Saying your spiritual is the new age way to say you’re religious. I found this site after realizing I could never be with someone who identifies as Christian. Not in the 21st century. But new age worries me almost as much even though I love the accessories, incense, candles, crystals, stones in general...even throat singing. I’m some weird religion if my own I suppose.
I'm spiritual, but I'm certainly not religious. I don't do candles, ceremonies, incense, etc. I just meditate, connect with the universe, commune with nature, etc.
Don’t miss construe... I meditate and like all the accoutrements but I don’t pray to a god, not a single one.
If you have any rituals, traditions and habitual practices around any sort of unsubstantiated truth propositions you could arguably be described as a "religion of one". Especially if those assertions are not only unsubstantiated, but, as they often are -- unsusbtantiatABLE.
Simply being interested in personal development, self-awareness, present-centeredness and the like however does not make you "religious", it just makes you evolved. None of those things have to be unscientific or woo-centered. They can be considered positions in your own rational self-interest. Indeed, I'd argue that it's impossible to counter the most insidious aspects of human mental weaknesses (tendencies toward confirmation bias, agency inference and the like) without some sort of systematic mental and emotional discipline. But then it's impossible to master anything of value -- math, computer software development, creative writing , whatever -- without some kind of systematic effort.
All that said, sure, New Age and New Thought are rife with incitements to be credulous concerning the unsubstantiated, and most of it is in fact inherently credulous about such things.
I live in an area filled with New Agers who turned away from traditional religion, but now simply found a new religion to house their gullibility. They will believe any flowery feel good thing, whether it makes sense or not. They are not critical thinkers but are socially active in group settings. Various activist groups with nefarious intentions know how to use the gullibility of the new agers and that is what I feel is dangerous, not the crystals and stones.
Seems like folks who just ..can’t quite live without fantasy… My last R/S was with a ‘former Catholic,’ claiming ‘not to be religious,’ though into the new age stuff you’ve described ..when I wasn’t looking I found it disingenuous, though it matched her pattern of lies... Once having been a bit more tolerant of that kind of hocus pocus, having experienced it close up, no thanks ~