In my first book Meditation as an art of life ? a basic reader (download free PDF Version), I presented what I call the four philosophical hindrances and openings in towards the Source. I presented them in order to show what I think characterizes the spiritual practice, as it exists in all the traditional wisdomtraditions. Ever since I have become increasingly puzzled over, how the self-help industry - which claims to work in accordance with spirituality, and also are inspired by philosophy of life and philosophy of existence - is turning all this upside down. The paradox is that while the self-help industry is claiming to create the authentic, autonomous, resource-filled and competent human being, at the same time is doing the exact opposite: it is making people dependent of therapeuts, coaches, others ideas and ideals; making them modeling and imitating so-called successful people, etc., etc.In this article I will explain this paradox, and I will show that the difference between the self-help industry and spirituality is that where authenticity in the self-industry is the same as becoming another (authenticity is a dream, a mythology), then authenticity in spirituality is the same as being what you are (authenticity is reality); or said shortly: the difference between becoming and being. I will also show, that the reason for this turn is ideological founded.The article is divided into eight parts:1) The two world-images of the mythology of authenticity2) Central aspects of the mythology of authenticity3) The dream about becoming another4) From religion and philosophy to psychology5) From religious myths and rituals to psychology and therapy6) The ideology of the authenticity-mythology7) The four philosophical hindrances and openings8) Becoming versus being: false spirituality versus true spirituality1) The two world-images of the mythology of authenticityNLP (as an example) is a very open therapeutic method, which draws on a number of other therapeutic methods and psychologies, and at the same time the people, who for example start a NLP education, are people, who carry the psychologizing world-view of their age. The two methods therefore don?t origin from NLP ? they rather become reinforced and ritualized through NLP as just one of a number of therapeutic methods, who today are being spread on the market for personal development and therapy.So the interest in the authentic human life is not a NLP invention but a trait of the age of authenticity, and the two methods refer after all also to the most spread psychological world-images of our age: the humanistic psychological world-image, and the constructivistic world-image. In a secularized culture of growth, where religion and ideologies play a constant lesser role in everyday life, psychologizing theories about the fall of the self, its regeneration and realization, apparently get a constant larger spread. Yes, my claim is that we in fact have to do with a new ideology, which danger can be seen in that secularization here has been removed. The pseudoscientific psycho-religiousness, which characterizes the self-help industry and its promises about personal development, is directly written in EU?s project on education and lifelong learning, and therefore it becomes systematically introduced in schools, further and higher educations, companies and management theory. I call this ideology The Matrix Conspiracy (see my article The Matrix Conspiracy).Today we do not need to open many weekly magazines, bestseller books about personal development, or newspapers, in order to discover, that the two methods are recurring everywhere, where modern people are concerned with telling and interpreting their life into a superior connection. The psychotherapeutic method especially appears through a long line of self-help books and books about spirituality, which are selling extremely well these years, and it also exists in countless versions of women?s magazines, and their many articles about women who have found their own true self again, and thereafter have taken the leadership in their own lifes (see my article The new feminism and the philosophy of women?s magazines).The constructivistic method is on the other hand more outspread in books about personal development (self-improvement or self-guided improvement) self-improvement based management and coaching. A bit caricatured you could say, that the prototype on the psychotherapy-oriented method is a spiritual seeking woman, who often is going in psychotherapy, while the prototype on a constructivist is a ranger, who is interested in personal development and works with coaching.But as mentioned, they can?t altogether be separated; often they are mixed together, and under one you can say that they both are a part of the self-help industry.Humanistic Psychology (Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow and Rollo May) is a fundamental inspiration for the management theories and therefore for the whole of the self-help industry (see my article Management theory and the self-help industry).The humanistic psychology is based on a biological view of human nature; or said in another way: it believes that humans entirely are desirous beings (see my book A Portrait of a Lifeartist ? download free PDF Version). Carl Rogers is therefore in his self-actualization theory focusing on the emotional experience of the individual. Abraham Maslow is in his self-actualization theory focusing on different levels of needs in the individual. Rollo May is in his existential psychology focusing on the will and wishes in the individual.If you focus on these aspects of the human nature you will find your true authentic self, they claim. Like the wisdomtraditions Humanistic Psychology namely have an idea about, that Man has a sovereign (or even spiritual/divine) core. So, it is from here we have the concepts of the self-actualizing and personal developing human being, and, as a result: the authentic, sovereign, autonomous, competent, resource-filled human being; concepts, that are central in the whole of the self-help industry.What is common in humanistic psychology is that the individual actualizes his full resources or potentials; that is: that he finds his authentic self. This thesis has been developed in many various forms, for example it is also this thesis that is lying behind the concept of positive psychology. Positive psychology has its roots in the New Thought movement, and is claiming that if you focus on your positive thoughts, feelings, needs, wishes and will, and are ignoring the negative oppositions, then you can attract anything you want (the ?positive? is in New Thought understood as material glory, money, success, personal power, sex, health, beauty) ? see my article The New Thought movement and the law of attraction.? It is, according to the Humanistic Psychology, therefore only the individual?s own subjective evaluation, which can provide something with value. There neither exist valid values, which come from the community, or objective values, which come from nature, the universe, or life itself. Nothing has value in itself, unless it comes from the individual?s subjective experiences, needs, will and wishes. The Humanistic Psychology?s view of morals is namely not only a subjectifying, which attributes the source of morals to the subjective itself, but also an emotionalizing, since it is the individual?s feelings, which decides the moral quality of something. What it is about, is to do what ?feels? right. It is the individual?s emotional experience of something, which defines values, not conversely. And this is fully in thread with the ideology of Consumer Capitalism, where the customer (and his or her?s experiences, wishes, will and needs) always is right. The consumer society, the therapeutic self-actualization and the subjectifying of the moral, go hand in hand. The moral ? the individual?s relation to himself ? is therapized, and the moral is subjectified. But religion has in humanistic psychology and self-help industry been reduced to psychology (feelings, will and wishes, ? Carl Rogers and Rollo May), spirituality has been reduced to biology (needs ? Abraham Maslow), and philosophy has been reduced to ideology (consumer capitalism). So, traditional religious and philosophical practices have in Human Psychology, and in the self-help industry as such, been reduced to psychology and psychotherapy. Spirituality has this way been turned upside down. See my article The devastating New Age turn within psychotherapy). Read more about humanistic psychology in my article Humanistic psychology, self-help and the danger of reducing religion to psychologyThere both exist a social and an individual version of constructivism. The social constructivism is outspread on universities and therefore in much degree on all educations. The individual constructivism is more outspread in the coaching environment on for instance work places. However they are both included in modelling the concept about what constructivism is.The latest craze in reductionism is social constructivism (read more about reductionism in my article The pseudoscience of reductionism and the problem of mind). Actually we ought to speak about a sociologism, but the dance was opened in 1967 with Berger and Luckmann?s work The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. And the term ?social constructivism? has been stuck and is used with much pleasure by the followers of the movement. In today?s literature social constructivism occurs in a weak and in a strong version. Both the weak and the strong version somehow claim that reality is social constructed from our language, or linguistic mappings.The weak version is about, that a line of institutions in society have been produced, and have to be explained, only from social/sociological causes. Examples on such institutions are legislation, for instance about traffic, monetary matters with everything that this include of banks, credit institutions, stock markets etc., standards of behaviour, ethical systems, religion and much more, but not scientific results such as the explanation of the periodic system of the elements, of the chemical connections, or of the laws of gestalt psychology, for just to mention some examples.The strong version - which among others are framed by the Edinburgh sociologists David Bloor, Barry Barnes and Steven Shapin, and since followed up by a long line of others, among these Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar - is about, that not just the mentioned institutions, but also all scientific results and discoveries, are social constructions.The individual constructivism has the same ideas. According to Nietzsche there neither exists a sensuous, a material, or a spiritual world given in advance. Everything are created by being interpretated. With this Nietzsche introduced a quite central concept: perspectivism. Through our interpretations (language) we directly construct the world. And you must therefore have the will and power to create new values, and you must have the power to give them name in a new way, because namegiving is the same as an unfolding of power. Or else you end up as a slave. To live is to will, to will is to create values. The will to power is becoming through us, and in that way we get control over the things through a perspective.Nietzsche believed that the will - that is to say: the defeating, the remodeling, the striving - is something creative. As told, then the will to power, according to Nietzsche, is a creating power. That this power is the basic power in Man means, according to Nietzsche, that all expressions of the human life must be understood as forms of will to power; intake of food, arrangement of the everyday life with home and clothes, cultivation of nature, as well as sensation, feelings, thinking and will in usual sense - are expressions of the will to power. Nietzsche is not least thinking about the will to power in the image of art. All human unfolding is actually a creative process where a content, or a material, is formed. Life is seen as a work of art.A similar thought exists in the so-called self-production thesis, which is the thought about, that Man is the being, who creates himself through his history, and thereby controls his own freedom. The thought exists in the German idealism, for instance in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. Both Existentialism, as well as Marxism, also builds on the understanding of the freedom of Man to form his own life, and that this is an unconditional value. Freedom is a good thing, a demand and a responsibility. What it is about, is the freedom to be the creative power in your own history. In the Existentialists it is the life-story of the individual, in the Marxists it is the world-history of the community.The self-production thesis builds on the thought, that Man is in a continual state of becoming. The concept formation also often becomes used in connection with the concept of becoming.To live is to will, to will is to create values. The will to power is becoming through us, and in that way we get control over the things through a perspective.It is now easy to see how much the modern management theory and coaching industry is inspired by Nietzsche: the relativistic and subjectivistic ideas about that it only is the individual himself who, through his interpretations, or stories, can supply the world with values ? or rather, not supply, but directly create it like a God; the denial of the past, and the orientation towards future; the superman idea about being a winner, a succes, a person standing on the top of the mountain; the preaching about that it is not facts, but the best story, which wins.Also existentialism can be used to justify these thoughts. The act-oriented ideas of existentialism match as hand in glove with a capitalistic-liberalistic ideology about being the architect of your own fortune, the right for each individual person to seek his own idea of happiness ? the philosophical point of view, that there isn?t any objective value-goals for the human life, only individual subjective choices. That is: value-subjectivism. For instance they use Sartre?s scriptures as a request for uninhibited and egoistic self-expression, where the individual person is letting his choices decide everything. The existentialists say that Man has the freedom, through his choices, to be the creative power in his own history. As management theorists and coaches say: ?It is not facts, but the best story, which wins!? 2) Central aspects of the mythology of authenticitySo, psychotherapy (humanistic psychology) and coaching (constructivism) can be seen as new, large, meaning-carrying world-images in a psychologized and therapized age. Even though they, in their sources of inspiration, at first specify two quite different views of Man and his possibilities and purposes in the world, they are common in explaining humans from a conception about, that humans have lost (or all the time are in risk of loosing) himself and therefore constantly have to work with personal development in order to find himself (psychotherapy and the dream of a lost past) or to become himself (coaching and the hope of a richer future). You can say that the two world-images both are based on the claim, that a human being not is himself, before he becomes himself, and that both world-images see lifelong therapeutic self-improvement as a presumption for, that a human being can become and live authentic.The two world-images can in other words be seen as two versions of the same superior psychologizing understanding of life, which the Danish researcher of religion Iben Krogsdal calls the mythology of authenticity. This mythology is so to speak a compilation of the two world-images into one. According to the mythology of authenticity the course of a human life is as follows (here inspired by Krogsdal?s examination (Krogsdal 191-192, 2011):1) Man comes to the world as himself: as untouched core (humanistic psychology/psychotherapy) or unlimited possibility (constructivism/coaching).2) During childhood other humans, or the culture, takes over the management of Man. Thereby he looses himself (his self-possession) and becomes another.3) Human beings live unconscious without awareness about, that they don?t possess themselves. They live non-authentic as a ?we? (instead of an ?I?), and out of what they ?ought? and ?must?, (instead of what they ?can? and ?will?).4) Humans experience problems (life crises, sickness, divorce, low selfesteem etc.), or they experience a need of changing in connection with challenges on for instance the workingplace.5) Through psychotherapy or coaching Man discovers, that he has lived non-authentic; that is to say: controlled by others and without contact with himself (with his own core ? psychotherapy and the dream of a lost past - or with his own potentials ? coaching and the hope of a richer future). He discovers, that his problems or wishes of change are due to, that he not so far has been in possession of himself.6) Through psychotherapy or coaching Man begins to disentangle from the leadership of others and takes himself in possession. The other humans exist in the subconcious mind and therefore have to be segregated through therapeutic self-cultivation. When this has happened, Man can himself decide, how he will react to reality. At the same time he gets in contact with his hidden resources (to either becoming himself as he was once ? psychotherapy and the dream of a lost past ? or to become the other, he wants to become ? coaching and the hope of a richer future).7) When the individual human being through the subconcious mind has taken over the control of his own life, he can place life-goals, which is in accordance with the one he is or chooses to be. The authentic human being lives with inner accordance ? and he expresses himself by creating accordance between his inner and the external world.8) Because he has realized, that the explanation of problems has to be seeked in his relationship with himself, and because this relationship all the time is under influence from outside and can?t be expressed once and for all, Man is in need of regularly repeating a therapeutic journey towards himself. He has to work with himself continuously in order to remain loyal towards himself as ?greater than? his conscious self.So the mythology of authenticity defines Man as a being, who continuously need to cultivate himself therapeutical. The mythology does so by making Man into a problem to himself (I explain this problem-making of oneself in the last?part of this article: Becoming versus being: False spirituality versus true spirituality). In the constructivistic world-image (coaching and the hope for a richer future) the problem becomes formulated very positive as a promise: ?You have not yet actualized what you have the potential for?. In the humanistic psychological world-image (psychotherapy and the dream of a lost past) the problem rather becomes formulated as a threat: ?You are all the time in danger of that others draw you away from yourself?.The mythology of authenticity, as Krogsdal here has described it, very much reminds about what the American psychology professor Frank Furedi has called ?The Therapeutic Manuscript? (Furedi 2004, 91). This manuscript is a kind of un-written and very outspread script about how life typically forms itself to a human being, and how a human being through therapy all the time is in need of becoming healed. In accordance with this manuscript every single plane in a human being?s life represents a kind of risk: human relations are the source of repeated emotional damages, and these damages have to be healed again and again through therapeutic intervention. Frank Furedi therefore sees the therapization of the late modern society as a kind of cultivation of fragility. It can sound paradoxical in a time which praises the autonomous and self-responsible human being, but the spread of the therapeutic manuscript through psychology and therapy is precisely participating in educating people in believing, that they are irresponsible, helpless and therewith dependent of treatment (Furedi 2004, 119). People quite simply learn to see themselves as vulnerable victims, who all the time become exposed for assaults and therefore constantly have to be helped, supported, healed.With the industrial modernization Man has cultivated a mind, which can solve almost any technological problem; that, which the German philosopher Habermas calls the instrumental reason. But apparently human problems have never been solved. On the contrary mankind are about to be drowned in its problems: problems concerning communication, the relationship with others, heaven and hell. The whole of the human existence has become one extremely complex problem. And apparently it has been like that through the whole of history. Despite the knowledge of Man, despite his millenniums of evolution, Man has never been free from such problems. The solutions to such problems require a communicative (philosophical/spiritual) reason, a reason, which understands the human community. But as Habermas says, then we are not using such a reason, on the contrary we are using an instrumental reason on human problems, where it only should be used on technical problems. We seek to solve human problems technically, where they should be solved in a philosophical way. The systems (the market, the economy, the bureaucracy, the systems) have colonized the lifeworld. An aspect of, that the instrumental reason has conquered territory from the communicative reason consists in, that we in connection with human problems treat each other as means or as items, which have come on the wrong course (the treatment society). It is interesting, that the New Age movement, which actually should be a spiritual alternative to this, and be an advocate for a communicative reason, on the contrary is one of the most aggressive advocates for the instrumental reason. This is due to its psychologizing of philosophy. New Age is possessed with all kind of self-invented forms of treatment, and with pseudoscientifical attempts to justify them as science. Often they manipulative use instrumental/scientifical inspired terms about their methods, but which are without any scientifical meaning at all. It is just a rhetorical trick to persuade people to pay the fee.So, in the mythology of authenticity people are seen as a kind of victims. Through childhood and the influence of others they have lost themselves or their original self-feeling. In the therapy ? as Krogsdal understands broadly as all personality developing work, whether it takes place at a therapist, in courses, in in-service training, or at home alone ?people once again get the possibility for letting go of their roles of victims. At the same time they also, in accordance with the mythology of authenticity, get the possibility for actualizing their subconcious potentials.In this way the mythology of authenticity keeps, in accordance with Krogsdal, its own practice ? that will say therapy in broad sense ? alive through the assertion about the chronical lack of authenticity. This lack comes to expression in the myths about Man as a victim of others? assaults, or as victim of the who-do-you-think-you-are attitude and other cultural limitations. Krogsdal says, that just like the Christian church (especially formerly and in its Catholic form) roughly said determines Man as a sinner, which regularly has to get absolution, and just like the church through this ritual revival of the faith keeps the faith ?alive?, in the same way the mythology of authenticity defines Man as a lost or not yet gained self, who regularly has to heal (humanistic psychology) or form (constructivism) himself in the therapeutic practice. In this fundamental way the myth-rite-system maintains itself: the mythology refers to the therapeutic practice, and the practice revives and revitalizes the mythology. All in a continuous, circular movement.So, as Krogsdal says, on the one hand the authenticity-mythology paradoxically enough confesses Man as independently, while it on the other hand makes Man dependent of therapeutic help (broadly understood as both therapy, dialogues or self-therapeutic work) by defining him as a damaged or not-yet-genuine individual, which is in need of constant personal development.3) The dream about becoming anotherThe conception about that a quite ordinary person in the starting point not yet is himself or not yet is fully realized, is in accordance with Krogsdal also the conception about, that Man in reality is another (psychotherapy and the dream about a lost past) or ought to become another (coaching and the hope for a richer future). The problem ?I am not authentic? becomes today often expressed more positive in the mainstream-assumption that people always are something more and greater than they believe they are. There are always hidden potentials and resources to fetch in the individual. To become yourself is therewith in accordance with the mythology of authenticity the process, with which Man actualizes himself as potential and goes through an extensive transformation to the better.With the promise about a transformation to the better the mythology of authenticity has in accordance with Krogsdal a fundamental feature in common with another of the large-scale suppliers of myths in the age of authenticity: the advertising industry. The modern advertising culture induces the hope, that you quickly and easily can replace one identity with another, that you through a consumer-defined change of life-style can transform your life thoroughly. You can so to speak through consumer-choices become an other and better version of yourself. The problem of authenticity (that you not yet are yourself) and the longing, which arises from this problem (the longing after becoming yourself) is in this way today parallel with the indirectly claim of the advertising-world to people about, that they constantly need new products, which can make them into new and better people.Both the advertising-industry and the self-help industry draw on the story about Man as a not-yet; a story which reduces the present to branches of the future and looks at people as potentials, and not as something already realized. Both industries profit in this way, Krogsdal thinks, from the authenticity-mythological propaganda about the dream about, that you in reality are another (humanistic psychology) ? or that you always can become another (constructivism). In the now Man is insufficient, he is always on a station before himself, and therefore all the time must be future-oriented. You can also say, that both advertising-industry and authenticity-mythology put forward growth as the solution to the late modern human being? s problems.In the humanistic psychological world-image and in the constructivistic world-image this growth-ideology not only expresses itself as a promising invitation to become a better, more fantastic and life-capable other, but also as a threat. Lack of authenticity actually becomes connected with danger: the person who lives unconscious without knowing and unfolding himself, basically risks to become both psychical and physical sick. In accordance with humanistic psychology restrained feelings will at some point begin to express themselves in inappropriate ways, for instance as pains, illnesses, depression or stress.The request for growth becomes in this way not alone what Krogsdal calls carrot-stories which focus on the possibility for getting a better life ? but also a kind of whip-stories. They are whip-stories because they tell Man that he is a self-explaining being with positive intentions alone, and whose suffering always is a symptom on, that something is wrong (that he thinks wrongly). Therewith they also tell that suffering is a from within coming request for personal growth, which ? if it isn?t obeyed ? leaves Man as self-made (though unconscious self-made) inappropriate behaviour, illness and suffering. The punishment of lack of authenticity ? that will say: lack of personal development and self-expression ? can in the growth-ideology be tough.So personal development is in accordance with the world-images not only about all the good, you can become, but just as well about the evil, which can happen if you don?t obey the demand of growth. You can say that the growth-conception of the authenticity-mythology not only solves ?the problem of happiness? by justifying achievement, success and health from within, but also solves ?the problem of evil? by explaining fiasco, unsuccessfulness and illness from the individual human being's lack of authenticity. To be in non-growth is to risk yourself and your own health.In that sense the growth-demand in the two world-images is so fundamental, that non-growth is being made sickly. The healthy person is the person who works with himself ? the sick person is the person who not yet has reacted on himself, realized himself, actualized his symptom-giving potential. Growth is considered the touchstone of normality, and therefore absolutely necessary.In that way we, in accordance with Krogsdal, today see a rising tendency to anomalizing or making non-growth sickly. Today we increasingly adapt or treat conditions, which before were regarded as normal conditions (this also happens in the pharmaceutical industry). Today the therapeutic market with its enormous supply of everything from self-help books which is sold in bestseller-numbers, to therapy for couples, birth coaching, communication training, general personal development, life-coaching, management training and business-coaching, obviously isn?t reserved sick people, but on the contrary is a market which recruits clients alone in these clients? quality of being parents, partners, mothers, fathers, child rearers, employees, leaders, colleagues ? shortly said: in their quality of being humans in an individualized and psychologized culture. You can say that being human in the age of authenticity is to have constantly ?potential? for therapeutic treatment ? a potential which becomes mythologized and legitimized through the new world-images, while they increasingly becomes outspread as the mainstream-understanding of life.From many interests, for instance professionalism and economical, the late modern world in this way treat people as ?not-yets? with constantly referral to authenticity-mythological stories about human psycho-social development. Seen from this growth-perspective the individual person as ?present? is being problematized and therewith made to subject for therapeutic attention, at the same time as the now in more general sense has lost its right.In a growth-oriented culture which praises Man as resource-strong, the eye of what someone or something not yet are, has paradoxically enough become immensely sharp. When people and professions in the age of authenticity look at themselves and each other, they in large scale do this with the future?s eyes, and seen with the future?s eyes the now has not yet become future, and therewith basically not good enough. When the future becomes everythings scale, change becomes, in accordance with Krogsdal, to a touchstone of human normality. The late modern Capitalistic society praises the changeable, growth-oriented, personal developing and flexible person ? contrary to the stable, past-oriented and finished person (Sennett 1999).The Danish ethnologist Kirsten Marie Bovbjerg has with starting point in NLP Courses shown how this future-orientation comes to expression in the working life, where the view of Man as a potential in large scale forms the starting point for the industry of employee-development and modern management (Bovbjerg 2001). Through the potential-idea the Capitalistic growth-ideal therefore increasingly colonizes humans? experience of themselves. As potentials people get market value and are being made into substance as merchandise or shares you can invest in; the self becomes habitat of resources, which can be extracted and cultivated with the future as only horizon.This therapeutic potential-eye on Man comes in accordance with Krogsdal to expression in a number of other places than in the actual psychological and therapeutic practice. It also appears in the spread of personal development methods to the pedagogical world and to the school system, where teachers increasingly have taken the emphatic therapist?s role, and where acknowledgement and focus on the individual pupil?s resources and development-potential has become a quite natural approach. It also appears in the rising demand for self-improvement techniques, in the last years especially in the phenomenon coaching (constructivism) which focus always is concrete action, and which therefore expresses the conception, that you always can do something about something. The increased speak of and use of sexologists is an expression of the same development. And finally it is in accordance with Krogsdal quite certainly not accidentally that they also in the entertainment-industry in these years are intensely occupied by the undiscovered and un-cultivated talent; by exposing the ordinary person who in reality appears to be unusual fantastic, to be a hidden star, to have so-called X-factor.4) From religion and philosophy to psychologyIn the traditional religions the divine is defined as an otherness which transcendences Man. Man only becomes himself by being in relation with this otherness, which precisely in its power of otherness is eternal and endless, and which determines Man both existential, conceptual (thought and language), ethical, cognitional and metaphysical: that will say: it defines Man in philosophical sense. Through a few truly spiritual practising men and women there has in all great religions arisen a spiritual practice which represented, not only a rediscovery, but in some cases an intensification of the light of an original teaching, universal and common to all mankind. Thus Gnosticism and Mysticism arised in the early and medieval Christianity, Sufism in Islam, Hasidism and Cabbala in Judaism, Advaita Vedanta in Hinduism, Zen and Dzogchen in Buddhism.Unlike the established religions this teaching is laying its emphasis on realization and inner transformation. And it is this which constitute the philosophical element in the spiritual practice. It is therefore I make much out of involving the concept of philosophy, for thereby to explain the essential role this concept has in the meditative process. This is because that the concept of spirituality, with the progress of psychology in the Western countries, far too often is being psychologized, with a lot of distortions, and misleadings as result. The psychologizing of the meditation-concept itself - that is to say: the psychologizing of the philosophical aspects of the meditation-concept - is namely a reductionism; that is: a distortion of human nature.In the following I will use the word God in the above-mentioned sense, and describe the psychologizing tendency. Note, that even though they in some of the above-mentioned directions use similar concepts as in self-help industry, for example the concept ?self?, then this ?self? also is defined in relation with an otherness. In a secularized world, where God as ?explanation? of the occurrences of life plays a still lesser role, psychology steps in on the ground with a modern system of explanation. Today, where people long ago have stopped explaining the ups and downs of life through a God or other cosmic powers, still more people explain themselves through psychology. They turn their eyes inwards. Introspection is a quite central concept in the method which is used in the self-help industry; contrary to the traditional spiritual traditions where the only possibility for discovering yourself is to see your relationships as a mirror. The system of explanation which today replaces the old cosmic system with for example God and Devil, is in this way in very high degree a system of self-explanation, which in widely extent draws on psychology as the teaching about, and the interest in, the human inner. People today more than ever relate to themselves, and their own past, when they have to explain why they are standing in a given life-situation. And when the course of the world has to be explained in a psychologized age, it often becomes explained as a product of the growing up conditions of single individuals and consequently psychical conditions.This psychologizing of Man has with the self-help industry been led to its temporarily extremity. In self-help environments most people try to find an autobiographical-psychological explanation of everything: the individual person is fully explained from within by the subconcious mind. In the self-help industry the explanation of the world?s condition is basically the hidden positive intention in the individual person, which has a line of inner hidden agents in form of the so-called subconcious parts. It is these parts, and their mutual interplay or struggles, which create a human being?s behaviour. The behaviour is all that, which as outcome of something else, come to expression in a human being?s thinking, feelings, conceptions, body and communication with others.A self-help practitioner refers (as a principal rule) neither to God, society or ?coincidence, when he becomes ill, abandoned, sacked, loved, employed or healed. A self-help practitioner will typically look into himself, into his own subconcious, after explanations. In the same way the world?s general condition to a high degree also is understood from the inner of single individuals. After all, the world?s problems are essentially the result of single individuals? lack of personal development and self-insight, and they can therefore best be solved by that every single person so to speak gets control of his personal development. The more authentic people, the better the world.As a kind of psychologized utopia the mythology of authenticity promises, in accordance with Krogsdal, salvation through the individual human being?s work with himself. When the individual becomes authentic (find again and expresses himself) it is happening for the best of both own and the collective. There is no opposition between personal development and community; the individual?s journey inwards expresses that the individual is on the way into a collective journey; when the individual becomes whole, the collective becomes healed. Conflicts, crises and class struggles basically arise because people not have worked with themselves; because they not are enough personally developed, because they act from un-released childhood traumas (psychotherapy) or un-released potentials (coaching). The world is problematic because it consists of psychical wounded or un-unfolded humans, who are acting from a lack of consciousness about themselves.Until people becomes aware and able to integrate the repressed parts in themselves, until they therewith become whole and healed, they are in accordance with the new world-images reduced to be limited and as such not appreciative towards others; they are reduced to be un-constructive, intolerant and in other ways inappropriate in their behaviour towards both themselves and others, not at least the children they are parents of.Krogsdal refers to a NLP-practitioner who says:?Original sin is, that we carry our childhood?s traumas with us. If you for example have grown up with an absent father, then you often come to be absent towards your own children.?So, victims without self-insight are in accordance with this way of thinking inclined to produce new victims in a world, where original sin has been reduced to the determinism of the childhood trauma. We here explicitly see the reductionism. I have before explained that our thinking, as well as our painbody, not only has a personal history, but also a collective and universal history (see my article The emotional painbody and why psychotherapy can?t heal it ? where the concept of original sin is explained). And I am not speaking about the collective or the universal in psychological sense, as for example Jung?s or Stanislav Grof?s collective subconcious. I speak about both the collective and universal history as ontological and metaphysical karmacially structures, which are lying in the wholeness; accordingly not in the psyche (see my article What is karma?). The psyche doesn?t contain the wholeness as humanistic psychology is claiming. That would be an example of the thought distortion called Nondual bias. Nondual bias arises when you describe something as nondual, while forgetting that you can?t describe anything without implying the negation of it. Both the collective and universal history are in this reductionism cut away, and that is a problem, when you at the same time work with spiritual practice, for example meditation, which with time will bring both the collective and universal history for the day, and that will say karmacially structures. It will cause the danger of spiritual crises, perhaps especially the ?positive? aspect of a spiritual crisis, namely the ego-inflation (see my articles Spiritual crises as the cause of paranormal phenomena, and The ego-inflation in the New Age and self-help environment).Within the alternative environment of New Age and the self-help industry intellectual ego-inflation is extremely widely spread, and when the game, as here, is about the development of Man, about the depths of the mind, about archetypical powers, about the source of life, then intellectual ego-inflation can be a hazardous play. When the intellectual knowledge begins to approach philosophical and religious areas, wisdom of life, meditation, spirit, then the ego can misjudge itself by being intoxicated by its intellectual understanding of deep phenomena.The reduction of all this to something inner-psychic (where the deeper collective and universal history have been reduced to the personal history) is self-deception, it is ego-inflation ? and it will unavoidably lead to misguiding of others.The psychologizing of explanation has a line of historical causes, but when it today has become so outspread, then this, in accordance with Krogsdal, is closely connected with, that many people find it difficult to navigate in a globalized and increasingly unpredictable world. Many structural connections are today out of human control, the everyday life has to the individual person become risky and unpredictable, and therefore many increasingly turn to themselves and their own control sphere, in order to practise a kind of control with themselves, their own body, their own life style.Control makes us feel powerful, which is a good feeling. And feeling that your own thoughts are in control of everything that happens is comforting to many people, for example the New Thought idea about that your thoughts can control an universal law called the law of attraction, which will give you anything you desire, if you just use your thoughts in the correct way (see my article The New Thought movement and the law of attraction).Is there any harm in this? What?s the harm in obliterating truth and reality in favor of what you want to be true? A great deal of harm can come from deluding yourself that you can control your health or your wealth, or somebody else?s health or wealth, by your thoughts and prayers or other superstitious actions.In my article The emotional painbody and why psychotherapy can?t heal it, I explain how the painbody, through the inner evaluating ego, is connected with the more dangerous depths of the astral plane?s collective history; you might call it original sin or negative karma. This you can?t control. In my article The value of having a religion in a spiritual practice I describe that only an intervention from the source (God, Christ, the enlightened consciousness) can basically help Man with a trancendence of the negative karma of the original sin. But in order to be able to receive this help you must do your part of the work: the spiritual practice. Many years. And this means that you need to re-structure the ego?s ownership to things, food, power, sexuality and emotions. First thereafter the mystical process can begin. The magnet of attraction, which the ego is controlled by ? (the ego?s identity with the material world: instincts, sexuality, emotions, desire, collective ideals, ownership, power) ? will in a true spiritual practice loose its attraction. Very few people will be willing to do this. On the contrary many people have today done an illusory work of trying to re-define this ancient wisdom, so that the magnet of attraction directly is becoming the object of worship. That?s what the law of attraction movement is about.Another aspect of the true spiritual practice is that you break the automatic process of compensatory karma, which is closely related to laws of nature, cycles of life, yes actually pure causal regularity of mechanical kind. It would an illusion to connect such things with a superior intentional divine order (see the thought distortion Intentionality bias). In Taoism and Zen they talk about the concept of Wu Wei which means non-activity, passive listening presence, non-control, non-interfering, which lead to Tzu-jen, spontaneity and naturalness. In Zen they for example talk about that when practising Wu Wei you are letting the grass grow by itself. Also the Stoic concept of Ap?theia (the Stoic calmness) is about this -?which you by the way find in all wisdom traditions. So, it is puzzling that they in the Self-help industry often quote these wisdomtraditions as if the self-help ideology?is in perfect harmony with these. The fact is that?the self-help industry is an extreme example of?the illusion of control, when believing that you via the "power of thought" can?attract (control) everything you?can dream of.?Illusion of control is related to Ego-inflationThat the eye for larger structural connections falls away for the benefit of focus on the individual person and his problems can in accordance with Krogsdal be seen as a a kind of resignation, where people draw themselves back to themselves and at the same time give up themselves as cultural critical beings. Yes, critical thinking ? and that will both say philosophy and science - is directly under attack, partly from constructivism, which forms the postmodern intellectualism (and therefore the ideology) behind New Age and the self-help industry (see my article Constructivism: the postmodern intellectualism behind New Age and the self-help industry); partly from the psychologizing demand for therapeutic solutions to everything.In a complex world, where problems are explained from the actions of the individual, and where actions are explained from psychological dispositions, it is not strange, that you increasingly turn to therapeutic solutions to enormous structural problems. The psychologizing therewith risks to contribute to a kind of cultural anaesthesia, or intellectual laziness, which all the time reduces the individual person to have to explain himself from within, instead of relating critical to things which may arrive from outside. Conversely the self-help industry?s reaction to outside coming critique indeed also - rather than answering the critique in objective form; that is: via argumentation ? is demanding that the critic has to explain himself from within ? as if it was a kind of psychotherapeutic inquisition. And this explanation is demanded to avoid philosophical argumentation; that is: critical thinking. It requires that you accept to be in a therapeutic situation, and explain yourself only in psychological terms. This therapeutic approach to everything is seen in its most extreme form in Nonviolent Communication (see my article Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is an instrument of psychic terror).Krogsdal claims that with the psychologizing of everything, the subconcious in Man quite simply becomes ascribed the intentions which before were ascribed to God. ?Response? becomes increasingly inside; meaning is coming from within; both the world and the individual are depth-psychical defined. The struggle for a better world therefore no longer takes place on an outside political, philosophical or religious scene, but rather on an inner battlefield. It is not the world, which has to be controlled ? it is the individual human being's own hidden inner.5) From religious myths and rituals to psychology and therapyDependent on definition of religion and agenda you can discuss, whether the new world-images and psychotherapies together constitute a new kind of religion, or whether they otherwise constitute something quite different. It is characteristic of both New Age and the self-help industry, that the fewest practitioners want to hear talk about, that they should be part of a religion ? partially because religion in accordance with the common comprehension is about God (and self-help isn?t), because religion is a teaching (self-help only consists of techniques), and because religion often suppresses the individual person (self-help is claiming to set Man free).But both psychology, and the many methods which belong to the psychologizing, in many ways look like religion in more traditional sense, and there is quite explicitly talk about a new ideology; that is: ideology as understood in relation to philosophy, which I will explain later in this article.Both religion and psychology are using certain world-images which explain the world, and make use of a line of rituals which are used to change the individual and the condition of the world. And what is more important: both within religion and psychology they all the time refer to something which is hidden for the individual person, but which can be contacted and interpreted both by Man himself and by the experts.In the classical Christian system the experts are first of all experts in God, but in the psychologized system the experts are experts in the psyche with all its hidden, subconcious layers. You can in accordance with Krogsdal claim that ?the subconcious? has taken over the trancendent God?s function as place of explanation, and that this subconcious now becomes interpreted by therapists as a kind of priests who are experts in interpreting the signals of the subconcious mind. Since we have to do with a hidden power ? something invisible which works on a different plane in life than what we directly understand or have access to ? the experts get a very big role to play. They have as experts precisely specialized in understanding this invisible reality, how it arises, how it gives signals, and how it works both inside the individual person and in the interaction between people. They are the mediators who have to help the individual to understand himself from this hidden. Because there is something hidden going on we are in other words also cultivating a need of professional ?interpreters? who can pass on and interpret that which we not ourselves can look through, but which plays an essential role in how our lifes work out.Just like people in premodern time believed in an outside power, God, and therefore as something obvious adapted themselves a priesthood, still more people today believe in the inner, subconcious potential and therefore quite obvious go to see psychologists, psychotherapists and coaches in their attempt of understanding and explaining themselves.Another way of saying it is that the classical, religious longing after God has become a new longing: the longing after a self; a different self, a more genuine self; or perhaps just a self. Something which is standing firm in a world where everything else all the time risk to fall. This longing becomes dictated by the new world-images and kept alive through therapy as their fundamental ritual. Therapy here has to be understood very broadly. It can both be the concrete therapeutic conversation between a psycho-expert and a client, or it can be therapeutic exercises the individual practises at home alone after having read self-help books.So in accordance with the new world-images it is not sin and lack of God, which are the fundamental problems of Man ? it is rather traumas and lack of authenticity. To work with personal development is therefore about trying to heal traumas and come in contact with yourself. In a time where religion increasingly becomes replaced with psychology people no longer want to be sinners. They want to be themselves, and preferable all the time in another and better version.Regardless of whether you choose to see the new world-images and their rituals ? psychotherapy and coaching ? as a religious system, or not, it is evident, that they to a high degree sell their services on the same market as religion in classical sense. When people today have to find out who they are, and how they want to live, they in far higher degree go to the psychologist or the therapist than to the priest. The church is lying far away and good out on the hill and becomes used to solemnities: baptism, confirmation, wedding, funeral service and Christmas. The everyday life and the life-perspective of the individual are no longer neither the area of the church or of Christianity (or other religions). Under any circumstance you can say that modern people with the new world-images and therapeutic rituals today has discovered alternative, or at any rate supplementary, ways of explaining and cultivating themselves, and that psychology and psychotherapy in practice are in progress of taking over that market of meaning, which before in special degree belonged to religion and philosophy.The psychotherapeutic practice has today got a line of the functions which before in marked degree belonged to the church: confession has today been turned into psychotherapy, church service has become replaced by psychotherapeutic rituals and the church?s traditional administration of a superior system of explanation of both the single person?s daily life and of life altogether has today got competition from psycho-experts, who also work with both explanation and meaning. Alone the number of therapists measured against the number of priests, speak for itself. In
Source: http://mortentolboll.blogspot.com/2012/08/self-help-and-mythology-of-authenticity.html
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