Glossary of New Age Terms for the Hopelessly (or Even Just Moderately) Conventional

Community   People like you who think like you and act like you and look like you and believe what you believe, otherwise we don’t know how to interact with you so therefore you must be our enemy.

Connection   What’s supposed to happen every single time you have sex with your partner.  Without exception.  Every.  Single.  Fucking.  Time.

Collective   Getting together with people of the same mindset and who possess the same goals as you.  But kind of more like a non-touching Vulcan mind meld kind of getting together because “COULD YOU PLEASE NOT INVADE MY PERSONAL SPACE RIGHT NOW?!  I FEEL TRIGGERED!”

Holding space   Not actually holding anything and not actually anything having to do with ‘space’ as you may be formerly familiar with the term.

Space   The nondescript, non-scientific kind, of course, as if the whole universe, in fact, does, literally, revolve around you.

Healing   Neither the allopathic nor osteopathic nor even holistic kind, but more the talking-things-through kind that doesn’t yield any kind of ‘healing’ at all but only temporarily calms you because you got triggered by something that happened because you haven’t gotten and never will get over all the shit from your childhood.

Chakra   Not a clue.

Mindfulness   Taking a moment to deliberately be full of yourself because you obviously don’t do it enough already in your everyday life and relationships.

Embody   To physically practice what you preach.  Or what other people preach to you and convince you is right.  And you subsequently adopt as Gospel.

Embodiment   Same thing, only as a noun.  Which happens after you become an expert at it and have forgotten to practice anything else that may be similarly or more effective than the preaching you’ve been subjected to since joining the New Age community.

You   A word that shouldn’t be technically in this glossary because “CAN YOU PLEASE JUST TALK ABOUT HOW YOU’RE FEELING AND USE THE WORD ‘I’ BECAUSE IT FEELS LIKE YOU’RE BLAMING ME FOR SOMETHING RIGHT NOW!”

Feeling   That voice in your gut that tells you the reasons for things, and which renders any possible conflicting explanation, even one made by each and every individual the sum of whose actions had consciously and knowingly made up the reason or reasons for said things, moot and/or irrelevant.  Because you should always trust your gut, and the neurotic, visceral sensations you feel that lead to your a posteriori reasoning beat logical deduction and a sense of trust in other people every time.  Plus, top-down processing.

Top-Down Processing   Basically making reality whatever you want it to be.  And that’s totally fine because it’s science-based.  (Though it isn’t, really.  Not in the way you think it is.  But that doesn’t matter, because top-down processing.)

Processing   Like a computer chip.  Only if the computer chip were incapable of being held accountable for its own actions, possessed a sense of entitlement because it, categorically, did more processing than you, continually threw all its baggage on you without realizing it but refused to hear you mention that might be the case when you bring it up because you’re NOT TALKING ABOUT HOW YOU’RE FEELING RIGHT NOW SO IT FEELS LIKE YOU’RE BLAMING THE COMPUTER CHIP FOR SOMETHING!!  So, actually, not at all like a computer chip.

Society   That abstract concept of people in the world who not only do things that you don’t agree with, but who don’t actually know nearly as much about those things and why as you do and who, consequently, live their lives in a haze of ignorance and structural obedience by a set of rules written and governed by the Patriarchy.  Who, therefore, need you to instruct them, on an individual-by-individual basis, on how to break free and achieve some form of enlightenment.

Life metaphor   Finding a deeper meaning to many or all of your life choices, likes and hobbies, and discovering the parallels that exist between them and your conscious and unconscious goals and desires.  And, in the moment you endeavor to do those things (e.g. rock climbing, ecstatic dance, shooting guns, etc.), you feel as if you’re literally in the process of or on the pathway to reaching the end of one or several of your life goals.  But, of course, you don’t and never will reach the end, because that would be scary, and so it’s therefore much better to stay confused and uncertain than to find resolution to anything regarding your goals and desires, conscious or unconscious.  Because confusion and uncertainty and fear have basically done a better job of raising you than your own biological parents.

Being curious   Not ‘curiosity’, mind you, but being curious.  It’s that thing you’re supposed to do to help you stay a child your entire life.  Because being an adult is hard.  And psychological regression is far, far easier.

Awakening   Drug-induced.  Duh.

Transformation   Drug-induced, again.  Because duhhh.

Enlightenment   Not quite something attained via massive hallucinogenic drug use but rather just having figured out, for the most part, who you are through self-inquiry and a certain amount of alone time.  Which neither you nor anyone else in your community has ever done so therefore the concept is revered as only attainable through some kind of quasi-religious or ascetic purity (or by taking an ungodly fucking amount of drugs), and your community will never believe anyone outside of those who continually talk about how they continue to strive for it has ever actually found it.   (see ‘Community‘)

Present   As in “being present,” which just means paying attention to how you’re feeling in any given moment.  Particularly the ones that heighten you.

Paying attention to how one feels   Because the only reason you’re part of this community in the first place is because you have no fucking idea who you really are and what you really want out of life and everyone there tells you that that’s okay.  Because they don’t, either.

Organic   1.)­ Everything that you either put into, on or against your body.   2.) That abstract place from where you strive to make all your ideas, emotions and feelings toward your partner originate.

Vulnerability   That thing which, for reasons unbeknownst to everyone including those in the New Age community, makes you most attractive in the eyes of your partner.  And if you don’t show it as often as your partner demands because his/her emotionally distant mother or father never actually showed it to them at all, you become incapable in the eyes of your partner of showing it at all, ever again, into perpetuity.  Even if you actually do.

Love   1.) Only if used in as general a meaning as possible “BECAUSE I CAN’T BE BOXED IN!”  2.) That feeling you feel when everyone around you tells you that it’s okay to be who you are.  Without their actually having spent any real amount of time around you in your personal life to know, exactly, who that person actually is.  Because if they did, they’d tell you to stop being so goddamn self-important, knotted up inside and controlling, and that all the bad stuff that happens and has happened to you in your life has, does and will happen in the future to nearly everyone else in this world, and that your own, specific problems need to be addressed head on, not to be continually remedied within a collective community of mindful, space-holding, process-oriented, present individuals who pay attention to how they feel while seeking transformation and healing.  Every time they come up.