CON-Spirituality – Part 2, Two Years Later

by Not Sure

15 September 2024

Let's pretend this is a piece of fiction, and so the names aren't changed to protect the innocent, because it's a fairy story, right? Here is the setup: The protagonist (me) is a very young woman who went “West” to seek...something. We will find her later in L.A., but right now, she has only made it as far as the ocean; she has not driven up the coast yet. It's the mid-1980s, somewhere in the San Diego area. Our protagonist (me) has spent all her money driving West. She can't remember exactly what she was driving, but it was old, gold, and big. A 1976 Ford LTD 4 door?

She registered at an employment agency and sometimes worked as a receptionist, sometimes as a secretary. The money was never great, and the agency took its cut. It didn't take our protagonist long to figure out that she could make more money in a different line of work. No, dear reader, she did not hit the streets, though she sometimes called her car “the pimp-mobile”. She decided to hustle her own jobs, cleaning houses. Two big houses a day, five days a week, no agency taking a percentage.

Most homeowners met her, decided she had an honest face, and gave her the key to the house. They went to work, and she was left alone to zip from one room to the next: scrub, vacuum, mop, laundry, make the beds, dust the philodendron and off to house #2.

Two things our protagonist especially liked about this work. 1) peace and quiet, and 2) the opportunity to observe how other people lived, what they ate, what they read, what they collected.

Let's pretend that our heroine started to clean the home of the Reverend Doctor Judith Larkin. This was RevDoc’s spiel. “I was on welfare and food stamps, living in a tin-can house with chickens and no heat. Poverty. Today I live in a 2200-square-foot house with cathedral ceilings and two fireplaces. Really beautiful. The reason that change has taken place in my life is because I’ve changed my thinking. Prosperity consciousness has changed my whole life. It’s not materialism; it’s divine attunement. It’s knowing your oneness with all the resources, so you don’t cut yourself off from your supply. You see, poverty is a ‘dis-ease,’ and prosperity consciousness is a kind of health. If a person is in tune with the universal concepts, they will be healthy — not just physically, but in their bank account, too.”

See? Right there. It's your fault if you’re poor. YOU have cut yourself off from your supply. Silly, stupid, sad, pathetic you.

Here is the Reverend Doctor as she appeared then, in print, and to the public. She had recently started her own church, Gateway, and later she would start the Gateway University, “...a leader in the field of soul-centered Spiritual Psychology, exploring the interface between spirituality and psychology.”

This is a quote from the September 11, 1986, edition of the San Diego Reader, “San Diego is the cradle of civilization for the Aquarian age,” declares Reverend Judith Larkin. Ph.D., seated in the living room of what she calls her dream home — a two-story house in La Costa, just up the hill from the golf course and resort. Larkin, a petite blonde with a whispery voice and dreamy eyes, is something like San Diego’s good witch of the north and is a key figure in the new-age movement here. “All the major planetary teachers are coming to San Diego to be trained, then going out to the rest of the world,” she says. “It’s like the eastern Mediterranean was 2000 years ago. San Diego is a geographical coordinate point with a high-energy vortex. Anybody who steps into the high-energy field here sees their life immediately accelerate. They go through their marriage in an instant, their job situation changes, their growth pattern speeds up. It’s quite miraculous.”

The article went on to describe her process. “Through her powers of Shaktipat meditation, she stares into people’s eyes with a hypnotic gaze that is the opposite of the evil eye and transfers “a light infusion,” which, along with her “psychic facilities” accelerates personal growth. After one or two sessions, Larkin claims her subjects “start doing miraculous things: recalling their past lives, opening their third eye, using clairvoyance,” and so on. The price Larkin charges for a fifty-minute session of this “ancient therapy” is eighty-five dollars.”

Here is the Reverend Doctor as she appeared to me (okay, just plain old me now, not the “protagonist”.) She was usually not home but left extremely detailed instructions on how to clean all areas of the house. The shower door must never have spots on it. “You must always use Lime-Away.” (For all you non-cleaner types out there, Lime-Away is extremely toxic, hard on the lungs of users, and not something I recommend. Here's my advice for water spots on shower doors: Live with them. Lighten up. It's just a sign that showers have been taken here.)

The “petite blonde with a whispery voice and dreamy eyes” ate a lot of meat which she prepared in cast iron skillets. She hired me to clean twice weekly and she did not wash dishes between visits. “Never use an abrasive on the cast iron. Wash with a soft rag, rinse well and season.” Season means that after the skillet is clean, I must burn oil onto the surface with high heat, wiping away the excess, taking care with venting not to fill the house with the smell of cooking oil. Of course, all that hullabaloo is after all six skillets soaked for an hour.

The instructions went on and on. “Always vacuum in one direction only. Leave no footprints on the vacuumed floor. Flip the mattresses monthly, and thoroughly vacuum the mattress weekly. Fold the toilet paper into a “V” like hotels do.”

This was a serious house. No man, no children, no pets. Just a “petite blonde” doing the Vulcan mind meld on eager victims. Well, that part isn't true. She must have been doing her Shaktipat “light infusion” at her church, because the house was quiet, almost lifeless, with just her books, her writing desk, and a lot of dirty cast iron skillets.

I had taken in the scenery of San Diego. Bright, shiny people with money and nice houses. Lots of folk had their crystal collections, maybe a framed mandala or two, a Buddha statue, a book about yoga. I understood I was in a new land, filled with possibilities. “Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Texas anymore.”

The Reverend Doctor's house was not the crystal cathedral, though. It was the staging area of one who had reinvented herself as “a key figure in the new-age movement”. I had not read that San Diego Reader article when I was cleaning her house. It's possible that it was still a gleam in the eye of the journalist. I didn't fully comprehend that she was “important and in demand”. But I know that she never once asked me about myself, where I was from, where I was headed, what dreams and aspirations drove me. I guess if she thought of me at all, she would have diagnosed me with the dis-ease of poverty.

Her office area was what most people would designate as the living room. Those high cathedral ceilings, and here was her desk and across from that a large wooden table (that most people would designate as a dining table), covered with her work. There was a little “show” pile of her published books and articles, and then her works-in-progress.

One day, I was alone in the house. The mattresses had been vacuumed, I had breathed in a fair bit of Lime-Away, the skillets were seasoned, the carpet pile was all facing one direction. I was carefully straightening her worktable, being careful not to mix anything up. An article in progress caught my attention. Her name was on it; a stapled booklet of thirty or so pages. The title said something about the lost city of Atlantis.

Maybe you've read about crystal skulls? Since the 19^th century, about a dozen of these skulls have made their way into private and public collections. Their origins are an ongoing mystery. How old are they? Are they Aztec? Mayan? Did they come from the lost city of Atlantis?

Well...I can't solve that mystery for us, and that isn't what the good Reverend Doctor was writing about. It wasn't really like me to pick up a book or a paper and start reading when there was the possibility that a speck of dust was still on the loose, yet that is what I did that day. I read her paper on Atlantis. The details are fuzzy, after all, I'm not certain if I was driving a Ford LTD, or another gold land yacht. But, all these years later, I clearly recall the tone of the piece, and the overarching theme. This was a story about class distinctions, them that have seen the light, and them that be dis-eased with a poverty mentality. This was not a passionate polemic against the abuses or indifference of those-who-have-more. It was not the compassionate, “The poor ye will always have with you”, so open your heart and give to those in need, and don't begrudge this woman the gift she pours on my feet. Nope. Not that at all.

The Reverend Doctor told a story about the advanced people of Atlantis, who could do all manner of wonders, and therefore had been rewarded with great wealth. They communed with one another as gods do, without speech, of one mind about their superior powers of intellect and spiritual attainment, their rightful role as rulers of the universe. Naturally, being gods, they couldn't be bothered with manual labor, and so they had slaves. Naturally, being gods, they couldn't be bothered to speak to a slave. Therefore, they did what self-respecting gods would do. They implanted crystals into the brains of their slaves so they could be wordlessly commanded.

What did I feel all those years ago upon reading that? It was something like horror, but not full-blown. Disgust? It was a bit creepy to think that my employer's holy-woman persona was such a sham. Not that I'd been taken in by it before. What kind of enlightened being is stressed out about water spots on the shower door? But still...it was an actual physical sensation that washed over me. I was cleaning the house of someone that as far as I was concerned wasn't human, if being human is caring about other people, having just a wee bit of curiosity about the woman who is scrubbing your toilet. So, that was it. I told the Reverend Doctor that was my last day cleaning for her. “Another opportunity came up.” Or some such excuse.

Maybe the good Reverend Doctor was right about San Diego. In an instant, my job situation had changed, and my growth pattern had sped up.

***

We might call Helena Blavatsky the grande dame of The New Age. She started Lucifer magazine, which Annie Besant co-edited, and continued to edit after Blavatsky's death.

The ABs duked it out for control of all things theosophical.

Annie Besant was a socialist and a leading speaker for the Fabian Society.

The New Age was a British weekly publication inspired by the Fabian Society. Its contributors included George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, P.D. Ouspensky, the esotericist, Havelock Ellis, the sexologist, G.K. Chesterton, philosopher and Christian apologist, Florence Farr, leader of the occult order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and Beatrice Hastings, theosophist.

The intersection between Socialism and the New Age is indisputable.

Alice Bailey was one of the first writers to use the term New Age. She wrote twenty-four books on theosophical topics, meditation, healing, and spiritual psychology. She claimed that the books were telepathically dictated to her by “the Tibetan”, a Master of Wisdom.

Alice and her husband Foster Bailey founded the Lucifer Publishing Company, which was changed to the Lucis Publishing Co., and founded the Arcane School, part of the Lucis Trust. Her Goodwill concept, or “love in action” is still taught today, along with the Triangles meditation program. One of the “actions” was support of the United Nations.

You may ask why any of these things matter today. I offer this to consider: the concepts of the New Age are now fully incorporated into the mainstream. It isn't like Christianity was outlawed, or the New Age somehow beat Christianity. It simply wove all its ideas seamlessly into the fabric of all existing institutions. If you've ever heard a Christian pastor preach the prosperity gospel, you're hearing the New Age. If you've ever heard a patriot/truther host talking superior alien technology, or ayahuasca/DMT, you're listening to the New Age. If you've been encouraged to look closely at your scarcity attitude, because the universe is limitless and wants to shower you with good things, if only you will open your mind and heart and embrace the abundance, you are receiving a New Age sales pitch.

Evidently, we're spiritually evolving, collectively. All the cool kids jumped on the bullet train to “My Higher Self”. Why aren't you onboard?

Conspirituality is a neologism to mock people who were thinking outside the box, but accidentally fell down a rabbit hole. It could be turned on the mockers, if defending ourselves from idiots (CoV and otherwise) was the best use of our time: You are sitting in your church pew, listening to a sermon delivered by a transgender “it”, who is telling you that the Christ in all of us wants us to open ourselves to the universe and all its gifts. But first, we must once again learn to love the Mother, respect her Earth, make our footprints smaller, or heck, make ourselves “carbon zero”.

Maybe your pastor is still cisgender, God bless him (or her). But there he is in the pulpit telling you that it's your Christian duty to V up. How can you love your neighbor as yourself, if you won't V up?

Sadly, this is a true story. Stay out of rabbit holes, because I guarantee you that every single one of them was dug specially, just for you.

Additional reading:

San Diego's prosperity gurus – Judith Larkin, Sami Sunsong, Terry Cole-Whittaker

https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/1986/sep/11/cover-the-propserity-gurus/