New age fun with language for every day terms
Today’s culture is one that has a greater awareness of various kinds spirituality and practices. As a part of the Global Village, our society has developed a habit of pillaging terms and ideas from other cultures and applying them to our own home life.
In the spirit of modern spirituality, what shall be presented here is an explanation of how someone can apply ‘new age spirituality’ labels and terms to their everyday lives.
“Finding my center”
Perhaps the most applicable of all new age terms. If one spends their afternoon upon the couch, eating chips and watching movies and someone asks what they are doing, they may respond that they are simply “finding their center.”
“Zen Garden”
Typically a garden of sand and stone, a Zen Garden can be in fact, anything at all. Observe a messy room for example. If questioned about the state of the room, or in trying to locate an object within the disorder, one can reply that the certain object “IS where it IS.” It sounds baffling and abstract, but then of course, so is Zen.
“Feng Shuei”
The art of arranging objects spatially in a room to create harmony. If one has organized a desk in the library or a kitchen table in a way that some would consider disorganized, and someone asks to have it cleaned up, they should be given a look of disgust and a reply of “don’t YOU believe in Feng-shuei?!?”
“Aura”
A polite way of explaining that a peer has an ‘odour’ issue — “I believe your Aura today is rather sour and is conflicting with everyone else’s Aura.”
“In contact with a medium”
Generally stated if someone has supposedly channeled a spirit, but instead if one steps in something unpleasant, or has fallen in the mud, they can state that they have just come “in contact with a medium.”
“Mantra”
A word or phrase that is repeated over and over again, until it becomes habitual. To be silly, one can adopt an advertising slogan as their mantra and then point it out to everyone when that mantra appears on television or a billboard.
“Meditation”
If the answer to a solution is elusive, perhaps instead of “sleeping on it” for the answer, one can state that it requires a little more meditation. Then they can close their eyes right there on the spot. To enhance confusion of whoever is proposing the problem, they must consider adding a mantra as well (see above) to the ‘meditation.’
“To be one with the universe”
Finally, perhaps the best way to explain a moment where someone may lose all of their patience, and ‘freak out.’ It could be said that the person was no longer at ‘one with the universe’ for that moment.
However, it is always important to keep in mind that for every misunderstood term or statement, there is always a deeper meaning beneath it. If a vocabulary contains words that have lost their meaning, it is best to challenge these terms and place them within an everyday, or modern vocabulary, so they can be best understood and enjoyed by everyone.
But why should the mockery stop at Eastern and New Age religions? My day planner can be my Book of Job, wherein I can jot the particulars of the professor’s Sermon on the Mount. And after that, I can head off to the campus pub for the Blood of Christ.