I've always been fully aware that much of it has a side show quality to it, that it often lacks any empirical evidence whatsoever, and usually possesses a hard to shake giggle factor. Regardless these subjects have taught me to question everything, training my mind to have plasticity. After all a good global conspiracy will often require you to recalibrate everything you ever thought you knew about reality up and until that very moment. In this way the New Age has an inherent ability to keep the mind limber. That is, of course, if you don't let it go slack.

Anyone who has spent any length of time in the New Age recently can no longer deny that it has become the Times Square of the Spiritual world. Filled with brightly colored bells and whistles promising you everything from healing to psychic ability to enlightenment and for relatively little commitment. A weekend here, a couple of sessions there. An increasing number of us are seeing the field as no longer holding the mystique it once did. Of course it will always have its geniuses and areas of authenticity but they have become so diluted over the years that many have simply decided to throw the baby out with the bath water because sorting through it has become such a tiresome and necessary requirement. "The New Age is a circus," I have heard people exclaim on several occasions recently and in all fairness I agreed. The New Age today is simply not what it was supposed to have become.

Changing Culture
A line is forming down the center of the Spiritual landscape, and if that landscape is where you reside, as either a practitioner or a participant, then you may soon find yourself on one side or the other. This line has been forming for the last fifteen years and if you haven’t seen it then it’s no surprise because it has yet to be publicly established as a single, identifiable movement despite its clear characteristics, intentions and increasingly expansive network of operations. The line that I’m referring to is the one that runs between those in the spiritual world who are giving their lives to “changing culture” and those who are not. Between a new breed of "Spiritual Professionals" and the rest of us.
Of course you might say that the entire Spiritual landscape is constantly changing culture and you'd be right, but only in so far as the physical aspect of Yoga will lead to enlightenment. It may, but like the horse and cart, will probably take a very long time. The individuals I'm referring to don't have that much time. They're making a break for it now, and if the Spiritual world is your habitat, to whatever degree, it may interest you to understand who these people are and what they're doing because like the civil rights movement in the 50’s, its emergence is creating a very clear distinction between those who are hip to it, those who are not, those who are making it their actual business to accomplish, and those who embarrassingly don't really know it's going on at all.  
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The New Spiritual Professional
The New Spiritual Professional appears to be defined by three main characteristics. The first is that they are Integral thinkers. And if you are unaware of Integral and are either interested in entering the Spiritual arena professionally, sustaining your existing career within it, or simply passionate about personal development, then you'd better get to know it. "Integral Theory" has officially become required reading for anyone at the cutting edge of transformation. It is, to date, the most comprehensive lens through which we can make sense of the human developmental experience.  

The second characteristic they have in common is that most of them are at the top of their chosen fields. These are some of the best Spirituality, Religion, Science, Business and Medicine have to offer. What this means is that they represent a portion of the leading edge of society who are on our side. They are meditators, first and foremost, and are actively campaigning for the legitimization of Spirit, within the main stream, for the greater good.

The third characteristic however, is where it gets tricky, and one of the reasons I decided to begin this conversation in the first place. Tricky because this third trait is an avoidance, or what they might call a transcendence, of everything and anything that looks or sounds like the New Age.

To put it another way - some of the best and brightest of our Spiritual brothers and sisters that make up the capstone of our Spiritual pyramid have decided to begin forging ahead into the main stream legitimacy and have decided to jettison the New Age altogether like a team member on the Survivor series because well, like many a reality star - in spite of its color and character - they possess just too many blind spots, too much unresolved baggage and as a result have become, in a word, untrustworthy.

Yes, the New Age certainly has its problems, but it is also perhaps the greatest resource the New Spiritual Professionals can pool for support. Like a training ground for spiritual seekers its numbers are vast and its potential great. But a moment has come in the Spiritual landscape of America that may very well define its future. Will the New Age become the new underclass of the Spiritual World, will it become the cavalry that supports the New Spiritual Professionals and their break for an Authentic Cultural Shift? Or is a silent, nonjudgmental, warm and fuzzy spiritual civil war brewing between the naive, unsophisticated New Agers and the elitist, judgmental, overly intellectual New Spiritual Professionals?


Part 2 - Just Because You're For Changing Culture, Doesn't Mean You Are Changing Culture - Coming Soon

Zachary Feder is a former Executive Director of the Association for Research and Enlightenment New York and is currently an independent interviewer...