We live in a time teeming with social ironies.  One is an electorate which claims to want political change but then votes incumbents back into office.  Another is the development of a large scale social movement like the New Age in which few of its adherents will admit to being part of the movement.  That is why the New Age Journal itself -- back in 1997, when it was willing to call itself the New Age Journal -- called the New Age movement “the movement without a name.”  

But of course, one of the big attractions of the movement is its emphasis on individualism and non-conformity.  In his book on the movement‘s history, Steven Sutcliffe describes the “universalized lay spirituality” ushered in by the New Age, which appealed to many because it was “open to all, yet with no stigmatizing label or fussy membership criteria.”  

Labels are indeed anathema to idealists, for a number of mostly good reasons.

Labels are anti-individual

While other philosophies may be inflexible and absolute, New Age idealism is highly relativistic and encourages us all to blaze our own paths.  We New Agers don’t see ourselves as part of a faithful flock.  We enjoy the role of intrepid explorer, trying on this tradition or that. And from the perspective of an unanchored explorer, no homogenizing label can be “right,” no label can accurately describes the unique blend of practices of my religion of one.

And so we find that the mere mention of the phrase New Age usually elicits little but patronizing, above-it-all smiles from those who most fit the profile. "No, not me," they say. "I’m a seeker, a wanderer, I can’t be pinned down."

Labels are superficial

Media images portray New Agers caught up in flighty nonsense, but a true New Ager is very concerned with depth and meaning.  Most of us are determined to get past surface distractions in order to connect with the source of reality. 

We know "the Tao that can be named is not the real Tao."  We know that “the finger that points to the moon is not the moon.”  We understand that reality is already here and now, there is nowhere else to go and no particular way to get there. 

And so we feel that if we name our path, or otherwise get hung up on labels, then we are headed away from reality, rather than into it.   

Labels are ego-driven

Some games of the ego are hard to recognize, but labeling is not one of them.  It is easy to see that the desire to be seen as a particular type of person, or qualify for this or that label, is usually the desire of the ego to be special.  The ego wants to be different from others, wants to stand apart, stand out, and be named.  American, Republican, Democrat, writer, doctor, lawyer, teacher, introvert, extrovert, jock, bookworm, gamer, computer geek, vegetarian, peacenik—there is no end to the ways we can make ourselves unique through a string of labels.  

Of course, we know the soul cares nothing for categories and names. We know the soul is concerned only with the awareness of this moment. The soul is simple consciousness without adjective, emptiness without name.  Thus, if I pin a label on myself, I cannot help but feel as if I am caving in to the dark side of ego.

Indeed, our own teachers openly scold those who might wish to align with a label.  In a 2001 essay for Re-Vision magazine, Mariana Caplan complained that spirituality had become a fad.  “It is a household term, a commodity that is bought and sold… an identity, a club to belong to.”  She made it clear that a truly spiritual person doesn’t care about identity, and certainly doesn’t need to belong to a group.

Labels are divisive

Religious dualists depend on labels to keep themselves separate from others, whether it’s Catholic or Christian or Muslim or Jewish. In the meantime, many use other types of labels to push others out of the mainstream, or mark them for attack – or as weapons to beat them into submission.  Meanwhile, materialists are positively label-obsessed, chopping all experience up into the smallest possible slices in order to better control it. 

Thus, if labels are incomplete at best, and harmful at worst, we figure it best to avoid them altogether.

This is merely a partial grocery list of an idealist’s reasons to avoid labeling, reasons why, even in its heydey, only a minority of those who held New Age beliefs identified with the term.  These are also some of the reasons why Sutcliffe says all New Age efforts to pin down a "stronger collective identity" are met with an "inbuilt resistance at the heart of the phenomenon." 

Essentially, the very beliefs that make me a New Ager all but require me to deny being a New Ager!

So then what do New Age-y types call themselves?  If pressed, they might say they are "sort of Buddhist" or "a little bit Zen," even if they’ve never entered a Buddhist temple or meditated more than once or twice. Or they might be "into yoga" or "reading about Taoism lately."  Or, they might say they are "experimenting with Wicca" or "going through my Celtic phase" or "taking Kabbalah."  Or, they could be Unitarian Universalist, or Religious Scientist, or even “Christian with an open mind.” 

Most, however, simply call themselves spiritual.

Go to "Spiritual But Not Religious."