SW writes: “My sister has run the mill of New age stuff. She was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic faith, but was rebaptized into a Siddha yoga group. She spent some time in an ashram in NY state. I visited her there once, and believe I was hurt spiritually by that visit for a long time. As the big sister, I was trying to rescue her. I have since accepted Jesus as my own personal Lord and Savior. Praise God!
She is constantly accusing me of proselytizing about our Catholic Faith. Anything I say that is wholesome is up for suspicion. I said I don’t practice ‘religion’ (a curse word to her) but ‘relationship’ with Jesus.
She plans on setting up her own business in Psycho Kinetic Energy. I did a search on your site, and had no results. What now?”
First of all, don’t give up on her. Jesus can rescue anyone, including your sister. When and how He does it is something He’ll reveal to you if necessary, but one thing I can guarantee – He hears your prayers and wants to answer them even more than you want Him to!
I was very concerned when you revealed that your sister was involved in Siddha yoga because this is known to be very cult-like with leaders who have had numerous charges made against them for sexually abusing members. This NY Times article dating back to 1994 describes in detail what kind of problems are associated with this branch of yoga and the power struggles of its leaders. The truth of these reports is borne out by the many victims whose personal testimonies can be found here.
The yoga culture definitely has a seedy underbelly, and Siddha is among its darkest seeds.
Your post does not indicate what kind of psycho kinetic energy (PKE) business she’s planning to operate so I can only assume she’s into some kind of parapsychology.
Psychokinesis, sometimes called telekinesis, refers to a belief that the mind has the power to move objects. In spite of the fame of people such as Uri Geller, the famous “spoon bending” psychic, no one has been able to perform these feats under scientifically controlled conditions. In fact, the very existence of PKE has never been convincingly demonstrated.
Although you may be too close to the situation to see this, when I read this e-mail the first thing that jumped into my mind was that your sister is searching. She’s obviously looking for something to believe in, something upon which she can stake her life. For whatever reason, she appears to have abandoned Jesus, but He has not abandoned her. And it is this truth upon which you must stake all your hope.
Many years ago, I was also searching for answers, for meaning, and I wandered all over the New Age world – from psychics to astrologers to hypnotists. Nothing stuck, and I would just go from one thing to the next. One night, while reading a book based on the New Age notion of the prosperity gospel, it purported that Jesus told us that whatever we asked for in His name, His Father would grant us. How clearly I remember wondering if Jesus really said that or if the author wasn’t just putting her own spin on His words. I put the book down and went over to my bookshelves to see if I had a copy of the Bible (that’s how far away from Christ I was!). I found one and thumbed through it until I found the place where He said exactly that. Of course, I was happy to find it, but another question somehow sped through my mind and settled deep within my heart.
“I wonder what else He said.”
Although I didn’t know it at the time, that was the end of my search. I had found what I was looking for. Ever so slowly, I began to flip through that old bible and no matter how many times I opened it, I always read something that struck me in one way or another. Before long, I was reading it every night and beginning to actually like this God that I was discovering anew. (I document this profound and sometimes hilarious journey in my book, We Need to Talk: God Speaks to a Modern Girl.)
I guess you can say the rest is history. I eventually came back to Jesus, to Christianity, and to my native Roman Catholicism.
The moral of this story is that only the lost can be found.
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Don’t give up on your sister. I was raised on New Age ideas by my well meaning mom. My friends and family all encouraged me to practice Wicca, go to Psychics for advice, and to attempt to develop my own paranormal abilities. It wasn’t until I was in college that I went to a group psychic event that changed my life. The psychic would allow something else to take control of her body and would then make predictions for all of us. I now know that something was demonic, but I didn’t understand that at the time. There had been a crime in the community involving a woman being brutally raped, and everyone was talking about the poor rapist and his past traumas. “What about the victim?” I asked. Everyone ignored me. No one cared about her; they only cared about the rapist. It got worse; the psychic began making predictions about how the world was going to change radically for the better, and that we should not be saddened by the earthquakes and the deaths they would cause. This, she said, was good because it got rid of those who wouldn’t want to be a part of the changes. She talked about these people as though they were disposable, and I found this abhorrent. It happened in an instant, the epiphany I experienced, that told me quite clearly that this was wrong. When I got home, I opened my bible to see what I could find about psychics. It said God says these practices are detestable. I went for the first confession I had gone to in nearly a decade, and I’ve been much better about attending mass and confession. My family is still heavily involved in the New Age, but I am praying for them. My mom did stop going to that Psychic when I told her what the Bible says about them (she didn’t know either), but she is having a really hard time letting go of the New Age. She and my sister still use many of the New Age practices; they believe they have special psychic abilities, and that I am in denial about mine. Despite this, I have faith. If God could save me, a woman who was raised on the New Age from infancy, he can save your sister along with my family.