I have been reading this forum for a year and a half or perhaps two years and I have learned a good deal. Thank you for all the information and warnings you share.
I'm your basic Anglo-American mutt---English, German, Dutch, borderlands Scots, maybe some Welsh and Swedish for good measure. I have participated in many New Age practices and read a lot of New Age books. I have discontinued and rejected the majority of it, but honestly, I still find some of it helpful. I just took Reiki I and II because I have found Reiki very helpful in soothing physical symptoms and lifting myself into a more loving yet detached perspective on troubling issues. Giving myself Reiki treatments is part of my self-care. I also still use Tarot and I-Ching for myself and for friends from time to time as a way to get another perspective on a difficult issue. The New Thought and New Age teachings about attracting what you focus on and what matches your behavior helped me decades ago when I struggled with depression and PTSD. In fact I understand that some cognitive and behavioral therapists (an evidence-based form of psychotherapy) use positive affirmations with their clients. Positive thinking and attracting what you focus on only break down when they are abused the way they are in the movie "The Secret." They are not an adequate explanation for everything that happens, nor are they a technology for controlling every detail of your life.
I do not practice anything that claims to belong to any NDN tribe or any other living indigenous culture. I attend a Unitarian Universalist Church, and I'm researching my ancestry, trying to figure out how I can dig my way into some kind of authentic earth honoring and culturally rich practice.
{I must offer an apology, though. I did participate in perhaps eight sweats with Barrett Eagle Bear in the 90's. Now I know better.}
I joined mainly to post information about the occasional group that concerns me.
I live in the Southeast with my husband, my daughter, my stepson and a cat.
Once again, I would like to say thank you for the time, effort, and information invested in this forum.
