New Age 1o1: Counterfeit to Christ

Sep 18

Written By Ashley Boyd

For nearly fifteen years I was deeply immersed in New Age spirituality. And when I say deeply, I mean deeply.

I didn't stand on the outside of the New Age looking in. I lived it. I studied it. I practiced it.

It shaped my work, my worldview, and the way I understood myself and “God.”

So when I talk about the New Age now, I don't do it from a place of condemnation.

I know why people are drawn to it. I was one of them.

But I also now know what I couldn't see then.

So, what actually is the New Age?

One reason New Age spirituality can be difficult to define is because it isn't one organized ideology. There is no single New Age church, doctrine, leader, or sacred text. Instead, it pulls ideas and practices from many different religious and spiritual traditions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Eastern mysticism, occult and esoteric traditions, pagan spirituality, metaphysical teachings, psychology, self-help, wellness culture, and, confusingly, even Christianity.

It's essentially a spiritual mixing bowl: encouraging followers to take what resonates, leave what doesn't, and construct a spirituality that feels true to you. Think of the New Age movement as a kind of “spiritual marketplace,” where beliefs from different traditions can be selected and combined.

That's why New Age spirituality can encompass so many seemingly unrelated things: manifestation, astrology, tarot, psychics, mediums, spirit guides, Reiki, energy healing, yoga, chakras, crystals, past-life regression, channeling, the “divine feminine,” the “higher self,” vibrations, Source, the Universe, cosmic consciousness—and even “Christ consciousness,” which borrows Christian language while presenting a deeply distorted understanding of who Jesus actually is.

New Age teachings typically redefine Christian language and portray Jesus as just an enlightened spiritual teacher rather than the unique Son of God. And after spending a year plus reading and studying—that's a big deception.

The New Age movement is a counterfeit to the real deal — Jesus Christ.

And underneath all those different practices is a question I couldn't see clearly until I had an encounter with Jesus Christ in 2025 that changed the trajectory of my life.

Who—or what—gets the final say about what is true?

In the New Age, we are continually directed inward to glorify self, i.e.:

Trust your intuition.
Follow your heart.
Raise your consciousness.
Manifest your reality.
Access your higher self.

Balance your chakras
Trust what you feel.

And don't get me wrong—your feelings matter. I’ve spent years helping people understand what was happening inside their bodies and I still believe there is enormous value in learning to notice, understand, and vocalize our internal experience.

But, our feelings are information. They are not our ultimate authority.

Feelings change. Circumstances change. Perceptions change. God does not.

Jeremiah 17:9 warns us that the heart can deceive us. Scripture doesn't teach us to despise our emotions; it teaches us not to make them God or the ultimate authority in our lives.

And this was one of the biggest shifts Christianity required of me:

I don’t create Truth. I submit to Truth.

Now, I know... Submit…

That word can make most people living in our day and age want to crawl right out of their skin.

But biblical submission isn't about becoming powerless. For me (and for a lot of people who follow Christ), it has actually been incredibly freeing.

Submission begins with recognizing something profoundly simple:

I am not God.

I don't hold the universe together. I don't create reality with my thoughts. I don't need to achieve the perfect vibration or maintain a “high vibration” to make good things happen. I don't possess infinite wisdom. I don't have to be my own savior.

Thank God.

What an exhausting amount of pressure that would be.

To submit to God is to recognize our proper place in creation: there is a Creator, and I am His creation. And that Creator isn't an impersonal Universe, vibration, energy field, or Source.

He is a personal being.

He knows us.

He created us.

And He desires a relationship with us.

The New Age deception isn't new.

This is where the book of Genesis—the first book in the Bible—absolutely stopped me in my tracks.

Go all the way back to the Garden of Eden.

God had given Adam and Eve a clear boundary: they were not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Then the serpent entered the conversation with a question designed to create doubt:

“Did God really say that?”

Then came the lure: “your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” — Genesis 3:1, 5

First, question what God said.

Then, convince the human being she can become like God.

That matters significantly.

Because when I began looking at New Age spirituality through that lens, I started seeing the same message everywhere.

You possess divine power.
You create your reality.
Access the divine within.
Follow your own truth.
You are your highest authority.

Different language.

Same ancient invitation.

And now, standing on the other side of fifteen years in the New Age, the Holy Spirit helped me to see something I simply couldn't see while I was inside of it:

Deception rarely sounds deceptive.

If it did, it wouldn't work.

It sounds like love. Light. Healing. Empowerment. Awakening. Freedom. Higher consciousness.

Scripture even warns us that Satan masquerades as an “angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).

The Constant New Age Seeking Keeps You Looping

Because I spent years searching for Truth in so many places, and what I can see now is that the constant seeking kept me stuck in a cycle of seeking.

There was always another layer to heal, another belief to uncover, another practice to try, another level of consciousness to reach, another version of myself to become, or another training to acquire.

Without realizing it, spirituality had become increasingly centered on me—my healing, my intuition, my power, my awakening, my highest self.

And when I look back now, I can see something that was difficult for me to recognize while I was in it: there was pride disguised as spiritual growth—the subtle belief that if I could just heal enough, awaken enough, know enough, or evolve enough, I could somehow become my own answer.

And that's part of the deep deception.

The enemy doesn't need us to openly reject God if he can keep us endlessly preoccupied with ourselves.

If he can keep us looking inward for what can only be found in Christ, we're still looking in the wrong direction.

I thought I was getting closer and closer to Truth. But the very search I believed was setting me free was keeping me on a spiritual treadmill—always reaching for the next thing that might finally make me whole.

Jesus interrupted that cycle.

I didn't need another spiritual practice. I didn't need another level of consciousness. I didn't need to become a more healed, awakened, or evolved version of myself.

I needed a Savior.

And after all those years of rejecting that very idea and searching for other “truths”, the real Truth revealed himself to me.

I am so deeply thankful He did.

The Cost of Conviction

But coming to Christ cost me something.

I don't write any of this casually.

Following Jesus meant allowing an entire version of myself to die.

I was being convicted by the Holy Spirit to change. The change took place over a little more than a year. And I’m still learning, growing and changing.

My work had to change. Some of my practices had to go. My understanding of spirituality changed. My understanding of healing changed. Even my understanding of truth itself had to change.

Christianity calls this dying to self—not because God wants to erase who we are, but because following Jesus means we no longer place self on the throne.

It means beginning to trust that maybe God actually knows better than we do—that the One who created us can see what we cannot, knows us more deeply than we know ourselves, and that His way for our lives is ultimately better than anything we could manufacture on our own.

We aren't losing ourselves in surrender to Him.

We're finally learning who we were created to be.

Jesus said:

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” — Matthew 16:24

What does that actually mean in everyday life?

To take up your cross is to choose to follow Jesus even when following Him costs you something. It means being willing to lay down the beliefs, desires, habits, identities, or ways of living that conflict with Him and his Word—even when part of you still wants to hold onto them.

It doesn't mean judging yourself harshly or erasing your personality. And it doesn't mean that every difficult thing in your life is “your cross to bear.” Jesus is talking about true surrender:

I am no longer the highest authority over my life. You are, Lord.

That's what this past year has looked like for me.

There were things I genuinely loved and believed in that I had to bring before God and ask:

Is this actually true? Is this from You? And if it isn't, am I willing to let it go?

Sometimes the answer required real loss.

But I'm learning that the cross isn't where God takes away everything good—it is where I surrender what I thought I needed so I can follow the One who knows what is actually good for me.

Over this past year, I have had to sit in that process.

To grieve things.

To question things.

To surrender things.

To allow God to expose beliefs I once held tightly and ask myself whether I was willing to release them.

And strangely, surrender has not made my life smaller.

On the contrary, it has opened my life in ways I never expected. This past year has given me more peace than I’ve truly ever experienced.

There is extraordinary freedom in realizing that I don't have to manufacture my destiny. I can participate fully in my life—think, choose, work, heal, create, discern—and still trust that ultimately God is God and I am not.

Christianity isn't an invitation to discover that we are divine. Although the Bible does say we are made in His image (“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…”— Genesis 1:26 (NIV)

Christianity offers us an invitation to become more like Christ.

There is an important difference.

Scripture calls us to holiness—to allow the Holy Spirit to transform us increasingly into the character and likeness of Jesus. But we never become God. He is the Creator; we are His creation.

And perhaps that's one of the most beautiful differences I've discovered between the New Age and Christianity:

I don't need to awaken the divine within me. I need accept I am a child of God and allow the Holy Spirit to transform me.

The goal isn't self-deification.

It's sanctification—the lifelong process of allowing the Holy Spirit to change us from the inside out, making us more and more like Jesus.

It's learning to become less ruled by our flesh, our impulses, our fears, the world and culture and our own limited understanding, and more formed by the character and truth of Christ. We learn about his character by reading His Word/the Bible.

We aren't trying to become God. We're allowing God to transform us.

And ultimately, it isn't about discovering some hidden divinity within ourselves. It's about knowing and belonging to the One who created us.

Because Jesus doesn't describe truth as an energy, an idea, a vibration, or something we manufacture within ourselves.

He describes Truth as Himself:

“I am the way and the truth and the life.” — John 14:6

And that may be the greatest distinction of all:

Truth isn't something I create or awaken within myself. Truth is a Person—and His name is Jesus.

If you're coming out of the New Age…

I want you to know something.

You are not alone.

Leaving a worldview that shaped your identity, relationships, work, and understanding of reality can be incredibly disorienting. I know because I'm still walking through parts of that process myself.

You probably have questions. I still do. And that's good! God has brought the most loving community into my life who encourage me to question and wrestle with God. It’s a part of the journey.

You may look back and wonder how you didn't see certain things before.

You may even find yourself wondering, If I don't believe all of that anymore, who am I now?

Give yourself time and room to walk this out with Christ.

Get a Bible. Read it daily. Ask questions. Test what you hear in the world and culture against Scripture and learn the character of God. Find mature Christians who will walk beside you. And keep bringing your questions back to Jesus.

Because I spent years searching for Truth in so many places, and what I can see now is that the constant seeking kept me seeking.