What happened to transcendence?
Dec. 30th, 2017 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophiaOkay, it was kind of a long shot, but I was out shopping for groceries today at the yuppie grocery* and picked up the latest monthly free local New Age newsprint adfomercial. I used to read the Seattle example of the species monthly back when I lived there, to keep tabs on what was interesting and what was absurd in the world of alternative popular spirituality -- but that was most of two decades ago and the world was a different place.
The thing that struck me, reading the current issue of the Providence example of the species, is that something that was very much part of the scene a couple of decades ago -- and was one of its saving graces -- seems to have dropped right out of it. Call it transcendence: the sense that entering into relationship with the spiritual realm is about stepping into a wider world, waking up to the things that really matter. Walking through the walls, to borrow a phrase, and into the Fire.
That's gone. As far as I can tell, it's all about soothing your nerves, boosting your health, managing your career and your love life, making your life bland and safe and predictable -- with neat little crystal sparkles on it, sure, but still bland and safe and predictable. Take up meditation, so you can lower your blood pressure and smooth out your wrinkles. Practice t'ai chi -- it's so very relaxing, and it makes your bowels regular! Go listen to a trance channeler to get advice on your relationships and tasty vegetarian recipes you can share with all your friends...
Back in the 1970s, when the New Age movement hadn't yet capitulated entirely to the hucksters -- Gregory Bateson counted as a New Age thinker back then, for heaven's sake! -- and I was scampering around underfoot in it, omnivorously taking in anything even vaguely esoteric I could get, it wasn't like that. There was plenty of nonsense and plenty of chicanery and an immense amount of vacuous babble, but in there with all of that you found a lot of people who wanted to tear open the sky and step into the luminous Beyond. People meditated and did rituals and practiced martial arts and did all sorts of other things to become something more than they were. Even the hucksters gave lip service to that.
Maybe I'm just not cynical enough yet, but it smarts to see something that once, for all its flaws, strove for high goals, reduced to a lifestyle accessory for bored suburbanites. I mourn the death of a dream.
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* our apartment is within an easy walk of three groceries: a delightful little Asian grocery, a standard American working class grocery, and a standard American yuppie grocery -- not Whole Paycheck, there's one of those too but I'd sooner trim my ears with a cheese grater than put up with the pretentious snots who shop there, with their "Out of the way, peasant!" attitudes. I'd probably flee from the yuppie grocery too, except that it has a much better selection of the gluten free products Sara needs, and a few other things we can't get elsewhere.
The thing that struck me, reading the current issue of the Providence example of the species, is that something that was very much part of the scene a couple of decades ago -- and was one of its saving graces -- seems to have dropped right out of it. Call it transcendence: the sense that entering into relationship with the spiritual realm is about stepping into a wider world, waking up to the things that really matter. Walking through the walls, to borrow a phrase, and into the Fire.
That's gone. As far as I can tell, it's all about soothing your nerves, boosting your health, managing your career and your love life, making your life bland and safe and predictable -- with neat little crystal sparkles on it, sure, but still bland and safe and predictable. Take up meditation, so you can lower your blood pressure and smooth out your wrinkles. Practice t'ai chi -- it's so very relaxing, and it makes your bowels regular! Go listen to a trance channeler to get advice on your relationships and tasty vegetarian recipes you can share with all your friends...
Back in the 1970s, when the New Age movement hadn't yet capitulated entirely to the hucksters -- Gregory Bateson counted as a New Age thinker back then, for heaven's sake! -- and I was scampering around underfoot in it, omnivorously taking in anything even vaguely esoteric I could get, it wasn't like that. There was plenty of nonsense and plenty of chicanery and an immense amount of vacuous babble, but in there with all of that you found a lot of people who wanted to tear open the sky and step into the luminous Beyond. People meditated and did rituals and practiced martial arts and did all sorts of other things to become something more than they were. Even the hucksters gave lip service to that.
Maybe I'm just not cynical enough yet, but it smarts to see something that once, for all its flaws, strove for high goals, reduced to a lifestyle accessory for bored suburbanites. I mourn the death of a dream.
---------------------
* our apartment is within an easy walk of three groceries: a delightful little Asian grocery, a standard American working class grocery, and a standard American yuppie grocery -- not Whole Paycheck, there's one of those too but I'd sooner trim my ears with a cheese grater than put up with the pretentious snots who shop there, with their "Out of the way, peasant!" attitudes. I'd probably flee from the yuppie grocery too, except that it has a much better selection of the gluten free products Sara needs, and a few other things we can't get elsewhere.
