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When I examined the question of ‘What do people experience from New Age practices?’ I found that most people in my study mentioned the issue of self-identity. For example, one woman mentioned how her self-identity was reconstructed while describing what transformation meant to her in the process of practising ACIL:

…It (the transformation) also includes the fact that I learned what I wanted to do in the future and what my mission in life was… I am getting clearer and clearer about myself; I know what I want to do, and what I do not want to do. …Before I practised ACIL, I was a

person who did not know how to refuse demanding people, and this really exhausted me. …I feel that the whole process of practising ACIL is to live your authentic self. Actually, I don’t need to become another person; what I have to do is to return to the nature that is inside me. (13/10/03, P5)

We can see that this interviewee asked herself existential questions such as ‘What do I want to do?’ and found her life purpose in the practice of ACIL.

As one of the popular practices of the NAM in Taiwan, ACIL inspires participants to think about existential questions in meditation, such as ‘Who am I? Where am I going? What can I do to bring the message of wisdom to earth? What must I shed to be free? What must I gain or acknowledge to become strong? What must I see to have vision?’ (Moltzan 1991, p.59). These questions recur in the text of ACIL at all levels.

New Age practices such as ACIL are widely credited with helpingpeople know themselves and the meaning and purpose of their lives, which are still connected to existential questions:

I had been curious and wondering about questions such as ‘Where did I come from and what is my life for in the world?’ since I was a child. But, these doubts have been resolved since I practised ACIL. (23/10/03, P10)

The greatest reward from practising ACIL for me is that I know there is a higher purpose in my life. (05/01/4, P33)

When people start to ask themselves about existential questions, they step into a process of reconstructing self-identity. They reflect on the past, look at the present, and think about the future. All the reflections are centred on the self and the meaning of the existence of life:

enlightenment. We (the self) were all conditioned by social values and have never thought of ’What do I want’? By participating in the New Age, it seems that I suddenly woke up and asked myself…who am I? I would trace back my past and re-identify my life. (14/11/03, P16)

New Age practices such as healing, to reconstruct people’s self-identity, also affirm the value of life itself. A female interviewee with cancer who has participated in a healing group based on the idea of Seth, said:

The most obvious transformation that I have experienced is the change of values for my life. In the past you did not know why you were alive. Even if you are a good person in the secular world, you do not know what is the value of your life. …But after I participated in the group healing and consulted doctor Hsu twice, I found that being alive itself is something valuable. This is the first point. The second point is the awareness of love… That kind of so called freedom and unconditional love… (05/01/04, P26)

The above discussions bring our attention to Giddens’s analysis of late-modernity. Giddens indicates that existential questions such as ‘What to do’, ‘How to act’, ‘Who to be’ are focal questions for people living in late modern society (1991, p.70). These questions belong to Giddens’s fourth type of existential questions (1991, p.52), which are fundamental to reconstructing self-identity. What is self-identity? Giddens says:

Self-identity is not a distinctive trait, or even a collection of traits, possessed by the individual. It is the self as reflexively understood by the person in terms of her or his biography. (1991, p.53)

As the self can be ‘reflexively understood by the person in terms of her or his biography’ (Giddens, 1991, p.53), it is therefore understandable that when my interviewees illustrate their stories about searching for the self, they

trace back their distant past and connect it to the present. The fact that the New Age encourages people to be self-reflexive in relation to identifying themselves cannot only be seen in my interview materials but is also implied in Heelas’s (1996) analysis of the NAM. Heelas asserts that one of the major problems associated with modernity is the problem of identity, and this problem may cause some people both to isolate themselves from modernity and choose to embrace the New Age (Heelas, 1996, pp.137-138). As one form of expression of Western culture, the idea of the New Age encourages people to strive for personal growth that centres on the self. In addition, as Heelas suggests, in a broad sense, ‘the entire New Age has to do with healing’ (Heelas, 1996, p.81). Healing phenomena, as one of the important trends in the NAM (Hanegraaff, 1998, pp.42-61), are therefore connected to the issue of

the self and self-identity, as is seen from the above discussion in this section. However, the way in which most healing practices in the NAM differ

from medical treatment is that they provide spiritual explanations for people who suffer from bodily malfunctions or emotional problems. For example, one female interviewee felt that ACIL helped her conquer feelings of grief about the death of her brother:

My brother’s death had a big impact on me…but such grief feeling didn’t last long because I was working with light (18/07/04, P37).

McGuire (1988)gives useful explanations of this in the context of her research on alternative healing phenomena in suburban America. First, she finds that ‘most people seek help and healing not so much for disease per se, but for suffering and affliction’ (McGuire, 1988, p.241). Most adherents are initially attracted to alternative healing by the larger system of beliefs, of which health-illness related beliefs and practices are only one part. This situation

contradicts the view that marginal medicine merely serves 'as an alternative healing technique to which people resort when all else fails’ (McGuire, 1988, p.5). Instead, McGuire notes that only a very small number of adherents initially come to their alternative healing group or healer because of a need to heal a prior condition. The following extract from my interviews confirms this point: it is from a male interviewee who had suffered cancer, and then started to participate in New Age practices and read New Age books after major surgery. The most important benefit to him of participating in the NAM was not a cure for his physical disease but comfort for his suffering; and the end to his suffering was to answer existential questions:

I don’t trust biomedicine and Chinese medicine because I have been invaded both physically and psychologically. …the biggest help for me is to see if I can be with myself. Later I spent some time to read Conversations with God because it talked about some…the important thing is not what you want to do but what you want to be, who you are, and what you are. …Most people do not dare to touch these core issues…however…I have to face these issues…after the physical operation…for me, if I can resolve these issues…then I can live my life to the fullest. (24/11/03, P18)

In addition, data from McGuire’s research also reveal that beliefs and practices regarding healing for American suburbanites represent an expression of their concern for meaning, moral order, and individual effectiveness and power in their social world. In a way, it seems that beliefs and practices regarding healing can be seen as tools for self-actualisation and that the first step is to reconstruct or reconfirm one’s self-identity. A female in my interviews confirmed McGuire’s observation while sharing her experience of being healed:

I looked back to those days when I was ill: I feel that it was good. It (illness) forced me to stop; otherwise it was not possible for me to stop and get a rest because there were so many social expectations of you… you were pushed to keep walking but did not know why and you couldn’t stop…there were so many responsibilities. Illness helped me stop and be myself, only to be myself. I feel that only to be myself is a kind of being healed. You have to go back to the point, that is, to be yourself, and then you will know why you are here in this life. (05/01/04, P26)

Although McGuire does not use 'New Age' as a category in her research, Heelas suggests (1996) that her research is of considerable value to the task of describing and analysing the New Age (pp.80-81). In particular, it is helpful to compare her category of 'Eastern Meditation Groups' with one of the New Age groups in Taiwan that I participated in, such as the ACIL group, because, on the subject of healing, there are strong similarities between them with regard to such notions as karma, illness and health. As one of the five main types of alternative healing, Eastern Meditation Groups adopt an Eastern spirituality that emphasises self-discipline while using Asian cosmological notions, such as karma and reincarnation (McGuire, 1988, p.97).

In examining the notion of disease or illness that is connected to the idea of healing, for example, the New Age practice ACIL asserts that the individual person, the self, creates disease or illness. It is said that, ‘energy follows thought, thought directs energy, and thought magnifies energy’ (Moltzan, 2001[1973], p.19). Apart from this, the idea of Karma is involved. For example, ACIL teaches that ‘you choose the diseases of your life in accordance with a law that karmically connects you to the imprints and actions of your past’ (Moltzan, 1991, pp.28-29). However, some interviewees use such

scientific terms as DNA to explain the idea of Karma, which is different from the original idea of Karma in Buddhism and Hinduism. As one female interviewee put it:

Reincarnation is true, it is what DNA brought you when you were born, and it influences your life…. For me, at first I thought that I was the only one who was responsible for my consciousness and awareness, and so,…I criticised myself because I always thought that I think too much; later I realised that, ah, there is something about myself which is unknown to me; it is derived from my previous lives or from the moment I was born, when I gathered all the energy with me to the earth…, it is possible (13/10/03, P5).

From another point of view, the concepts of well-being and health in ACIL are associated with the idea of balance between the body, emotions and the spirit; and one has to have trust in the body. The following excerpts are from two interviews; they illustrate participants’ self-awareness and sense of well-being:

As ACIL also emphasizes the importance of attending to our bodies, I really care about my body, because my body is the site in which my soul dwells. Besides, your cellular systems will be

activated if your body is healthy, and a healthy body will help you to be more aware of yourself. …so, a deep self-awareness is derived from the activation of the organic and cellular systems; therefore, the well-being of each of the bodily, mental, and the spiritual dimensions is actually correlated. You will be healthy in your mentality if your body is healthy, and your mental well-being will give you a positive attitude toward your spiritual well-being. I treat any symptom as a signal to attend to my body. Your body itself knows better than any doctor in deciding what kind of treatment you need and how you should be treated. …In fact, you will be healed as long as you have trust in your body (23/10/03, P10).

I am aware of each part of my body, emotions, mentality and spirit, and their connections to each other; thus, I can keep myself well through self-awareness (05/01/04, P33).

It is seen from the above-mentioned examples that deas such as balance, self-awareness, trust and flexibility are related to the notion of health for New Age people. Self-awareness is regarded as a necessary precondition for true health. A female interviewee who is working as a Seth consulter implied the importance of trust in oneself and self-awareness:

We say that your belief creates your own reality…for cancer patients we would say that all healing is centred on the belief, ‘you create your own reality.’ Some people would be very angry if you said that ‘your cancer is your own making.’ However, you cannot read this sentence literally. The meaning of this sentence is that if you can create it, you also have the power to change it! … (11/02/04, P32)

For New Age people, it is through self-awareness that individuals become aware that they are responsible for their state of being and illness. In the process of healing, no matter what New Age practices people become involved in, their focus is on self-transformation by means of reconstructing self-identity. Healing in the New Age not only helps participants deal with problems of self-identity through reflexivity, but it also cultivates a sensibility toward self-healing rather than creating a client-counsellor relationship, as in the case of psychotherapy. In addition, as far as healing goes, New Age practices help people focus on the present and not on the future,because they involve a spiritual transformation that is beyond any rational risk assessment of the possible outcome of an individual’s ‘self-reflexive project’.