If you cannot understand "spiritual narcissism", look at these five points and read the rest of the post.
One, spiritual narcissism allows the person to be the center, the goal of religious quest. In other words, "it is all about me".
Two, God, if there is a God, is within, not as the Indwelling of the Holy Trinity through baptism, but simply because man is god-like and only needs to find his or her god within.
Three, vibes, energies, healings, can be found withing through certain ritualistic actions. Of course, this is a fancy description of "magic".
Four, the goal is self-realization, not god of God, really.
Five, the early Christians threw out this nutsy stuff as part of the occultic thinking of both the West and East, realizing that myth, paganism and magic would not save one, would not purify one, would not lead one to Christ.
A new labyrinth has been established by the United States Navy. Here is a section of an article from "America's Navy". This is embarrassing.
National Naval Medical Center held a dedication ceremony for its new stone labyrinth, designed to foster an environment for healing, compassion and hope, March 14.
Located between Walter Reed Bethesda's Buildings 8 and 9, in the Angel Garden, the labyrinth is a spiritual tool that all staff, patients and family members can use to find peace, pray, or meditate, as they walk along its path toward its center, said Cmdr. Kim Donahue, chaplain, who initiated and led the project.
"This is a community garden, and I want everyone to look at it like that," said Donahue. "This labyrinth is dedicated today, an enduring work of love, to bring healing, compassion, hope and peace, in memory and in honor of all who have given themselves to free others."
During the ceremony, Rear Adm. Alton L. Stocks, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC) commander, noted the labyrinth's value and its healing capabilities...
"After walking a labyrinth, your energy is flowing again in all directions," she (Donahue) said. "It balances your system. You're allowing yourself to get in the present moment to let down your guard, [and] relax.
I hate to tell the good doctor, and the chaplain, but there is nothing healing about a labyrinth. On the contrary.
Here is our Church's teaching against such such....pay attention.
Alternative therapies have gained enormously in popularity because they claim to look at the whole person and are about healing rather thancuring. Holistic health, as it is known, concentrates on the important role that the mind plays in physical healing. The connection between the spiritual and the physical aspects of the person is said to be in the immune system or the Indian chakra system. In a New Age perspective, illness and suffering come from working against nature; when one is in tune with nature, one can expect a much healthier life, and even material prosperity; for some New Age healers, there should actually be no need for us to die. Developing our human potential will put us in touch with our inner divinity, and with those parts of our selves which have been alienated and suppressed. This is revealed above all in Altered States of Consciousness (ASCs), which are induced either by drugs or by various mind-expanding techniques, particularly in the context of “transpersonal psychology”. The shaman is often seen as the specialist of altered states of consciousness, one who is able to mediate between the transpersonal realms of spirits and gods and the world of humans.
There is a remarkable variety of approaches for promoting holistic health, some derived from ancient cultural traditions, whether religious or esoteric, others connected with the psychological theories developed in Esalen during the years 1960-1970. Advertising connected with New Age covers a wide range of practices as acupuncture, biofeedback, chiropractic, kinesiology, homeopathy, iridology, massage and various kinds of “bodywork” (such as orgonomy, Feldenkrais, reflexology, Rolfing, polarity massage, therapeutic touch etc.), meditation and visualisation, nutritional therapies, psychic healing, various kinds of herbal medicine, healing by crystals, metals, music or colours, reincarnation therapies and, finally, twelve-step programmes and self-help groups.(25) The source of healing is said to be within ourselves, something we reach when we are in touch with our inner energy or cosmic energy.
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The labyrinth has made a come-back because of New Age Occultism. It falls into several categories
The labyrinth follows these errors: the biggest is the idea of self-healing and self-redemption!
Some stages on the way to self-redemption are preparatory (meditation, body harmony, releasing self-healing energies). They are the starting-point for processes of spiritualisation, perfection and enlightenment which help people to acquire further self-control and psychic concentration on “transformation” of the individual self into “cosmic consciousness”. The destiny of the human person is a series of successive reincarnations of the soul in different bodies. This is understood not as the cycle of samsara, in the sense of purification as punishment, but as a gradual ascent towards the perfect development of one's potential.
Psychology is used to explain mind expansion as “mystical” experiences. Yoga, zen, transcendental meditation and tantric exercises lead to an experience of self-fulfilment or enlightenment. Peak-experiences (reliving one's birth, travelling to the gates of death, biofeedback, dance and even drugs – anything which can provoke an altered state of consciousness) are believed to lead to unity and enlightenment. Since there is only one Mind, some people can be channels for higher beings. Every part of this single universal being has contact with every other part. The classic approach in New Age is transpersonal psychology, whose main concepts are the Universal Mind, the Higher Self, the collective and personal unconscious and the individual ego. The Higher Self is our real identity, a bridge between God as divine Mind and humanity. Spiritual development is contact with the Higher Self, which overcomes all forms of dualism between subject and object, life and death, psyche and soma, the self and the fragmentary aspects of the self. Our limited personality is like a shadow or a dream created by the real self. The Higher Self contains the memories of earlier (re-)incarnations.
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Human Potential Movement: since its beginnings (Esalen, California, in the 1960s), this has grown into a network of groups promoting the release of the innate human capacity for creativity through self-realisation. Various techniques of personal transformation are used more and more by companies in management training programmes, ultimately for very normal economic reasons. Transpersonal Technologies, the Movement for Inner Spiritual Awareness, Organisational Development and Organisational Transformation are all put forward as non-religious, but in reality company employees can find themselves being submitted to an alien 'spirituality' in a situation which raises questions about personal freedom. There are clear links between Eastern spirituality and psychotherapy, while Jungian psychology and the Human Potential Movement have been very influential on Shamanism and “reconstructed” forms of Paganism like Druidry and Wicca. In a general sense, “personal growth” can be understood as the shape “religious salvation” takes in theNew Age movement: it is affirmed that deliverance from human suffering and weakness will be reached by developing our human potential, which results in our increasingly getting in touch with our inner divinity.(102)
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