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A Special Report from thesecondparadigm.com
We started our day today grabbing an iced coffee (like most mornings), and decided on a whim to head to Barnes & Noble.
David plopped down with a book on Psychology and started noting points where The Second Paradigm differs from mainstream psychological thought. #typical
Miriam found herself in the Gardening section reading about how to grow vertically to optimize our patio space next growing season. #alsotypical
We started talking about the possibility of a Second Paradigm planner—one without dates, with a focus on distilling all of the things floating around in our heads, down into the simplicity of what’s actually here.
Right up at the front of the store, next to the sea of planners that sparked that idea, was a sizable section of books on spirituality—Intuitive Tarot, Astrology, Chakras, Astral Projection, Trauma Healing, the list went on.
Seeing such a thorough selection of spiritual books at the front of the store would’ve gotten us excited in 2015. “Look! Consciousness is shifting, and there’s hope for humanity!” we might have thought. Today, we shared a somber sigh and simply moved on.
New Age Spirituality has lost its luster for us. What used to be thrilling, now just feels darker than ever.
It was March of 2020 that we first publicly alluded to our thoughts on New Age: “Manifesting seems eerily similar to black magic…” we hesitantly said on a podcast.
Over two years later, that’s actually become one of our core messages—New Age Spirituality is designed to entice spiritual people toward their adolescent desires and coax them out of a real connection to divinity.
We’ve changed a lot in that short time and offended plenty of friends, clients, and peers in the process—but our convictions are now firm.
Looking around, there seem to be plenty of people with similar ideas. Search, “Leaving New Age Spirituality” on YouTube, and you’ll find countless stories of people who did just that.
What you’re not likely to find is a single person who left New Age without also converting to Christianity.
The paved path out of New Age only goes in one direction—“away from demons” and “back to Christ.”
That fact, quite honestly, threw us for a loop at first. We had nearly identical perspectives to Christians on nearly every matter when it came to New Age Spirituality. Many of them even shared our newfound love for homesteading, food preservation, and a simpler life with more distance from the rising technocracy.
But when it came to finding the ideal pathway out of New Age, we couldn’t be further apart—Jesus Christ is not our lord, or savior.
That might be quite the conversation starter at our local church, but it’s probably not the best way to make new friends.
Is it possible to leave New Age, without dropping to our knees in subservience to the cross and nibbling on a cracker every Sunday?
Well, maybe—but it’s not a path where we’d find preexisting community, and it’s certainly not a path we’d be directly affirmed for.
The fact that it’s a bit scary to even whisper, “Jesus Christ is not my lord and savior,” alludes to why it might be challenging to do something new.
Being around spirituality for so long now, we’re used to some degree of ideological conflict with the majority of the social fabric—but it never really gets easier to be that different.
Leaving the already limited social safety net of the spiritual community, it would be easiest to just fake our convictions for Christ, find a Christian church, and call it a day..
Then again, that would be something akin to denying God as we know it for social gain—something we clearly couldn’t actually stand for or build our lives around.
The only true option we had was to pave our own path (again).
If you’ve read this far, it’s likely that you resonate to some degree with this idea:
“Quit New Age, Can’t Christian.”
In the rest of this article, we hope to share some of our reasons why that‘s rung so true for us, and hopefully give some new language to that familiar feeling.
Why Not New Age?
It’s worth starting here, first.
Is New Age headed in the same direction we are? If so, couldn’t we have just stuck around and preserved the community we’d already built?
Frankly, we don’t think so.
This exploration started when David started poking around in the philosophies of Satanism. He’d heard the terms “Greater and Lesser Magic” floating around, and that eventually led him to Anton LaVey.
From Wikipedia: “Greater and lesser magic, within LaVeyan Satanism, designate types of beliefs with the term greater magic applying to ritual practice meant as psychodramatic catharsis to focus one’s emotions for a specific purpose and lesser magic applied to the practice of manipulation by means of applied psychology and glamour to bend an individual or situation to one’s will.”
Miriam had been a dog-with-a-bone for weeks around manifestation, saying, “Something just feels off!” Her best friend at the time had asked for help to manifest a Sprinter van. Miriam just…couldn’t.
This idea of greater magic helped things finally start to click.
The reason why manifestation felt so off is because it was using emotional energy to manipulate reality—LaVey called that “Greater Magic.” If life didn’t give us what we wanted, we could manipulate our emotional energy to take the place of the actual energy—to take the place of Light. We’ve seen it done.
Put that next to “Lesser Magic”— manipulating others by strategically playing various archetypes—and you have something that looks eerily similar to New Age community.
This was the only philosophy we’d ever seen that could bridge New Age manifestation with the tactics of manipulative coaches and the questionable social dynamics that play out in New Age community. Again, this is from Anton LaVey, founder of The Church of Satan.
The more we looked, the more we found ourselves shocked at the ideological foundation of the ideas we’d aspired toward not long before.
We learned about the story behind The Lucis Trust, the Baileys, and Lucifer Publishing Company—plus their ties to the UN and many of the organizations we’d spent much of 2020 exploring more deeply.
The line was only getting clearer.
We had to ask, “Was New Age meant to be a PsyOp all along?”
Was there ever Light at the end of that spiritual tunnel?
Maybe “The New Age” wasn’t about Astrology or a rise in consciousness at all. Maybe it was always meant to be an ideological facilitator of the demoralization of the Western world and a gateway to Satanism. Maybe this wasn’t the only “New World” its founders had in mind.
If so, that would explain not only its roots, but its fruits.
Why Not Christianity?
Like with New Age, this is a highly nuanced discussion—a nuance that runs far deeper than there’s room for in a single article.
That being said, there are a few core challenges we have with turning to Christianity as our sole source of Light.
Here are a few of the big ones:
First, it’s old—very old.
Life has arguably changed more in the last 100 years than in the previous 1000. Christianity says, “The Bible is all you need,” but is it?
Isn’t there more nuance in navigating sex and pornography, for example, than there was for King David when he looked longingly at another man’s naked wife 3000 years ago?
If a parent from the 1950’s walked into the average modern household and saw what was on TV, they’d gasp and think it was pornography.
There’s more lustful sexual energy thrown around today than there ever was in an ancient society. When sex is being used to sell hamburgers, you know something’s changed.
Old guidance in new circumstances creates gray area.
It’s easy to say, “The same principles apply to any era,” but do they?
There are no clean lines—only personal interpretation. One Christian family is going to watch Rated R movies for leisure, and another is going to throw away their TV and burn their Macy’s catalogues. Who’s right?
More importantly, who’s doing right by God and Light?
Today, countless spiritual seekers (ourselves included) have followed a deep inner calling to seek Light more actively—beyond what tradition offers.
They’re searching for more nuance than the church or the Bible ever offered them. Is that needless rebellion, or a long overdue evolution?
Second, we’ve had profound spiritual experiences that aren’t dark.
Anyone who’s ever truly explored spirituality has had an experience that broke their reality context.
They learned, overnight, that reality is more than physical.
For a lot of people, especially in New Age circles, many of those experiences can be pretty dark.
But are they all dark?
If even one of those experiences was positive and truly profound, there’s no obvious way to convert to Christianity without entirely throwing out that lived experience.
“It’s all demons,” they’d say.
Looking to the Bible, you find dozens of stories of visceral experiences of God.
Looking to the church, you find all of the reasons why God has since stopped talking, and how the Bible is complete.
Is it really reasonable to believe that Light has interfaced directly with humanity for thousands of years, but only communicates today through the stories of those lucky ancient men?
To deny our own lived experience of divinity in exchange for one of dozens of conflicting interpretations of the Bible—that sounds like spiritual apathy, not a life in Light.
Third, the Christian narrative of Jesus doesn’t fully resonate.
Earlier, we said, “Jesus Christ is not our lord, or savior.” If we get struck down by lightning…disregard this article and get your butt to church. But we have a feeling we’re safe (and if you feel similarly, that you’re safe too).
Both of us (and many of our clients too) have had direct experiences with Jesus.
It’s visceral, and unlike any dark or sticky energy we’d encounter in New Age circles. All of the heaviness of the moment simply moves away, and all that’s left is a deep reassurance—we’re held, taken care of, and protected.
But no matter how profound these experiences might have been, “our Jesus” has never led us to Christianity.
When Light and spiritual truth are your highest values, turning away from what society deems to be the only Light is not a decision you take lightly.
So on several occasions, we found ourselves in a twisted funk, looking up through teary eyes, and asking point-blank: “God, Jesus, if we’re not on the right track, if you want us to go to church, if you want us to go that way, we’ll go.”
But every time, we’ve gotten the exact same answer: “Nope. You’re on the right track. Keep going.”
This, again, was a challenging thing to parse through. Was our access pure? Could we trust that guidance?
It took some time, but something finally started to click for us that changed that inner conflict—this one question in particular:
“Why does every Jesus experience lead to Christianity?”
We’d hear people share a testimony about overdosing on drugs and seeing Jesus come to them—how right then, their life turned around.
That’s incredible. But did Jesus come to them and say, “You must declare I am your savior, or you won’t find Light?”
Did he say, “The Bible is 100% true, and there is no Light outside of the church?”
The more we thought about it, the more that doubt inside us started to break down.
How was it that Jesus would come directly to people, give them profound guidance, and help them through their challenges; then send them to the church, where every personal spiritual experience is seen as demonic, and the only truth is locked into a narrow interpretation of the Bible?
There has to be more to Light than simply saying those magic words: “Jesus Christ is my lord and savior.”
And there has to be more to spirituality than a hierarchical ruleset from a church with an odd history of mass control and abuse.
But if not Christianity, then where is there left to go?
Moving Forward
Over time, New Age has proven itself too dark to be useful—unfortunately, the next best thing, Christianity, isn‘t quite nuanced enough to serve as a replacement.
Now, all that’s left is The Second Paradigm! Hah. If only it were that simple.
As much as we love the idea of being able to help people find their way spiritually, we don’t have a new spiritual ruleset to offer up.
We’re just two people who have dedicated their lives and careers to the exact same spiritual call so many of you have answered yourselves.
The real issue with both New Age and Christianity isn’t that they’re outdated or outright factually wrong—it’s how depersonalized they are.
It’s no different than cookie cutter business strategies, or dime-a-dozen personal development tools: what works for one person, rarely does for another.
What people really need in life isn’t a moral code thrust upon them by a spiritual authority. It’s the exact opposite. They need personalized spiritual guidance, tailored to their unique circumstances. That’s not something we (or anyone) can offer.
It’s something only divinity has the knowledge, bandwidth, and ability to provide.
There’s a Biblical saying, “Man can’t rule himself.”
We don’t think that means, “Turn to the church,” as much as it means, “Turn to divinity directly”—no different than many of those ancient Biblical figures did themselves.
Whether it’s always been this way, or the church just got a little power hungry along the way, spirituality has devolved into an odd parent-child dynamic.
The idea that we, as adults, are any less capable than any other man or woman in history to speak to God is insanity.
Every spiritual concept, every word written, every teaching taught, has always been delivered by someone just like you.
What is stopping us from simply embracing that obvious capability?
Do we not trust ourselves? Or do we simply have a distorted view of the maturity and intelligence of authority?
For centuries, a small class of spiritual elites have shaped the format for the rest of the population’s dynamic with God. Are they somehow special?
Just because someone is doing something doesn’t mean they’re the only ones capable of doing that thing.
At some point, if we are ever to move beyond the limitations of New Age and Christianity, we have to be willing to venture out into new territory—personally.
That requires a maturity that’s all but lost in our modern age. We have to be willing to face uncertainty head on and to trust our own connection to divinity, no matter what anyone or anything has to say about it.
In a world that’s built around blindly following authority, that’s not easy. You’re almost certain to feel different, wrong, unproductive, limited in your career options, misunderstood, crazy, and more.
At The Second Paradigm, we do our best to offer guidance on how to navigate those feelings—how to make sense of the journey, and embrace that truest connection deep within us.
But ultimately? It’s between you and God. It always has been and always will be.
We don’t want that “power,” because we don’t want a parent-child dynamic with people who, in every sense of the word, should be our peers.
The more we understand about the world, the more we realize how deeply manipulated our society is.
So many aspects of life seem to be built around that parent-child dynamic—using authority, shame, guilt, and adolescent desires to steer others against their better judgment.
This extends far beyond spirituality, into nearly every industry and every aspect of life—but it’s only spirituality that can serve as a remedy.
When you’ve experienced a real-time personal connection to God, and you’re unafraid of the perceived social consequences of trusting it, you know there’s no better alternative.
You give your life to God, because there is quite literally nothing better. It becomes obvious how immature, hollow, destructive (and common), the alternative paths are.
You realize how difficult it is to live life without that constant, personalized divine guidance.
And you wonder, “Am I really here first? Or was this meticulously beaten out of us, over countless generations, by those who sought to rule?”
Either way, it doesn’t matter—because there’s nothing better. It’s everything you’ve been seeking for years and years, and you finally arrive.
We want nothing more than for this experience to become ubiquitous.
Maybe in an ideal world, these are early childhood realizations—not just deathbed regrets.
But we’re not in that ideal world.
We’re here.
No matter how we got here—to this spiritual landscape where Light is so uncommonly found—this is the reality we live in.
Our choice is to consciously embrace a common path and bear the weight of that hollow feeling…or to continue onward, refining the single most important thing in life:
A Real-Time Personal Relationship with God itself.
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