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5 Potentially Hazardous New Age Myths.

From the countless spiritual websites, Youtube videos and

infographic memes that cross our social media channels daily, to the glowingly fit, Sutra-spouting vegan teacher at our local yoga studio, the abundance of uplifting and life-improving information available to us at this time is astounding.

Even Siri can provide bits and pieces of life advice when requested.

However, spiritualisms, metaphysical truths and platitudes which areintended to uplift can also be used to shut us down in the name ofhigher consciousness.

I'll never forget coming face to face with the many ways I was using my

spirituality as a defense. Years ago, I walked out of a metaphysicallecture on a mind-blowing high until I discovered that my new and priceybusiness investmenta smartphonewas awash in a water-bottle failure atthe bottom of my bag. My stomach sank. I cringed as waves of shock,panic and profound disappointment coursed through me, and I scrambled tofigure out how I was going to stay in touch with people in my life andkeep my business afloat. And because there was no cloud then, it waslikely all my newly transferred contacts and photos were lost as well.

This is a test, I thought, trying to remain tranquil by holding on toall I had just learned about quantum physics. But that was the moment Irealized that all the spiritual knowledge in the world wouldn'tcircumvent my emotional experience, and that I couldn't use it to

placate myself.

/1. Everything is an illusion, or The Myth that Metaphysical Truthsare Actually Useful in Everyday Living./

When you experience loss, when your heart is broken, when an importantventure is thwarted or anytime some form of devastation visits, anyreference to our earthly existence as being an illusion, how /TheUniverse/ is perfect, or any form of higher belief, is usuallyirrelevant. The drowned-phone drama was a test for sureand it was inhow resourceful I was going to be in replacing it without destroying mycredit and keeping my business intact.

David, an app developer, struggled with an illusion of his own. Helooked at me pleadingly, threw his hands up, and shook his long-hairedmane. I can't believe I'm letting this upset me, he mused, as if heshould be able to rise above being impacted by a powerful tech reviewer,who diminished the project he spent the past 18 months focusing on,believing in and toiling over, by suggesting that his new product wouldonly be utilized by tweens at best.

I know I'm not supposed to let it hurt, but it does.

David works hard at maturity and self-knowledge, but here he was usinghis spiritual knowledge against himself. It is bad enough to feel bad

about a bad review without having to complicate it by piling on morelousy feelings. David was blaming himself for having a reaction,thinking mistakenly that if he were more evolved, he could avoid the

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impact. Relate? David is operating under the spell of another profoundnew age misconception:

/2. No one can hurt you unless you let them, or The Myth ofInvulnerability./

I see sensitive people struggle with this one all the time. Perhaps the

fabled level of spiritual development where events, people, andconditions don't hurt us does exist. But I don't know anyone whogenuinely lives in that world. Strength, as I see it, lies not inachieving a state in which people can't hurt us, but in acknowledgingthat we are and can be hurt by others, and choosing to love, speak ourtruth and live large anyway.

At this point you may be onto the fact that in our puritan and new ageculture, pain is a sign of failure. Maybe this is why true intimacy isbecoming so uncool. It leaves us too vulnerable to hurt. I mean,yesthank god for Melanie Beatty, who coined for us all the termco-dependent in the mid 1980s, to address that needy form of

disempowered relating that keeps people locked in destructiverelationship patterns. And it's great that the schmaltzy line from themovie/Jerry Maguire/, You complete me no longer represents the way weapproach relationships.

However, even as we relish in the fact that each of us is whole, itseems that the pendulum against dependency is swinging too far in thedirection of isolation.

Perhaps as a way to deny our true needs for contact and prevent us fromthe entanglements that could result in bruised hearts, people areveering towards a state of complete independence, proving we don't needanyone else by engaging in limited, virtual, super casual and

non-committal ways. The DIY or Do-it-Yourself culture; thesort-of-friends-with-benefits hook-ups, and thecareer-comes-first-cool-cat stereotype all perpetuate:

/3. You don't need anyone or The Myth of Independence./

While we may not need another to complete us, we still need other peoplefor a variety of very natural and healthy reasons: we need emotionalconnection, we need touch and we need to share resources and skills forthose things we cannot manage on our own (profound thanks to my dearhairdresser).

We need people who will be there for us in a crisis, and we need to giveas well. The myth of complete independence over inter-dependenceperpetuates chronic loneliness, and is a double-edged defense for thosewho could benefit from but are terrified of intimacy and thereforeattempt to rise above it.

And speaking of intimacy, I just read a well-respected spiritualteacher's definition of love. While I'm all for people stepping intotheir authority and sharing what they know, a lot of people professthings they believe, or would like to believe, stating them as fact.This teacher's lofty and poetic treatise about love turned out to bepretty trite: love has no bounds, we are all one, and our very human andconditional ways of loving another aren't really love, because love

exists beyond all of these ways we try to express it. Is it true? Whoknows. Is it useful to couples, parents, singles struggling inrelationship? Not really.

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In his attempt to define love, he was practicing what I call:

/4. Love is or The Myth of Certainty./

How does this teacher know exactly for sure what love is?

Regardless of how many years I've been studying human relationships fromthe sidelines as well as from deep within the trenches, I couldn'tattempt to define for certain what love is. What I see is that it isdifferent for each, and it changes with time. Love is sometimes afeeling, sometimes an action, sometimes a choice, and occasionally awalking away.

It is always elusive, a mystery, popping up in unusual ways in unusualconfigurations. Parental love, teacher love, romantic love, animal love,idealized love, friendship loveso many different forms, styles andpaths of loving. Who can really say what it is and isn't onan empirical level?

These kinds of declarationsnot only about Love, but also about truth,thoughts and karma attempt to reduce our complexities and untamableurges into some kind of digestible package. They negate the messiness,variety and the mystery of life and love.

Another popular myth that arises in the face of hardship has to do withresponsibility. Responsibility for your actions is a mature disciplineand perspective that can enlighten you to the behaviors that work forand against you. But I'm not so sure we're responsible for circumstancesoutside our sphere of influence.

It's true, there are people who move from one chaotic life event to

another and you thinkclearly this person thrives in a state ofemergency and has something to do with the repetitive chaos in his orher life. But would you think that of the people of Nepal, or insertnational tragedy here? What about someone who lost their child in somesort of accident?

I've heard people accuse those who have life-threatening illnesses suchas MS or cancer of choosing or causing their diseasea supposedlyempowering belief that seems rather cruel.

The final potentially hazardous myth is:

/5. You are responsible for everything that happens to you or The Mythof Control./

This can be a shaming way to respond to life's unbearably unpredictablenature.

Every human has their own ways of coping in a universe in which random,horrific things happen to both good and bad people. The Myth of Controlis one way that people can feel a sense of choice and even superiorityin the matter of our frailty.

When we honor our quest for knowledge but surrender our need to knoweverything, when we drop our need to be above needing and to maintain

emotional control at all costs, we are left with humility and wonder.And, perhaps, a greater understanding of why we need each other to getthrough it all.