Feature (Book Excerpt):

Creating a new paradigm will require a strong community

by Peter Block

Editor's Note:  We have a saying in the New Age movement that has become holy rote:  “By working on ourselves, we are working on the world.”  But is this really true? Change expert Peter Block says no.  The following is an excerpt from his insightful book, Community: The Structure of Belonging.

We are broken into pieces… Each piece is working hard on its own purpose, but parallel effort added together does not make a community.  Our communities are separated into silos; they are collection of institutions and programs operating near one another but not overlapping or touching.  This is important to understand, because it is this dividedness that makes it so difficult to create a more positive or alternative future—especially in a culture that is more interested in individuality and independence than interdependence.  The work is to overcome this fragmentation…>>More

Movie Review:

'Men Who Stare At Goats' Vindicates New Age Movement

After my Google alert informed me that “new age movement” had been mentioned in a half –dozen reviews of the new comedy, “The Men Who Stare At Goats,” I headed down to the multiplex, braced for another round of mockery of the New Age. What a surprise to find a nuanced picture not only of all that is wrongheaded about the New Age, but also much that is right.  >> More

Rant of the Month:

Why do we enable religious intolerance against the New Age?

When I first came up with the idea for newagepride.org, I knew that most people of a New Age persuasion were embarrassed or put off by the New Age label, and I wanted to offer them a welcoming community where they’d be able to feel proud of claiming a New Age identity. 

I knew it would be an uphill climb.  After all, here in America, land of religious freedom, where many different faiths co-exist peacefully, the New Age spiritual persuasion is still openly mocked by the media as something idiotic, or attacked as “dangerous” and “evil” by fundamentalists Christians.  When the majority opinion is that your beliefs make you a crackpot or the devil’s handmaiden or both, it becomes difficult to espouse those beliefs openly.  >> More

Political Action:

Health Care Reform

Last week, the House passed an historic Health Care Reform Bill, and now it is in the hands of the senate.  Call or write your senators – whether they are Democrat or Republican, whether you think they will listen or not --  and tell them how you feel about health care reform.  It is a moral obligation to make our voices heard.

Events Calendar:

Saturday, November 14th, 10 a.m. (CST)

Teena Booth Interview with Sandy Andrew
Universal Learning Series

Friday, November 20th, 7 p.m.

Book Singing -- Unfinished Evolution

Well Red Coyote Bookstore

3190 W. State Route 89A,  Sedona, AZ

Talking About a New Age Revival

Book Launch party for Unfinished Evolution at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, AZ, on November 4th, 2009.

Interview:

Where does the New Age Stand Today?

An interview with Marilyn Knight of Crystal Magic

To get a closer look at what’s going on in the New Age movement today, we went to Sedona, Arizona -- a breathtakingly beautiful city that has openly embraced the New Age and welcomes spiritual seekers from all over the globe.  Visitors can enjoy a variety of metaphysical experiences and healing treatments, and find more New Age book and gift shops per square mile than any other city on the planet. We spoke to Marilyn Knight, the book buyer for the popular Crystal Magic, a “Resource Center for Discovery and Personal Growth.”

Knight moved to Sedona in 1987, arguably the year that the New Age reached its peak in popularity (remember the Harmonic Convergence?).  For the past 20 years, she has had a front row seat to the ways the New Age has changed, and the ways it has stayed the same. >> More

New Age in the Media:

The Sedona Sweat Lodge Tragedy

After we absorb the shock and sadness of hearing about unexpected deaths, anger usually follows.  When three people died on October 8 in the pursuit of their spiritual beliefs in a sweat lodge in Sedona, Arizona, my own shock and sadness was followed by the instinct to brace myself for a wave of blame to hit the New Age movement.  But the wave never came. 

The media, normally quick to ridicule anything New Age, was respectful and circumspect and analyzed the situation with fairness.  In fact, most of the stories in print and on the airwaves gave the benefit of the doubt to the sweat lodge ceremony leader, so-called "New Age Guru" James Arthur Ray, a benefit he might not deserve.  The blogosphere, however, was more critical, and comments posted to blogs were sometimes savage in attacking the New Age.  On the question of whether the deaths point to New Agers somehow being more gullible than most, I posted a blog of my own.  >> More

Book Review :

Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America,
by Barbara Ehrenreich

If Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret was a missive from the New Age movement to the rest of the world about how one should think to be happy and successful, then Barbara Ehrenreich has just written a stinging response that should be required reading for all who have turned their minds over to the dictates of the Law of Attraction.  

Until I read this book, I assumed that manifestation mania was a unique twist of New Age thought-- or, to be more precise, New Thought thought.  (Contrary to popular belief, New Age and New Thought are not the same thing.)  But Ehrenreich makes an ironclad case that American culture is now steeped in positive thinking, to our own great detriment. >> More

New Age Journey of the Month:

Darkness and Scattered Light -- Elihu Edelson

"Darkness and Scattered Light" is the title of a 1978 book by William Irwin Thomspon and it is very appropriate for the times we have been going through.  On the dark side we have seen wars, ecological crisis, economic collapse, false religion, political irrelevance, adn other signs of the end of an era. 

On the other hand there have always been among us lightworkers who have held fast to the visions of a better world andhave been striving for its fulfillment in word and deed.  That fulfillment has been referred to as a New Age.   I have been publishing Both Sides Now: A Journal of Lightworking, Peacemaking & Consciousness since the late 1970s.  

>> More.