TL/DR: I think the cures offered by New Age practitioners are usually based on cultural appropriation (where they get their product from) and exploitation of the vulnerable (who they sell it to).
I have tried almost every alternative healing method out there. I have also belonged to to a couple of major religions when I was younger. During my adult life, I became less and less interested in mainstream religion and it's alternatives. But when I got sick, and absolutely received zero help and comfort from scientism, I started looking at different approaches again. I suspended all my scepticism and wanted to give anything a chance, since I was desperately ill with two young children to care for. I must have been immersed in this stuff for at least 2-3 years. In the end, I was in financial debt, still ill, and less hopeful about the future. Following are my conclusions about all self-help, spirituality, new age peddlers: In this market of commercial spirituality, I believe that the most famous gurus are all greedy selfish people, or covert narcissists, who thrive on victim blaming and call it personal development and responsibility. They are part of the capitalist colonialist systems, and will continue to be, as long as they are allowed to make money from the unfortunate poorer people in society. They mix and match whatever teaching they can get their hands on, and think that this random selection of different ideas makes for a superior spirituality. Even though they hardly even have the thinnest layer of surface knowledge on the subjects involved, they believe they outgrew the ancient ideas and practices… The new age gurus always talk about spirituality but they are deeply attached to material goods. They live in an imaginary world where physical resources on Earth are infinite. According to their view, those who are starving are to blame, not the systems and people that steal and exploit. If only all the suffering people in the world would snap out of the victim mentality and start using law of attraction… Then poverty, oppression, exploitation, environmental destruction, child abuse, war, disabilities… would all cease to exist and we would all become perfect rich healthy enlightened hyperconsumer beings like the spiritual gurus. Except... As an ordinary human being, when you take a step back, you can see that the ones who need to change aren’t the victims. It’s the perpetrators. The ones to blame aren’t the ones who were innocent, vulnerable and powerless. Or the ones who choose to remain modest, honest, generous, kind. Never. If the predatory humans stopped their species-inappropriate, anti-social, selfish, sick behaviours of accumulating, hoarding and consuming far more resources than their fair share (or if they simply ceased to exist on this planet), then the rest of us could find peace. (Though possibly not permanently, according to George Orwell in Animal Farm... This is something I am passionate about, but irrelevant here. I will just say that I do not believe humans are inherently greedy. I think the problem is the increasing ecological deprivation, especially since we went from nomadic hunter gatherers to sedentary farmers. But that discussion is for another day.) These new age teachings are the junk food of spirituality. You can get morbidly obese from consuming their material, because they sell simplified, quickly digested, shallow ideas. But you will still be spiritually malnourished because the actual nutrients have been lost during the processing. Where the fake gurus get their raw materials from, is where true spirituality is. But true wisdom isn’t usually in pretty, bite sized packages, manufactured for consumerist modern societies. The philosophies, religions, ideologies, disciplines that the new age steals from, are not for sale. These require one to renounce materialism, selfish desires, arrogance and many other things that most modern people are too attached to give up. They require long term changes, patience, and a more natural way of living. This isn’t palatable for the majority of people in western world. There is also knowledge from philosophy, psychology, physics and history that are stolen to use in new age teachings. Again, not having extensive background knowledge and education, some random information is taken out of context and used to support their arguments. This saves the authors and audience lots of time and energy, since now they don't have to read and learn anything, but can just pretend to be above it all. A perfect example of the extreme level of disrespect, ignorance and self-centeredness (of both the author and the audience) is Coleman Barks, who published corrupted interpretations of Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumi poems, even though he does not speak Persian, Arabic or Turkish. But also, isn’t it ridiculous that someone like Alan Watts, an alcoholic who slept around with young women, is considered a spiritual teacher? Or Osho, obsessed with Rolls Royce cars, like a spoilt child? The list is obviously much longer than just these 3 (No, Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumi doesn't count). Unfortunately I spent countless hours reading from and listening to meaningless nonsense from these other annoying people too: Joe Dispenza. Deepak Chopra. Gregg Braden. Byron Katie. Teal Swan. Anita Moorjani. Eckhart Tolle. Dolores Cannon. Rhonda Byrnes. Abraham Hicks. Robert G. Smith. Pema Chödrön. Thich Nhat Hanh. David Hawkins. Wayne Dyer. Caroline Myss. Honestly, I may as well have read David Icke, I think even he makes more sense than this. I think the major reason why even the worst scammer gets to have an audience, is because mainstream science is too arrogant and dogmatic. It doesn't have all the answers, and many people know that. So, after being let down by the medical system, when the alternative healers sometimes have success, people are relieved to have someone who seems to have the answers. The side people take depends on their personal experience. I was damaged by both sides, so I reject both sides. If mainstream medicine or some alternative healing method cured me, I would likely have more loyalty to one of them. I grew up in a Muslim country, and I am old enough to remember seeing many many news reports over the years, exposing all kinds of sect leaders who got caught scamming people, recruiting them to their cults, and even sexually abusing them. (To be fair, “molester doctors” were in papers as commonly as the “molester hodjas” back then, so let’s trust nobody at all, ever, I guess…) These lifestyles are no more ethical than the pope’s, who sits on a throne of gold and preaches gratitude to poor people, while covering up child abuse in churches all over the world. Well, it’s easy to have gratitude when you have everything you need, and belong to a group of people who can get away with all sorts of despicable crimes = Rich people. Laws are pretty much designed to protect the rich minority from the poorer majority, or the powerful from the powerless. This reality is already difficult to swallow. And when we want to escape from this unjust physical world into the spiritual world, we get conned again! Should spiritual leaders have no money and starve to death? Should they live a life of poverty? No, obviously not. (I believe we should all have our basic needs met, which we all used to get for free from nature, until it was polluted and destroyed. Yet again, that’s a different subject for another day.) BUT there is a huge gap between starving to death in poverty, and a filthy rich lifestyle: Living in giant mansions, polluting the planet with an unnecessary amount of consumption, enjoying luxury tropical holidays… Mostly with money earned from people who are blinded by oppressive systems, or too physically or mentally ill to even work. This is unethical. No amount of shameless excuses and rationalisations will justify that for me. A person who claims to be enlightened cannot live a life of contradiction. Real spirituality or mysticism, isn’t valuable in the age of Capitalocene because it cannot be bought and sold. So, in the end, we have to have commercialized artificial spirituality for people who live artificial lives. If their problems are artificial too, the new age treatments may work well. But if they have real problems, then they will need real solutions. And that is why after several years of immersing myself into the ideas and methods of new age ideology, my health issues did not improve. Lying to myself and going along with these teachings came easily to me due to my childhood experiences, but it turns out I cannot lie to my own body and get away with it anymore. First and foremost, I needed practical help in the real world. At least a small amount of physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual safety. Somewhere to retreat from the attacks, somewhere to hide and heal. So do many other people. Since no amount of spiritual bull crap can replace even a tiny amount of social work, it is useless. And because it distracts people from their real problems, and exploits them financially, this kind of modern spirituality is actually very harmful in my opinion. Can it be used for good? Of course it can. But so can snake venom. It's still generally poisonous. Saying that, I guess even snake oil can be useful, but will it be worth the hassle? In most cases, probably not. So I pray that life will not send me to such depths of desperation again, that my mind will be too vulnerable to the rationalisation of exploitation. The things I would never want to do again: Read any book written by a person who claims to be awakened Pay money for someone to practice any kind of energy healing on me or to teach me how to do it myself Take commercialised spirituality seriously Suspend my rational mind and go against my instincts, out of desperation for relief from suffering
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This is one long story between me, my family of origin, my abusers, psychiatrists and the wretched poisons that they call psychotropic medicines.
The longer summary of my experiences with psychiatry is on another website called Mad in America. I found this website very helpful over the years, and so I sent them my story, for their “Personal Stories” section. The very short summary is that I was traumatised due to emotional and sexual abuse in childhood. This resulted in me becoming a psychiatric patient and prescribed benzodiazepines and antidepressants from age 15. These turned me into a zombie and caused a lot of side effects. I started tapering with the intention to quit, around age 30. The withdrawal syndrome from SSRIs destabilised my nervous system and caused a chronic illness. I was then blamed for all of these events. In conclusion, psychiatry ruined my life as much as my abusers, if not more. What is wrong with psychiatry and scientism? Real life experiences are being labelled as disorders and illnesses by all kinds of “experts” and authority figures. Those figures are characters we are all familiar with: The “intelligent” people who show little emotion, because they are logical, rational people. In reality they are using intellectualisation as to justify their dissociation from their natural humanity. Those people write science fiction books like Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And they keep churning out newer and newer editions, pretending to know what the hell they are talking about. “Hey there consumer, this newest model of manufactured product is improved to perfection this time! The old models may have been invalid, inefficient or even harmful, but trust us, this time we have got it right! This final version is definitely the best! Yes we say the same thing every time, but this time we are even more certain.” Except they are not selling unnecessary consumer goods (By the way if it was an essential item for human life, it wouldn’t need marketing to tell us why we need it), they are publishing medical guidebooks that end up ruining innocent people’s lives. We go to professionals and authority figures to get help, and all we receive is insult to the injury. Justice system can be similar, but let’s not go there here. Human experiences cannot and should not be observed and categorised like that. It is deeply disrespectful to the whole of the humankind. We are not things to be measured and predicted and experimented on. It is bad enough that this is done to animals, but treating humans with such contempt is absolutely pathological (yep). I know that I am not the first person who thought that it is the psychiatrists that are ill, not the “crazy” people that they experiment on. How can a grounded, decent human being assume that he and his group of people are the only right ones, and they are entitled to tell the rest of us that we are messed in the head? What makes them immune to delusion and grandiosity? Let me tell you: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They have this self-perpetuating system of acting like they are superior to other human beings, and congratulating each other, which makes them feel even more superior, and so on. While they are inside of that toxic culture, they are unable to see what they have become: Soulless vampires who feed on the vulnerable. Really the most vulnerable of the society. Because it is those of us who have been betrayed by other human beings that are the most traumatised, and so we become the most mentally ill. If not a mental illness, then we will most likely develop physical illnesses, and those will also be treated with the same ignorance by the other doctors. And when some of us discover that mainstream medicine is hurting us more than the original problem, we go searching elsewhere. That is, if we made it out in one piece out of a hospital or a mental institution. Unfortunately, we can then become easy targets for any kind of person who exploits others for personal gain. Holistic practitioners, new age gurus, self-help books, (religious) cults, all sorts of alternative tools and methods… Many of the healing teachings either having lost their original purpose or being used by incompetent and/or malicious people. Sigh… History repeats itself. Does history repeat itself because of repetition compulsion? I don’t know. I just know the different shades of the same betrayal and exploitation, happening over and over again... Is this curse breakable? I believe it is. But I will not be asking for help from those who made me and kept me ill anymore. The things I would never want to do again: Let any psychiatrist diagnose me with anything. Take any kind of psychotropic medication for long term conditions. Be forced into using methods of treatment which make me feel unsafe or uncomfortable. Assume that every psychotherapist is competent, intelligent or a decent human being. My personal experience with medical care BEFORE chronic illness in 2020, includes both positive and negative experiences, probably like most people. Medical care can be lifesaving but sadly also fatal, so it should be used with great care. At this point in my illness, I cannot risk using it at all, unless it was a definite life and death situation. My body does not tolerate most natural substances, let alone chemical ones.
Without going into detail, AFTER falling ill in 2020 I experienced: Medical negligence, iatrogenic injuries, medical gaslighting. I had many many tests, x-rays, examinations by all different specialists. Many different diagnoses. Different treatments. Being given drug cocktails that are known to cause permanent disability when taken together or administered at the wrong speed. I was simply unwell when I sought help from the hospitals. But I was permanently disabled as a result of their treatments and now am unable to tolerate many ordinary things like most foods, movement, heat, cold... It ruined my fragile health completely. If I had kept trusting the doctors and doing as I was told, I am pretty certain that I would not be alive today. This is a very lonely place to be, because most people are conditioned to think that if you get ill, you go to the doctors and get better. That’s why people are petrified of incurable diseases like cancer, while they don’t take the illnesses which are normally treatable, seriously. So if you have something that is usually treatable but in your case resistant to treatment, people around you assume it’s your fault. This obviously makes the ill person deeply depressed and hopeless, because who wants to live in a world where they are not believed or trusted by their family and friends. For me this experience was like being attacked by bad people and falling to the ground as a result, so asking for help from doctors, but being attacked by them too, then crying to my family and friends, and being attacked yet one more time. It is hard to gather the motivation to recover after so much betrayal and contempt. Everyone assumes that if doctors don’t understand and cannot treat you, your illness isn’t real. As if today is the time where every single secret of life and existence was uncovered by science, and your diagnosis wasn’t in that final instruction manual. So your illness doesn’t exist and your experience is all a delusion… I think that this arrogance of doctors is very dangerous for the patients. Apart from that, as helpful as modern medicine can be, it is way too invested in reductive materialism and a mechanistic view of humans. I find this perspective blatantly incorrect. I could write forever about this, but there are already great books about overmedicalisation if you are interested. Also, I assume that this subject is well known enough by people with chronic illnesses, who were let down or damaged by the medical system, which makes it unnecessary for me to talk about here. The last thing I would like to point out is that, some of the people and groups who criticise the mainstream medical system or the dogmatic materialism/scientism are no better than the ones they criticise. (*See my post about New Age). Since they all belong to the same tradition of colonialist worldview, and mainly the WEIRD (western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic) societies, the similarity of the attitude doesn’t surprise me. After much contemplation, I came to the conclusion that absolutely no area of human activity or profession is immune to incompetence, blind faith, or malicious intent. So, as much as our efficiency-needing brain would love to be able generalise and classify things, I don’t think it is always beneficial to us to do so, at this point in time. And as a result of my experiences, I don’t trust most doctors, and I don’t trust most alternative healers. The things I would never want to do again: Accept medical intervention without being absolutely sure that it is crucial for my survival. Assume that every healthcare professional is competent or a decent human being. Let a doctor administer any medication into my system without me looking up drug interactions first. Take any prescribed medication or prescribed supplement without researching it myself first. |
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