New Age Thought Traps & the Return to Instinct.

Can you sense? Can you smell? Can you feel it? How do you know you are alive? Safe? How do you know you are free?

If a spiritual practice does not include the honoring of your physical body—and your right to protect yourself—it is incomplete.

Most ‘New Age’ thought is a permutation of Christianity, or some other religious philosophy. Though at the heart of these religions there are usually some unifying principles such as ‘Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.’ In practice these religions become, and are actually designed to be dogmatic and controlling.

In other words, most of those philosophies, from which the ‘New Age’ is borrowed, are tainted.

There is nothing new about the ‘New Age’, and many cases it simply uses the same formula only switches out certain words; ie. ‘God loves you’ becomes ‘The Universe loves you’. Little switches such as this are harmless. However, acting as if we have come across some sort of unifying reality theory which is, more often than not, a combination of fringe science and antiquated philosophical concepts does not actually put us into never-before-known ‘spiritual’ territory. And it does not accurately put us in touch with ancient practices, either.

Those religions are part of caste systems in which religious and political heads take advantage of people they are allegedly ‘shepherding’. The best, and age-old way of doing this is to make it virtuous to be prey—and to elevate the archetype of the martyr.

The victim/perpetrator/martyr/triad is one of the biggest and deeply entrenched trances in the human consciousness.

Such examples of its infiltration into ‘New Age’ thought is the so-called Law of Attraction, where you are ‘attracting' everything that happens to you, including abuse. This is both regressive childhood thinking—in which the nature of others, and their internal world's influence, has no bearing on their actions—and it’s magical thinking. Everything that happens is purely the province of the subject's creation. There is no objective reality or recognition of ecosystemic influence. It's all your fault when something goes wrong, and all your success when something goes right.

The whole concept of: ‘There’s nothing out there that is not within us’ simply feeds into the infantile delusion of a fully self-generated reality; it creates layers of enmeshment in which we lose ourselves, our sense of self, and purpose.

The only people who are served by us believing that there are no abusers except the ones in our own head are abusers, themselves. And the most successful abusers are not mass murderers or torturers; they are the skilled manipulators who have their prey seeking their abuse and calling it law and comfort.

The acknowledgement of a deeply entrenched and systemic trauma bond masquerading as religious doctrine does not deny the existence of archetypal forces, synchronicity, or miracles. The acknowledgement and pursuit of intelligent judgment and distinction in no way leaves us living in a world devoid of wonder. It does, however, give us tools to keep ourselves safe. And though many of us ‘seek to understand’ that understanding needs to come after we have taken the measures to protect ourselves.

Nature is chaos—nurturing and destructive, not punitive; that is a human construct. However, wolf mothers teach their pups what is safe and what is dangerous before they leave their den, and yet…

“Many women do not even have the basic teaching about predators that a wolf mother gives her pups, such as: if it's threatening and bigger than you, flee; if it's weaker, see what you want to do; if it's sick, leave it alone; if it has quills, poison, fangs, or razor claws, back up and go in the other direction; it it smells nice but is wrapped around metal jaws, walk on by.”

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

The lack of this basic education about prey and predator, and sick and well smells, leads to mass instinct-injury, which is usually replaced with religious and social indoctrination.

In nature there are poisons, predators, and other potential life-threatening circumstances. Life is not all that different for humans even though we have left the wild. And there is an undeniable parasite infecting human consciousness; call it narcissism or something else, but it does not have our best interests in its design.

To be ignorant of the function of our own basic instincts is intentional religious and social crippling of the human organism and the denial of its deeper purpose to wake itself up, and to wake up to life.

Do I believe there is intentional gatekeeping that goes into that obstruction (trance)? Absolutely. And there are undeniable monikers that have been touted by the New Age that keep that trance in place: ‘It's all love and light’. ‘No one can hurt you without your consent’. ‘You attracted this’... are all anthems of mass gaslighting and obfuscation that much of the ‘New Age’ has bought into—and is selling in its white-garbed, guru-touting ‘counter’ culture.

Sure, there's plenty of people who are ignorant (entranced) to the dangers of thinking no harm can come to you. Then there are those who come with the conscious intention of doing harm, exploiting pain, and aggrandizing themselves as saviors from the very abuse they are perpetuating.

Can you see? Can you feel it? Do you know the difference?

Do you, yourself, have the basic, instinctive knowledge of what you can fight, kill, eat, or fuck and still retain your sense if self and walk through the world safely?

Because that is the real frontier for humans—mind, heart, blood, guts, and bones. It’s time to awaken our instincts, return to the wild, and glow the hell up.

~Justice Bartlett

Image: Madison Oren