and shift something in our lives?
If this article triggers you – are you really as enlightened as you thought?
I’m guilty aF, here. When I want to throw the book or the computer monitor, I have to really challenge myself to stop and ask: Wait – is this the dumb book’s fault, or some kind of “user error”? And of course, the “user” in “error” is me.
This idea that we can only think thoughts of light and love, makes me want to puke into someone’s solar rain bag. Sure, I can appreciate the sentiment – but thanks/no thanks – I prefer to be someone who can successfully operate at every level of the emotional scale, not just from the vibrational excellency brought on by 3 hours of meditation and a kombucha.
“Sometimes the only way to muster an original thought is to start with a tiny rebellion.”
The natural by-product of a strong lightbody may just be an ever-increasing desire to activate and engage with your shadow in a truly productive way, instead of keeping it locked down deep in an eternal EMF timeout cage.
It’s fun to stop pretending to be a good person, constantly looking for validation in external practices. There’s a kind of deep satisfaction which comes with acknowledging that we’re flawed individuals and that maybe that’s okay.
Author Unknown – Originally Circulated Mid-1990s. This piece has circulated anonymously for decades in New Age and counter-culture circles.
New Age Anonymous: The Twelve Steps
Step One: “We admitted we were powerless over the New Age – that our Higher Selves had turned us into flakes.”
Step Two: “Came to believe that a powerful bullshit detector could restore us to sanity.”
Step Three: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of our lower selves and a good psychiatrist.”
Step Four: “Made a searching and fearless disposal of our crystals, tarot decks, incense, angel cards, rising signs, wands, spells, medicine wheels, pendulums and lottery tickets.”
Step Five: “Admitted to God, our Guru and our seminar leader the exact nature of our delusion.”
Step Six: “Were entirely ready to take back our mind, body and spirit.”
Step Seven: “Humbly asked our Higher Power to f*** off.”
Step Eight: “Made a list of all the New Age a**holes we’d been nice to and vowed to make amends to them all.”
Step Nine: “Insulted the New Age wherever possible, especially when to do so made us look bad.”
Step Ten: “Continued to take personal inventory and, when we were wrong, promptly relished in it.”
Step Eleven: “Sought through television and newspapers to improve our conscious contact with humanity, concentrating only on our ability to understand what the hell was really happening in the world.”
Step Twelve: “Having avoided a paradigm shift as the result of these steps, we vowed to carry the NAA message to New Agers everywhere and to practice being ordinary in all our affairs.”
Two Stories of Recovery
Robin’s Story: “At the urging of Whozdime, a high octave, 12th dementia dull, hypo-planetary being with a wide photon belt, I gave up my job, moved into a teepee and began building the ark that would save me when California dropped into the ocean.”
Chuck’s Story: “One day, while I was feeling up a woman’s aura for possible energy leaks, her husband, possessed by a group of demonic entities leftover from a previous lifetime, burst into my office, smashed my copper pyramid and thrust an ozone tube down my pants.”
Step One: We Admitted We Were Powerless
Although nobody wants to admit defeat, it is especially difficult for bliss ninnies. Pain, despair, confusion aren’t allowed unless we pay a month’s salary to humiliate ourselves in front of others at inner child retreats.
We beam with other disciples, projecting world peas and carrots through the sacred hoop of mandatory eye contact. We offer unsolicited advice and power trip with vows of silence, using our spiritual superiority to mask how stupid we really are.
No other form of delusion is more destructive than such base Shirley MacLainism. Let’s face it, newageoholics, we are flakes, fakes and far from awake. We have hit rock bottom.
Step Two: The Bullshit Detector
A bullshit detector, what is that? Will it interfere with our ability to know ourselves through past life regressions?
Now is the time when we must learn to question every Tom, Dick and Guru who shops in a health food store. Just think, instead of spending Saturday in a hotel conference room listening to near-death experiences, we can mow the lawn, bake cookies, go fishing.
Step Three: Lower Selves and Psychiatrists
No longer can we ask dead white guys or dead brown guys to save us from the paperwork piling up on our desk; nor can we expect angels to plan our vacations and fairies to water our plants for us while we are away.
Acting without spiritual superiority is scary, for it forces us to return to the days before yurts and geodesic domes.
Yes, we are tested at every turn (no one said it would be easy to withstand the death throes of a Higher Power), yet, finally we see that it takes more than Cherokee jewelry to solve our problems.
Sure our hardship is more pronounced when we can’t blame an astrological square for our flat tire – but we also gain power and confidence as we do lower self stuff (such as burping) in public.
Step Four: Disposal of Crystals
Step Four is our vigorous and painstaking effort to come to terms with our desire to be on one of the 144,000 seats on the ascension starship and how this compulsion causes severe financial problems.
Like other newageoholics, we got hooked via isolated purchases of relatively harmless New Age paraphernalia, such as a rose quartz, an angel pin, a book on out-of-body experiences. When these failed to satisfy, we moved on to harder gear.
Step Five: Admitting Our Delusion
“Dear God, Guru, seminar leader (circle those that apply), I have been lying. I tell people I found you in Retreat-Land. I tell them God snores, I mean speaks, to me during my meditation…”
Step Five is when we admit that our New Age addiction arose out of a paranormal need for attention and validation.
Step Six: Taking Back Mind, Body and Spirit
With our delusions accounted for, it is time to embark on the next step: exorcism. The task of reclaiming our identity is of grave importance.
Tell people your walk-in walked out. Go to parties and advocate imbalance. Open your eyes during group meditation and make faces at others while they aren’t looking.
Sometimes the only way to muster an original thought is to start with a tiny rebellion.
Step Seven: The Mid-Point
Step Seven is the step that signals the mid-point of our recovery. Indeed, there is nothing so rewarding as the moment our Higher Power gets exactly what it deserves.
Out of all the steps, NAA veterans like working this one the best because it is a noisy opponent to denial.
Step Eight: The List
Addressing how one falsely imposed hierarchy creates another, Step Eight focuses on the emotional terrorism of New Age relationships.
First, we mentally review every New Age gathering we’ve attended and record all of the undeserving people we were nice to. Second, we set the record straight.
Step Nine: Insulting the New Age
Step Nine is similar to Step Eight, in that it gives us an excuse to exercise duality and pave over New Age paths.
Sit in the front row at a channeling and, just as the human host goes into trance, hold up a sign that says “Pleiadians Suck”. Call psychic hotlines and ask for Charlie Tuna.
Step Ten: Relishing Being Wrong
As we work the first nine steps, we are preparing ourselves for an ordinary way of life. Now, at Step Ten, it is time to practice all that we’ve learned.
Step Eleven: Television and Newspapers
Nicknamed the paradigm downshift, Step Eleven begins when we realize that NAFTA isn’t the name of a fancy Japanese import sedan.
Step Twelve: Practicing Being Ordinary
The joy of descent is the theme of NAA’s twelfth step. This is when we renounce all dolphin pandering and celebrate the steps we’ve taken to save ourselves from wounded healers.
NAA graduates no longer have to pretend to love everybody. We can give up aikido and throw out our recycling bins. And best of all, we can sleep at night knowing we’re ordinary.
Humanity
grant me the serenity to accept life without astrology,
The Courage to change my name back to what it was,
And the Wisdom to know that aliens can’t save me.
All that said: The New Age is really, really fun and does have a lot of valuable nuggets to offer, but it’s incredibly easy to turn our willpower over to it and stop making our own choices. Everything in moderation, including moderation.