spiritbattleforsouls.org

Raised as a Catholic, author Moira Noonan began her apprenticeship in New Age practices and ideas as a college student. Over a twenty-five year timeframe, she worked in Religious Science ministry, as a psychic counselor and a therapist. She became certified and developed expertise in such areas as Hypnotherapy, Past-Life Regression, Astrology, the Course in Miracles, Reiki, channeling, crystals, goddess spirituality, clairvoyance, and other occult practices.

In 1993, after a series of powerful conversion experiences, she returned to the Church, and is now a popular speaker in the Christian community, witnessing and evangelizing, and explaining the deeper meaning and influences of the New Age movement. Noonan has told her story via religious cable and radio stations worldwide. She has a featured chapter about her conversion in Prodigal Daughters, Ignatius Press.

I highly recommend that people read Moira Noonan’s book, RANSOMED FROM DARKNESS, The New Age, Christian Faith and the Battle for Souls. In her easy-to-read book, she writes about her journey in and out of New Age. She exposes the true nature of the New Age movement, its true origins and purposes, and explains the dangers.

“There is no such thing as Christian Yoga,” states Moira Noonan. Yoga, which originates in Indian religions, is considered to be a part of the New Age movement and therefore is inconsistent with Christianity. The concept of yoga is to become self-enlightened and to attain self-salvation. This is not of our God.

Moira Noonan says that Pilates is a form of exercise. However, the problem is usually the music in the exercise studio. The music tends to be New Age or chants that are something other than Christian. So while your body may be benefiting, how is your mind being programmed? Jesus makes it clear in Hosea, "My People perish for lack of knowledge."

Moira Noonan currently lives in California. To learn more about yoga and other New Age practices, go to Moira Noonan’s web site: www.spiritbattleforsouls.org

Yoga refers to traditional physical and mental disciplines originating in India, with meditative practices in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The word “yoga” means “to control”, “to yoke”, “to unite”, or “contemplation” or “absorption”. Yoga is a particular path to salvation offered by Hinduism. It involves the body, mind and spirit, which can include physical postures, breath control and chanting of religious mantras.

Yoga focuses on the purification of the physical body as leading to the purification of the mind and vital life force energy. In India the purpose and the ultimate goal of different forms of yoga is to achieve unity and to enjoy an eternal relationship with the Hindu god Vishnu.

In North America Yoga is advertised on web sites as follows... Yoga originated in India 5000 years ago. It involves poses and postures, breathing exercise, meditation and chanting (not Christian). Yoga practitioners say yoga has physical benefits; that it is not about exercise; that it is about breathing correctly and integrating that breath into your being; that yoga enhances your strength, the balance of body and mind and increases your energy. They stress achieving self control, mental clarity, powers of relaxation, peace of mind, and happiness; and infuse a sense of balance and internal harmony. It is stated that yoga is a way of life developing harmony of mind and body.

This way of thinking is not Christian. See the following for an explanation from the Vatican.

The Vatican released of document on New Age February 3, 2003, called, JESUS CHRIST THE BEARER OF THE WATER OF LIFE, A Christian reflection on the “New Age”. It states in 2.3.4.1 The fundamental principles of New Age thinking—“There is no need for Revelation or Salvation which would come to people from outside themselves, but simply a need to experience the salvation hidden with in themselves (self-salvation), by mastering psycho-physical techniques which lead to definitive enlightenment.” In 2.3.4.3. What does New Age say about the world—“the concept of matter as waves or energy rather than particles, is central to much New Age thinking. The universe is an ocean of energy … the universe is “spirit” … the world itself is divine and it undergoes an evolutionary process which leads from inert matter to higher and perfect consciousness. … God and the world, soul and body, intelligence and feeling, heaven and earth are one immense vibration of energy.” In 2.4 New Age and culture—New Age has the “philosophy of egoism … on the level of feelings, instincts and emotions … There is a search for wholeness and happiness.”

And what does our Lord Jesus Christ teach? “Take up your cross and follow Me.” New Age is the opposite. New Age does not understand the Catholic teachings on the merit of suffering, such as, “Join your sufferings to the Passion of Christ for the good of souls.” New Age has no concept of sin. Therefore, for them there is no need for the sacrament of confession, self-sacrifice and penance. New Agers do not surrender to our personal God, Jesus Christ, and trust in Him for their salvation. The goal of New Age thinking is to be happy—self fulfillment. By making use of techniques and methods they want to rise to higher levels of life force energy and comic powers and become one with the universe. In this way they think that each person can be their own god and experience self-salvation within themselves.

“The Vatican cautioned Roman Catholics that Eastern meditation practices such as Zen and Yoga can “degenerate into a cult of the body” that debases Christian prayer. “ The love of God, the sole object of Christian contemplation, is a reality which cannot be “mastered” by any method or technique”, said a document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (at that time under Cardinal Ratzinger now Pope Benedict VI).

Christians should not do yoga because yoga is part of a religious system that is not compatible with Judeo-Christianity and mixing the two is Syncretism and the Catholic Church warns against that. The yoga system teaches to reach an impersonal godhead through manipulation of the physical body and Chakra energy centers to attain enlightenment. This view is Gnostic. Christians do not inherently believe that the physical body is evil and that it will reincarnate many times to reach enlightenment. Reincarnation is a heresy that the Catholic Church has warned against in scripture and the Catechism. To a Christian the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and will be resurrected with our Lord Jesus Christ in Heaven.

Acupuncture and Bodywork such as Reflexology

By Lorraine Vincent

The Vatican released of document on New Age February 3, 2003, called, JESUS CHRIST THE BEARER OF THE WATER OF LIFE, A Christian reflection on the “New Age”. The following is taken from this document. While you read the introductory paragraph, you will discover the dangers of New Age healing methods. This whole section will shed some light on acupuncture and bodywork such as reflexology. I highlighted these three words in the document for your convenience. This document shows that the practice of acupuncture, also touches on the same surrounding or interpenetrating forces of inner energy or cosmic energy.

2.2.3. Health: Golden living

Formal (allopathic) medicine today tends to limit itself to curing particular, isolated ailments, and fails to look at the broader picture of a person's health: this has given rise to a fair amount of understandable dissatisfaction. Alternative therapies have gained enormously in popularity because they claim to look at the whole person and are about healing rather than curing. Holistic health, as it is known, concentrates on the important role that the mind plays in physical healing. The connection between the spiritual and the physical aspects of the person is said to be in the immune system or the Indian chakra system. In a New Age perspective, illness and suffering come from working against nature; when one is in tune with nature, one can expect a much healthier life, and even material prosperity; for some New Age healers, there should actually be no need for us to die. Developing our human potential will put us in touch with our inner divinity, and with those parts of our selves which have been alienated and suppressed. This is revealed above all in Altered States of Consciousness (ASCs), which are induced either by drugs or by various mind-expanding techniques, particularly in the context of “transpersonal psychology”. The shaman is often seen as the specialist of altered states of consciousness, one who is able to mediate between the transpersonal realms of spirits and gods and the world of humans.

There is a remarkable variety of approaches for promoting holistic health, some derived from ancient cultural traditions, whether religious or esoteric, others connected with the psychological theories developed in Esalen during the years 1960-1970. Advertising connected with New Age covers a wide range of practices as acupuncture, biofeedback, chiropractic, kinesiology, homeopathy, iridology, massage and various kinds of “bodywork” (such as orgonomy, Feldenkrais, reflexology, Rolfing, polarity massage, therapeutic touch etc.), meditation and visualisation, nutritional therapies, psychic healing, various kinds of herbal medicine, healing by crystals, metals, music or colours, reincarnation therapies and, finally, twelve-step programmes and self-help groups. The source of healing is said to be within ourselves, something we reach when we are in touch with our inner energy or cosmic energy.

Inasmuch as health includes a prolongation of life, New Age offers an Eastern formula in Western terms. Originally, reincarnation was a part of Hindu cyclical thought, based on the atman or divine kernel of personality (later the concept of jiva), which moved from body to body in a cycle of suffering (samsara), determined by the law of karma, linked to behaviour in past lives. Hope lies in the possibility of being born into a better state, or ultimately in liberation from the need to be reborn. What is different in most Buddhist traditions is that what wanders from body to body is not a soul, but a continuum of consciousness. Present life is embedded in a potentially endless cosmic process which includes even the gods. In the West, since the time of Lessing, reincarnation has been understood far more optimistically as a process of learning and progressive individual fulfilment. Spiritualism, theosophy, anthroposophy and New Age all see reincarnation as participation in cosmic evolution. This post-Christian approach to eschatology is said to answer the unresolved questions of theodicy and dispenses with the notion of hell. When the soul is separated from the body individuals can look back on their whole life up to that point, and when the soul is united to its new body there is a preview of its coming phase of life. People have access to their former lives through dreams and meditation techniques.

Reiki and Acupuncture

The following has been taken off Moira Noonan’s web site, with her permission.

It will give you an insight into New Age healing practices such as reiki and acupuncture.

What is reiki? How does it "work"? Why is it perilous?

Proponents of reiki believe that there are "vibrational" fields around humans that influence our well-being -- energies that surround and interpenetrate. It is similar to the Eastern concept of " ki" or "chi" energy that many non-Christians in Asia believe flows around the human form as sort of an aura or psychic influence.

When they are out of balance, manipulating these fields can bring healing, claim those who practice it.

Basically, the reiki healer (pronounced ray-kee) is supposedly affecting or activating the energy of a person with his own energy or channels -- sort of a laying on of the hands, but without a vital component: the Holy Spirit. If such impersonal energy or spiritual forces exist and are manipulated in such a fashion, especially without the Name of Christ, it enters a dangerous area. Evil spirits are attached to it.

While such practices may cause some relief (just as psychic healing can, at least temporarily), it invites in spirits of darkness that are only too happy to masquerade as angels of light -- if indeed they are not behind the reiki energy to begin with.

The devil mimics all that God does, and this includes healing. Just as the Holy Spirit gives us "words of knowledge," there are psychics who rely on their own occult energy to read thoughts ("telepathy"), divine wisdom from objects ("psychometry"), see at a distance ("clairvoyance"), and peer into the future ("precognition").

The problem is that such power is not only vastly less effective than the force that flows from God and His saints, but also come with the bondage of owing forces of darkness in return. Psychics, fortunetellers, mediums, and channelers are often very problem-plagued people, and many succumb at an early age. Despite initial relief, those "healed" by them can end up worse than they were to start with, until they go to Jesus.

We are called to pray for those involved in such practices. Many are those who argue that the Vatican went too far in condemning (as it did, in a document about the New Age, Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life) the practice of acupuncture, which also touches on the same surrounding or interpenetrating forces.

But the Catholic Church is wisely cautious (the "narrow gate") and clearly it is the Holy Spirit Whom we are to go to when we want to cause a spiritual affect -- not our own or some other cosmic field of "energy."