Is It Too Late for the Baby Boom Generation?

In the early days of working on this project – the call for a New Age revival -- I assumed that I would be addressing the demographic group that makes up the “New Age market” -- which is comprised largely of women of a certain age and income level who are interested in spirituality and a holistic lifestyle.

But as I talked to different “spiritual” people of the Baby Boom generation, I discovered that most of them wanted nothing to do with any kind of movement or the creation of a community. Even those who most fit the New Age profile would literally make faces at the mention of the term New Age. They would then reaffirm their commitment to their own path, their own needs. It seemed clear that Baby Boomers have been operating on the individualistic terms of uncommitted “seeker” for so long, and this role has become so well rationalized in their minds, that I would find no receptive audience there.

To be frank, I felt some anger after such conversations, and a big sense of betrayal. After all, I was raised by one of the first Baby Boomers – my mother was born in 1945 and she was an open-hearted, peace-loving flower child. I absorbed the communal values of the young Baby Boomers, and strongly believed in their call to create a better world. And when the most hopeful of them forged the New Age movement in the 1980s, I eagerly hopped on board, and was bereft when it dissolved away to nothing but a consumer category a few decades later.

To find such clear evidence in my conversations that those who once inspired me had not merely been accidentally lost on the way to community, but decisively turned their back on it, was painful. And in that pain, I decided that it was “too late” for the Baby Boom generation. I decided that so many of them had clearly chosen interminable mirror-gazing and self-soothing as their spiritual path that it was useless to talk to them anymore. I began thinking of them as the “dead weight” generation, well-intentioned but completely unable to get out of their own way, and ours.

I also began to understand why Ken Wilber half-jokingly wrote in Boomeritis that “the knowledge quest proceeds funeral by funeral,” and that Baby Boomers “might have to die” before the narcissism that blocks the spiral of development can be breached. And I began to address all my writing to newer generations who -- with futures threatened by the catastrophe of rampant individualism -- would be better able to grasp the need for spirit-based community.

It was Marianne Williamson who changed my mind and changed it big. She spoke in Phoenix in November 2008 about the New Mid-Life and the opportunity those of a certain age now have to “get it right.” I listened with tears streaming down my face as she convinced me it is never too late for any of us, no matter how old we are, to finally get to work on the vital business of saving the world.

In her book, The Age of Miracles, Williamson describes an “epiphany” now pressing in on Baby Boomers “that in many ways we wasted our youth—not in that we lived it frivolously, but in that, in far too many cases, we lived it only for ourselves.” She then goes on to say:

We haven’t lived through what we’ve lived through, bled the way we’ve bled, and been humbled the way we’ve been humbled to have it just be over now. In fact, we owe too much to the world to get off that easily. We were all born carrying a promise – a promise to make the world better – and there’s a yearning to make good on that promise that none of us can suppress forever. There’s a silent question blaring loudly in our hearts: What will I do with the time I have left?”

Even Wilber, the world’s most outspoken critic of the Boomers, says that “profound transformation often occurs in the second half of life.” As they age, the Baby Boom generation increasingly faces their own mortality, “which marvelously concentrates the mind and releases it from things of this world. The finite self becomes more and more transparent, more easily let go of, and a certain spiritual perfume fills the air.”

Our so-called prime adult years, Wilber adds, keep us so preoccupied with the demands of career and family that growth into higher stages is rare. (Looking back at my own life, I can certainly say that’s been true for me.) But once we pass through mid-life, and reach our 50s and 60s, we may suddenly found ourselves “ready to pop,” and feel ourselves becoming “deeply, deeply open” to transformation from Stage Four individualism to the Stage Five integralism that deeply, deeply understands the value of community.

I had read Wilber’s words years ago, but did not much believe them until I heard Williamson give her speech on that warm November night in Phoenix. She said the year 1968 and the assassinations of King and Kennedy was the symbolic point at which the idealistic dream of a new age of harmony began to die, and now, 40 years later, the election of Barack Obama served as the symbolic point at which it is time to resurrect the dream of a better world. On that night, she called specifically to the Baby Boom generation to take their hard won wisdom and “align with the creative pulse of the universe,” and “prepare the ground for a glorious future.” It is time, she said, “to accomplish what we came here to do.” And on that night, 2,000 people jumped to their feet and applauded wildly.

“Each of us has gone through our own private dramas,” she adds in her book, “taken our own individual journeys; now we meet as though at a predestined point, to pool our resources of talent and intelligence, faith and hope. Ultimately, we are individually glorified as we find our place within a collective heartbeat. We have journeyed alone, and now we’ll journey together… It is time for us to become elders and caretakers of this precious planet, not just in name but in passionate practice.”

Amen.

The New Age, circa 2008

I spent a thrilling weekend at the “Celebrate Your Life” conference here in Phoenix, only days after Obama was elected. It took $440 to get me in, and as I pushed my way through walls of people filling up every nook and cranny of the Sheraton, it was obvious the New Age is alive and well. Although, of course, the term “New Age” was nowhere spoken (except at the end) or written in any of the literature I heaped into my tote printed with the words “At One Yoga.”

This conference, which attracted several thousand people, seemed to me a perfect reflection of the many factions of the New Age movement today. There was the integral level of spirituality represented by Marianne Williamson in her stirring keynote (oh it was marvelous!), in which she talked about Obama’s election as an opportunity to get back to the work of creating a better society. And she urged us all to take the next step and work on the healing of the world. (She called us “the higher consciousness community.”) Wayne Dyer’s keynote was also a wonderful meditation on leaving behind the shallow, desire-driven manifestation craze of the “The Secret,” and moving toward the more authentic ‘yielding to the moment’ spirituality expressed by the Tao Te Ching.

I went to workshops with Dr. Joan Borysenko and Dr. Judith Orloff, who marry psychology to spirituality and intuition and gave me solid tools to use in my life. I was transported by Byron Katie and “The Work,” the most simple cognitive therapy in the world -- and I felt myself drop pain and anger over an unexamined belief I’d been carrying around for two years. I walked around the rest of the day feeling so light and free, simply loving what is…

I went to see Dr. Bruce Lipton give a mind-blowing science-oriented talk on the “The Biology of Belief,” and learned that DNA does not control cells, the environment does. I loved the funny, smart Lipton, and how he described his shift from materialism to idealism when he discovered how cells really work. He talked the human body as a communication device for the divine. Dr. Joe Dispenza also held me rapt, echoing a lot of what Lipton said, about how our emotions “wire” thinking habits into our brains, and how we can literally rewire ourselves. I think this is invaluable information and he had me hanging on every word – my mind literally lay there still and quiet to absorb what felt like waves of truth. Then he started talking about how his daughter manifested an “unlimited shopping spree” for herself and I felt a thud of disappointment.

I accidentally found myself in a manifestation workshop – there were so many it was near impossible to avoid – and when I realized it, I wanted to bolt. But I was eventually won over by the lovely author, Alan Cohen, who turned on a little light for me about the ways manifestation efforts can help us get clear about what we really want, and can help us “align” with the universe. Yet I also did a little exercise with the woman sitting next to me who was clearly tortured by the fact that after years of trying to manifest good health for herself, she is still in constant pain. She blames herself for not doing it “right.”

There was a lot of buzz about Gregg Braden and his talk about 2012 and the planetary disasters to come as the earth’s magnetic something or other gets thrown out of whack when it crosses the “equator” of the galaxy. I didn’t go to his workshop, but a number of people were talking about it. This seems to me very much a holdover over the 1980s-style excesses of the New Age movement -- a mixture of one part science and three parts imaginative nonsense -- and it is still attractive to people in certain stages of growth. It is surely no coincidence that one of Braden’s biggest fans, a sweet person I liked very much, told me she was “turned off” by Williamson and her call for us to get to work for the good of the planet. She prefers instead to stockpile food for the coming 2012 disasters which Braden convinced her cannot be avoided. Interestingly, the panel at the end of the conference, which included Borysenko, Cohen, Cheryl Richardson and Neale Donald Walsch, made a point to distance themselves from the idea of 2012 as a significant date. In fact, Borysenko said the important date is now, and that its time for us to make a collective shift to a new state of mind that steers away from disasters.

On the same panel, there was Cheryl Richardson who did not pretend to know what comes after death, and next to her Neale Donald Walsch who claims to have been “given” exact details of what the Afterlife is like. All in all, the conference seemed to me to the perfect expression of the different stages of spiritual growth represented by the New Age today. Those in early stages who need to rely on authority, need to be sure – and those who have grown enough to be comfortable with the unknown, and are ready to let life, and death, unfold as it will. Those in the early stages who want to take control and manifest – and those who have grown enough want to stop “arguing with reality,” as Katie put it, and better learn to accept what is.

It was a glorious weekend for me -- being uplifted and inspired by wonderful people, with wonderful people. I learned so much, and feel energized to keep orienting myself toward spirit, and away from ego. I am grateful, grateful. And more than ever, I love the New Age movement -- or the higher consciousness movement, or whatever we want to call it. I love the bridge it builds for us, a bridge that leads to growth and a better life for us all. Now I just have to figure out how to throw a conference for people who don’t have $440 to get in the door. Waves of truth should not be reserved only for the well-to-do.

Writing stories

I am often amused and bemused to realize I’ve been working on different versions of this same project for close to 20 years -- revising and reworking the narrative for who I am today. This endless task has kept me sane in many ways, allowing me to organize the meaning of my life into eighteen chapters.

It doesn’t seem all that different from my day job, writing scripts for television, narratives “inspired by real events,” fictional versions of the truth, organized into eight acts.

I used to think spiritual effort was supposed to help us “wake up” from the stories we tell ourselves about reality, supposed to help us live here in this moment, free and unfettered by our fictional versions of truth. But it has become clear to me that just like meditation does not stop thoughts, we cannot stop our own story-making. In the act of setting one story aside, another automatically composes itself along the structure of new insights, new emotions.

It has also become clear to me that’s exactly why we are here, why the universe peopled itself. We are here not to wake up but to dream -- dream up stories of meaning, revise and revise with new insights, until we dream up a story that rings true, a story that connects us.

“Restoration,” writes Peter Block, “is the willingness to complete and eliminate the power out of the current story we have of our community and our place in it. This creates an opening to produce a new collective story. A new story based on restorative community, one of possibility, generosity, accountability.”

I so much hope I am doing that.

The risks

After talking myself into believing I was getting a "sign" from the universe, I decided I simply had to get to making a youtube video for the site -- oh it was going to be so cute and funny, talking to people about the New Age. So I drove up to Flagstaff and Sedona where all the liberals and New Agers are -- and struck out terrible. The two owners of the New Age stores in Flagstaff refused me, and the wind died in my sails right then and there.

I have been stuck since on how to approach people, WHETHER to approach people to invite them to contribute to my little endeavor. I am "live and let live" to a fault, terrible sales person, no hardcharging promoter, so what do I think I'm doing? My next step was to try to contact different authors and invite them to add their two cents, but it is hard, hard, to bring myself to it. Then tonight I run across this in Peter Block's book on Community (oh what a book, profound book, beautiful book), a little section called: The Risk of Invitation.

"The anxiety of the invitation is that they might not show up. I do not want to face the reality of their absence, caution, reservations, passivity, or indifference. I do not want to have to face the prospect that I or a few of us may be alone in the future we want to pursue."

"And I do not want to face the same truth about myself, for my fear that they will not come is the caution I feel myself about showing up, even for the possibility that I am committed to. My fear is that what I long for is not possible, that what I invite them to is not realistic, that the world I seek cannot exist. And so I imagine myself as a misplaced person, an exile. It is today's version of an old story that I am wrong and I will soon be found out. The fear that no one will show up is a projection of my own doubt, my loss of faith."

It is equal parts unnerving and comforting to see one's fears and anxieties laid bare by a stranger. Now what to do with this diagnosis? The few invitations I've offered thus far regarding this project have indeed resulted in no one showing up. I keep wanting to make this a sign from the universe as well, to let myself off the hook, and go back to life as normal.

But I can't, I can't, I believe the words I have written. I have to go forward. But at least I have the understanding of Peter Block of Cincinnati Ohio.

Signs from the universe

Two days ago, I finally for the first time ventured out into the world on behalf of this site. I drove to my local New Age store to ask if I could some photos for my photo gallery, permission to make a youtube video, etc. After all, who would want to see a New Age revival more than the owner of a New Age store? But after a visit, and a follow up email, I haven’t heard a word of acknowledgement about my request. Likewise, the dozen or so people I’ve emailed, New Age-y types I know, asking them to help me out, please contribute something – nada.

Now from the New Age mindset, when you’re on the right track, doors are supposed to open. When you have an idea that resonates, people are supposed to resonate back. I thought I was getting those little signs early in the process, but lately? Thick indifference. It makes me second guess all of this, the site, my book, everything.

Last night, I heard myself blithely say, “Well, I better get used to being blown off if I’m going to take this on.” People inherently resist change, resist effort. The changemakers of the world have had to push steadily, relentlessly against complacency – they don’t let apathy get into their heads and make them give up… Right?

But we New Agers, we want signs from God. We believe in synchronicities and the magic of intention. We are urged to “manifest” thought beliefs rather than action. It is one thing to sit safely at home and envision outcomes, but it is another to assert one’s will in public. It seems like flaunting one’s ego.

Even as idealism tries to talk us into doing what’s right rather than what is comfortable, the pluralistic New Age comes along and asks, who is to say what is right? Right for who? It is a trick question impossible to answer, and it allows us (me) to sink back into complacency.

So I’ve been sitting on the couch in the early morning hours, scribbling down these thoughts, and stopping to ask the god-universe, please show me a sign I’m on the right track, let me find help. And what do I do if I get no such sign? Give up before I even start?

Another question I don’t know how to answer. So I log onto this blog to post this – and I find an unmoderated comment from Old Hippie a few weeks ago. And what do you suppose he tells me?

“I suggest a way out of your fears - stop doing what they want you to do - Praying to a god is what they want you to do, as they know such denied delusion will divert you from doing what is really needed to stop them... and that is to communicate with your fellow citizens, not an unanswering god.

‘Pray’ to your family, friends, co-citizens to stop the 'allowing.'…

Asking this god (praying) to now intervene is… useless, as it is now our free-will and self-determination that controls events."

The New Ager in me is stunned – and is convinced that this guy telling me to forget about needing signs from God is in itself a sign from God.

But sign or no, the man is right. Clearly, I am going to have to figure out how to get around my own New Age-iness in order to promote the New Age.

From talking to walking

Life sweeps me up, work and work and more work and kids and baseball and getting Natalie settled in college and watching the Obama vs. McCain election coverage as if my life -- all our lives -- depended on it… I forget about the site, no not forget, that is not the word. I have a running argument with myself about whether it matters, whether it is worth my time, whether it is a self-indulgent thing or an important thing to do. It seems both -- but now suddenly I am in a little stretch between assignments, I have time.

I spent three months over last winter rewriting the entire thing, doubling its size. It is really a book now, cut up into Web pages. Not exactly Web friendly length, but, I can’t seem to leave anything out…

I’ve spent these past few weeks loading up those new pages. Now suddenly I am getting to the point where I can’t add anymore without contacting other people. I am almost to the point where it is no longer my little private project, but something subject to other opinions. Which is what I want. In theory. I want to settle this argument whether launching this site is a self-indulgent thing or an important thing to do. An exact reflection of the argument whether we need a New Age anymore or not. Ultimately, its not my own personal argument to settle, but an argument that must be decided collectively.

But what surprises me is in posting these idealistic thoughts, how it keeps me honest. How I do things differently. Little things, like buying grocery bags to reuse instead of throwing away gobs of plastic bags every week. Big things, like meditating more. Like donating money to different causes so I don’t make a hypocrite of myself. And I stop myself from spilling my anxiety about the election in letters to the editor and such, letters that would be full of things like, ‘what kind of idiot would vote for McCain, or any Republican, after these past eight years of disaster?‘ I can’t do that after toiling on a Web site that promotes respect of different spiritual stages, and counsels an integral approach. We don’t get anywhere by making the other guy wrong, says Ghandi, we must simply hold to our truth, respectfully…

This is how the site is changing me. I have to walk my talk because I wrote it down, and I’m now about to put it out there.

Plus, I get emails, comments from people that stumble across the site as I’ve let it lie ignored. They say I am on the right track. So….Now I test all the links, then start emailing people for feedback. My new launch date is February 1, 2009.

I want to wait until after the election because either way, that will change the tone of so many things. It will either be a more hopeful time, a sign that it is truly an opportune moment for a New Age -- or a Republican and fear win again, and we will have another confirmation that we need to better join together to help ourselves evolve. Or at least I tell myself this in hopes of beating back the despair that surely awaits many of us if Obama loses this thing….

I pray each day, Please, God, open the hearts of the people, free them from their fear, give us all the courage to reach for hope… And -- Please God, open my heart so I will not eat myself up with anger and despair if fear wins again.

I remember who I am

I spent years on the text, months on the idea, weeks on getting the Web site together, countless hours, and then—

I let it go. Dropped, walked away. As if it had never been important to me. At first it was just that I got a lot of work dropped in my lap, planned a wedding, bought a house, busy, busy, thinking I’d get back to the site eventually. Then almost immediately, that marriage – another one! – fell apart around me, within me. The divorce shook my confidence down to rubble, laid waste to all my beliefs about myself and reality. It seemed that every thought and belief I had was suspect.

And then there’s the administration of George W. Bush, destroyer of dreams and goodness for all people everywhere. However upset I had been when he was re-elected, that was nothing compared to the long slow oppression of hope during this last term of his. I have felt so despairing over a society that sits mute and allows a man like that do whatever nasty thing he pleases to the world – for profit, for the glory of his religion, for who the hell knows what reason… All my idealism seemed the smallest most useless light in the face of catastrophic howling darkness. (Oh yes, drama is my middle name)

I simply could not bear the thought of looking at the Web site, was embarrassed that I had once looked into the future with such hope. I felt it represented too much of my own wishful thinking – a fake paradise. Like my marriage. Like the idea of democracy under Bush. Like the housing market in Phoenix in 2007.

Then came the WGA strike, losing my paying job, losing my house. A strange disaster that knocked me further down the hole – and sent me tumbling out the bottom into a temporary freedom. Without the work, I have time.

I moped through a few weeks wondering, what should I do with myself? The Web site did not immediately occur to me. It had been my habit to brush it off in my mind, a painful reminder of the unrealistic idealist I used to be. And yet there I was asking my old idealist questions: Where can I be useful, do some cause some good?

And the other day, I thought – maybe I should just look at it. Maybe even read a few pages. And as I took a peek into it, I was stunned and amazed. These were not my old outdated thoughts. These thoughts still made perfect sense to me. They were still me, still mine. This is still my dream, and my deepest hope. I am going to pick it up again.