Religious Pandering:Now that's a great bit of logic there! But here's my question:
[Starts crying] "I feel like honestly that God sent me those lyrics and that melody. When you feel a message to give to the world and people are shooting arrows at it... there's no way for something that pure to be wrong."
Is there ever going to be a NewAger who doesn't use their feelings ("Nothing more than feelings,...") as the ultimate justification for trying to get their way? (Or, in this case, attempting to change reality?) They need to try a new schtick, if you ask me, because their own feelings ain't cutting it. News to GaGa:
I love this one - sincerely, here's a story just made for TMR:A Staten Island belly dancer jiggled her way out of a sweet deal with her ex-husband after he found pictures of her shaking it on the Internet, a judge ruled last week.Because, as we all know, NewAge is all about truth, and compassion, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Good luck to her husband.
Dorothy McGurk won a settlement of $850 a month for life and the couple's home by convincing a court three years ago that a 1997 car accident left her too injured to work.
The payday ended when Brian McGurk went back to court after spotting a blog where his ex-wife boasted of cutting a rug and dancing "everyday for three years."
"My belly dancing is the reason why I adore myself so much," McGurk, 43, posted on the blog, including photos of herself grooving at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, a new age gallery in Chelsea.
"Today I decided to dedicate myself more to my dance," she wrote. "Even though I dance everyday, it's not enough. It won't be enough until I dance for you all, until you feel my euphoria.
"Today as I danced myself silly, I lifted my head and elongated my neck as I swirled around," she wrote in another post. "And then it happened, I got really, really high."
Thomas Kyle, a lawyer for Brian McGurk, said the blog posts convinced Richmond County Supreme Court Judge Catherine DiDomenico the dancer was fit enough to fend for herself.
"She told outright lies," Kyle said. "If she could blog for hours, if she could dance the day away in Manhattan, then how is it she couldn't hold down a job?"
In one Facebook entry, a friend asked Dorothy McGurk why she had not posted photos of herself from a recent belly-dancing performance.
"Gotta be careful what goes on line pookies," she answered. "The ex would love to fry me with that."
Confronted with the damning evidence, Dorothy McGurk told the court she was prescribed belly dancing as treatment for her injuries - a statement her doctor contradicted on the stand.
DiDomenico stripped McGurk of her settlement last week and ordered her to pay her ex-husband $5,000 plus interest for lawyer's fees.
McGurk was also told to move out of the couple's house, and her ex-husband was awarded 60% of its value because she "worked only two years of this 11-year marriage," the judge wrote in her decision.
"The court credits husband's testimony that wife slept all day or otherwise spent her day on the computer participating in Internet blogs," the judge wrote.
Dorothy McGurk, who testified she is a trained Reikki spiritual healer and can "channel God's light to facilitate healing," could not be reached for comment. Her ex, a U.S. Post Office mail carrier, also could not be reached.
"He's just happy that this is all over and he can move on," his lawyer said.
Read this and tell us the noted author and historian isn't channelling this blog:In classical Athens, public life became dominated by clever and smart-sounding sophists. These mellifluous "really wise guys" made money and gained influence by their rhetorical boasts to "prove" the most amazing "thinkery" that belied common sense.Damn it, if he keeps this up, TMR's going to offer the ol' boy a job!
We are living in a new age of sophism -- but without a modern equivalent of Socrates to remind the public just how silly our highly credentialed and privileged new rhetoricians can often sound.
It. Just. Never. Stops:"Recent accounts of Hugo Chávez's politicized necrophilia may seem almost too lurid to believe, but I can testify from personal experience that they may well be an understatement. In the early hours of July 16—just at the midnight hour, to be precise—Venezuela's capo officiated at a grisly ceremony. This involved the exhumation of the mortal remains of Simón Bolívar, leader of Latin America's rebellion against Spain, who died in 1830. According to a vividly written article by Thor Halvorssen in the July 25 Washington Post, the skeleton was picked apart—even as Chávez tweeted the proceedings for his audience—and some teeth and bone fragments were taken away for testing. The residual pieces were placed in a coffin stamped with the Chávez government's seal. In one of the rather free-associating speeches for which he has become celebrated, Chávez appealed to Jesus Christ to restage the raising of Lazarus and reanimate Bolívar's constituent parts. He went on:
I had some doubts, but after seeing his remains, my heart said, 'Yes, it is me.' Father, is that you, or who are you? The answer: 'It is me, but I awaken every hundred years when the people awaken.'
As if 'channeling' this none-too-subtle identification of Chávez with the national hero, Venezuelan television was compelled to run images of Bolívar, followed by footage of the remains, and then pictures of the boss. The national anthem provided the soundtrack. Not since North Korean media declared Kim Jong-il to be the reincarnation of Kim Il Sung has there been such a blatant attempt to create a necrocracy, or perhaps mausolocracy, in which a living claimant assumes the fleshly mantle of the departed."
Seeing how this is Hugo Chávez we're talking about, any particular flavor of cultism makes perfect sense, and it supports my theory, also perfectly, that the more to the Left one is, the less of a grasp on reality they will possess - as they openly grasp for power.
Read the whole thing.
"Tim Miejan became the editor of a New Age magazine this year. And he found himself smack in the middle of the shifting, fractured New Age world — where beliefs change faster than you can flip a tarot card.
'We are about what it means to be human, in the metaphysical, holistic and spiritual realms,' said Miejan, of Woodbury, who bought The Edge magazine with a partner in February.
As the editor, Miejan has become a New Age gatekeeper, deciding which legitimate beliefs get into the magazine and which are too far out to be included.
It's not an easy job.
Chiropractors want out of the New Age movement. Channelers wonder if they belong at all, and pagans feel jilted. Organic farmers don't want to be near pet psychics. And no one knows what to do with the witches.
For a movement based on peace, love and understanding, New Age looks like a battleground.
'I have customers who completely believe in fairies and will laugh at you if you believe in Bigfoot,' sighed Teisha Magee, owner of the Sacred Paths Center, which describes itself as an 'organization celebrating earth-centered spirituality,' in St. Paul.
Lest anyone laugh at their beliefs, New Agers point to the tenants of mainstream religions that seem bizarre to nonbelievers — such as virgin birth, turning water into wine and rising from the dead.
'Is there a way to prove the afterlife?' Miejan said.
Until Miejan took over, The Edge was 'an airy-fairy New Age publication,' he said. But he is redefining the magazine's mission — and whipping up some Age of Aquarius acrimony.
Miejan favors articles on stress reduction and spiritual quests. He welcomes columns on astrology, written by 'Moonrabbit.' He recently featured an article which pleaded for a halt to construction of wind turbines because of the harm to life-force energy flows called 'prana.'
He says he would include stories about 'nature divas,' the politically correct name for fairies. 'We would never say those do not exist. We are one of the forums where people can share those ideas,' he said.
But even Miejan's open mind sometimes snaps shut.
Channelers — people possessed by spirits of the dead — are out. So is the belief that reptile-like aliens have taken over the bodies of celebrities, including Queen Elizabeth and — according to one Web site — former Minnesota U.S. Rep. Bill Luther.
Paganism? Out.
'I am not saying that because paganism offends anyone,' Miejan said. 'But it is a complete niche by itself.'
Other New Age leaders are appalled.
'He is excluding channeling? Yikes. Or pagans? He should not be doing that,' said Kathy McGee, editor of the Washington-state-based magazine New Age Retailer.
'New Age is an umbrella term encompassing anything on a spiritual path — Bigfoot, Jesus, Buddha. Even worshipping a frog is sort of OK,' McGee said."
Just knowing who we are, having a name as it were, gives Cultural Creatives more power to affect the world.
"Psychic Derek Acorah has slammed 'a despicable plot' to destroy his reputation as Britain’s most famous ghosthunter.
But now the dad of -two – and his trusty, invisible, 1,500-year-old Ethiopian spirit guide Sam – are back with a series of one-hour shows on digital channel Sky Real Lives in the New Year.
Derek, 58, is still furious at claims he was sacked from Most Haunted three years after being exposed as a fake by the show’s resident parapsychologist Ciaran O’Keeffe.
Derek came up with the name – an anagram of the words 'Derek Faker' – on a live show. But he claims he was merely sensing the negative energy of O’Keeffe’s earlier plotting.
And he says he wasn’t sacked but had already announced he was leaving.
He said: 'I’m sensitive. I pick these things up. I was picking up people talking and back-biting in the ether.
'I heard these despicable discussions between people and it was sickening me to my guts. When we were doing the investigation I was walking around the area and the words hit me – ‘Kreed Kafer, Kreed Kafer!’ And I said it out loud.
'They set out to dishevel me with my new show.'
Since then Derek has shown off his talents at packed-out venues across the UK.
He will be 'talking to dead people' and 'picking up vibrations' from their family heirlooms in a kind of psychic Antiques Roadshow."
“[Glen Cunningham] said he decided to do the interview as a way to help people.-- Glen Cunningham, J.Z. Knight's former bodyguard, backing up everything J.Z. Knight's ex-husband said, to Megan Hansen of the Nisqually Valley News.
'There’s a lot of people who have approached me about their decision to get out of the [Ramtha] school,' Cunningham said. 'I tell them my stories and it helps them.'
'(Knight) is a very charismatic person,' he said. 'You want to be around her until you get to know her.'
'(But) she’s a drama queen; she likes to have drama in her life.'
...Cunningham also said that he considers RSE to be a cult.
'It’s just like any other cult,' he said. 'All the things they do now are cult activities.'
'I saw 1,200 people who would drink the Kool-Aid,' he said in the online video.
Since leaving RSE, Cunningham has kept fairly quiet on his experience.
Occasionally he warns people how it is so they 'don’t waste their money.'
'I think people have been disenchanted with things,' Cunningham said. 'There are too many dead people who came here to get cured.'
He recalls when a woman suffering from cancer arrived at the school hoping to be cured. In front of everyone, Ramtha hugged her and told her she was free of the disease.
'The whole school is a lie and she’s dead,' he said. 'I saw a lot of them that thought this was going to be their answer, but it wasn’t.'
Through all his experiences, Cunningham doesn’t hold any harsh feelings towards Knight.
He refutes claims made by Knight supporters that he hates the channeler.
“I don’t, because she’s a very brilliant woman,' Cunningham said.
'I just feel sorry for her.'
'She’s got herself in this thing to where she can’t get out. It’s the rest of her life.'”
""Spiritualism is a religion. It's not a cult, it's not a sect, and we do believe in God . . . There are a lot of people who don't know that this is available,...The soul is eternal. People don't die, there is life after death and we do talk to dead people."
""In company with other men, I spoke just as any other man, so that no one was able to distinguish me either from myself as I had been formerly, or from any other man; and, nevertheless, in the midst of company I sometimes spoke with spirits and with those who were around me; and perhaps they might have gathered something from this circumstance.'
"While participants suggest that mystical and supernatural experiences may be genuine phenomena they nevertheless recognize (to varying degrees) the socially constructed and mediated nature of beliefs and practices, explaining that people must interpret – give shape and content – to unexplained events and supernatural phenomenon through the creation of symbols, beliefs, rituals, myths and stories. Consequently, participants suggest that television responds to their spiritual interests and needs by offering a wealth of programs, images and themes that not only resonate with their personal experiences and beliefs, but also shapes, fosters and further expands them."
"The 'New Age' movement is a worldwide net formed by thousands of organizations, which collaborate to impose a universal financial system, a universal religion and a universal authority. 'New Age' promises that by its predominance an insurmountable Golden Age will rise, full of love, peace, wisdom and progress, provided that whoever disagrees with its doctrines and programs, is a 'negative person' and should be eliminated, so that 'New Age' followers may enjoy it unobstructedly. The 'negative' ones are calculated to 2.5 billion people, or the 1/3 of earth population."
