Imagine a fellow who pretended to see auras because it helped him get fame and fortune. A good old boy who picked up ladies by telling them he moonlighted as a dreamtime tantric shaman for struggling actresses in order to teach them how to undo the sex karma keeping them in bimbo roles. A chap who couldnít make a single decisionóólike whether to stir fry his vegetables with tofu or tempehóówithout first consulting his pendulum.

No doubt to the average Joe Bob or Betty Sue such behavior may sound too ridiculous to be true, but believe it, because that man was me before I found NAA and overcame my New Age persona. Oh boy was I a piece of work. In my merkaba spinning days, peopleóówell mostly womenóótreated me like king of the holograph. And if you'd of asked me what I thought of myself, I would have honestly told you that I ranked just one or two rungs below the all mighty Protector himself, definitely on par with Uri Geller.

Hell, I even bragged that my underworld feats for the resurrection of mass consciousness would earn me the right to a Dr. Midnight Angel (my mystery school name) postage stamp after the alien battle for the control of Earth was over, even if telepathy made the US Mail Service obsolete. And this is just an outline of the reality biosphere I created for myself while under the influence of New Age delusion.

It all started in early November 1989, when my old buddy Frankie came back to Texas for our high school reunion and convinced meóónothing but a simple, cow-eating oil heiróóinto a becoming a sensitive new age guy, what he called a "SNAG". It was the first time Iíd seen Frankie since heíd moved to Sedona two years before, so initially I was irked that all he wanted to do when we got together was to talk about how Sedonaís "power spots" and "vortices" were going to put the oil industry out of business. I wanted to drink beer and shoot things, but since I was feeling lonely and tired of my other friends, I acted real politeóówhich was really hard to do at first, especially when he passed up Mama's home cured jerky for a little bag of green powder he called spirulina.

His talk of angelic overlords and the new millennium bored me silly, and I thought I was going to have to throw him out of the house before I fell asleep at the kitchen table. Then he mentioned how his understanding of these things brought him success with a new breed of babes he called "goddesses". Iíve never had much of a face, so the thought of gaining some advantage in the area of poontang was enough to make me stop imagining him outside the door and pay attention to what he had to say. He told me about the challenges I faced as a Virgo with a Gemini moon, explained why I had to overcome my rut as a nine in the enneagram, and, best of all, filled me in on the ins and outs of polyfidelity and the etheric interspecies orgasm.

But his words came from no dictionary Iíd ever seen, so most of what he said floated above my head like smoke from Uncle Rex's pipe. I tried to nod and grunt in the right places, but Frankie must have noticed my confusion, because he left me with a channeled book from the Pleiades (called Harbingers of the Yawn) and a 900 number he said I should call whenever I needed someone to talk to about my evolving consciousness.

The book must not have been too bad, cause I read it like it was my favorite horse, Fast and Furious. I understood about 20 pages of itóóenough to draw the conclusion that the Pleiadians wanted me to know that there was an alien-controlled library of human DNA with strands and helixes anybody could check out if they could decipher the universal indexing system before all these words made them fall asleep. Could I be that someone? I thought. What if I were the one who created the biological Dewey decimal system for all mankind? Iíd be even more famous with the fillies. The thought alone gave me a rise. I decided to call the number Frankie had given me.

To my surprise, the number turned out to be a psychic sex line, and all the operators were white buffalo women (WBW) who read blue balls and channeled telepathic sea men. For the first month I called every day, sometimes twice a day. Never before had a womanóólet alone so many of themóócounseled me on the relationship between my genitals and my horoscope. Hell, I didnít even know I had a horoscope. I walked around in a goddess-intoxicated ecstasy until the first phone bill arrived and Mama bawled me out for being a pervert.

When I tried to explain the spiritual release I was experiencing while talking to these goddesses on the telephone, Mama wouldn't listen. What else could I do, but phone the 900 number for advice. As luck would have it, my favorite WBW, Deep Cavern Talking, answered. I told her what had happened and she told me this was a sacred sign from the Backdoor Buffalo.

"It is time to leave Texas for a more spiritually-aligned planetary position, to a place that is in accordance with your Jupiter line" said the Backdoor Buffalo through Deep Cavern Talking. "Your consciousness wants to expand, but there are too many steak eaters and Born-Again Christians in your bioelectric field for your spirit guides to sufficiently transform your reality."

"But where can I go? I've always lived in Texas."

"This is the point we are trying to make, dear one," continued the buffalo. "Texas is for neophytes. You must move to the grid matrix location you call Sedona and become enroll in the Mail Order Mystery School of Ascended Mastery."

What luck, I thought: correspondence school for enlightenment, plus Frankie and his WBW goddessesóóthose affirmations Deep Cavern Talking taught me must really work. The next morning I packed a couple of bags, jumped in my 4 x 4 and drove away, glad I didnít have to see Mama's tear-stained face disappear in the rear-view mirror. Even losing my inheritance wasnít going to stop me from fetching some multidimensional courtship skills.

Frankie was expecting me when I showed up at on his adobe doorstep with all my belongings, even though I hadn't called him ahead of time. Telepathy, he said, gesturing to the door as he said I could stay with him as long as I paid rent and promised to smudge the house with sage twice a day to compensate for my chaotic, overtly-masculine energy. The Gods were definitely manifesting in my favor.

Sedona seemed pretty weird at firstóóall those big red rocks with people siting on them like statues, vegetable hamburgers, and bald men wearing weird chunks of glass around their necks. It certainly wasn't Lubbock, and the folks weren't like any that I'd ever seen. Frankie (who now insisted I call him, Manipuka, the name given to him by his latest guru) said the Sedona scene would seem normal when I became self-realized like he was. In the meantime, he suggested I try sleeping on magnets and putting coffee up my butt.

But mama always said I was a fast learner, and by the time I rebirthed a few weeks later, bad words like "can't" and "but" had disappeared from my vocabulary. In addition, I'd mastered Reiki I and had learned to make a killer nutloaf. I'd even experienced a solar heart awakening and perfected the ability to use "I" statements and take responsibility for my feelings. I was so Sedona that my cowboy boots had become merely a fashion statement.

Manipuka was impressed by my progress and decided to reward my efforts by taking me to an all night tantric community dance party. What a bummer that was: twenty-five white men in leopard print Speedos vying for the attention of seven women with pierced belly buttons, only one of them truly hot. It was awful. The dance opened with the sex priest telling us join together in a circle and massage each others shoulders while visualizing the room turning orange and juicy like a papaya. He then made us dance around the seven women and sing songs about the second chakra and the marriage of Shakti and Shiva, a couple I assumed weren't able to make it that night. At the end, no kissing or anything, we all sat by ourselves in the dark and played with ourselves using some spicy kama sutra oil that later gave me a rash. Not exactly the 1001 sensual pleasures I'd imagined.

On our drive home from the party, I told Manipuka the tantric party was boring. I could tell this really pissed him off, but instead of yelling, he told me my "unevolved third-dimensional sexual expectations made me no more than a typical 20th century male, a young soul unable to survive without the friction of actual penetration." When I questioned his credentials as an expert in such matters, he cited his experience as an empath and a healer who'd lapped me many times over in New Age awareness. He then proceeded to list all the goddesses heíd scored as a result of his superior awareness, pointing out that none of them had ever been willing to enter the "now" with me. The truth of his words hit me square in the solar plexus, and before I could figure out what happened, my Texas will gushed out of me like a Middle East oil spill. Turning to the pendulum I'd bought two days before, I vowed to master the New Age so I could be more like Manipuka.

It was also around this time that I began to realize I needed money, which needless to say, was new for me. Rent, added to the costs of healing sessions, psychic telephone consultations and incense purchases, had nearly exhausted the little piggy bank I'd left Texas with. Not knowing what to do, I asked my pendulum and it told me to go to the New Age bookstore and buy a UFO magazine.

Flipping through the pages of UFO Tomorrow, I wished the aliens would just land on the White House lawn and answer the alien question once and for all. I wanted to stop worrying about whether or not they were friendly and think about more important things, like how I could bring more tantra into my life. Besides, aliens would probably help my financial situation, for what good is money in the 5^th dimension? Just as I was about to start comparing myself to Manipuka again, the fate fairies pulled my attention toward an ad for an enlightenment school. GET YOUR DOCTORATE DEGREE AND AMASS A FOLLOWING it said in bright green letters. My entire future almost flashed before my eyes, and I knew Iíd found what I was looking for. I rushed home and checked with my pendulum; we both agreed, I was going to be a Doctor of Divinity.

The year that followed my three-week doctorate program was amazing. My pendulum told me Chuck didnít go very well with Doctor, so after many hours of centering, we finally decided upon Midnight Angel. Dr. Midnight Angel. I bought a Kirlian camera and opened a sidewalk spiritual counseling business so I could photograph tourist's auras and use the colors I saw to tell tales about their Higher Powers.

I was raking in the bucks and it was 11:11 heavenóóall of my harmonics were converging. I tossed out the last of my cowboy clothes, grew my hair long in the back, and traded in my truck for a Subaru. In my spare time, I scanned portals for New Age babes, and when I found one, my doctorís status took me inside all sorts of life-affirming nooks and crannies. I was hot, and I knew it.

Despite my increasing success, my pendulum informed me that auric readings would only take me so far; if I wanted to make the Whole Life Expo circuit, I needed help from the Great White Brotherhood. I begged my guides to give me an assignment that made me look good while I cashed in, something daring and sexy. And boy did they deliver. For six months, me and my loaded pendulum sat for 12 hours a day as I was given an astral manifesto one word at a time. I was being divinely inspired to become a cosmic crusader, so I could fight the dark forces who wanted to control Earth, right the wrongs of countless past lives, administer to the various needs the Quan Yins, Isises, Kalis, Taras, Athenas, Demeters and Mother Marys disguised as lonely women.

It was the call I'd lived my whole life for, and I was scared, but ready. Fortunately, I had my pendulum, so I was never without direct link-up to the Great White Brotherhood. I incorporated as Midnight Crusaders, Inc., even managed to get www.midnightcrusaders.com as my domain, and began offering snail and email-order white witchcraft and dark goddess rituals for housewives with too much time on their hands. Business grew steadily for six months, and then, out of the blue, my pendulum refused to offer clear advice, telling me it could no longer look at photos of women with their clothes on. What else could I do but ask my clients to send naked pictures. Fortunately, only a few said no.

Whoída guessed it, but the nudity factor made me even more popular. Bag after bag of naked photos were coming into my office every week. Black and white, color, slides, I was up to my neck in breasts, asses, thighs, underarms. . .backlogged over six months; it was bliss. Then my pendulum did it again: It threatened to strike again if I didnít stop working in 2D and go for the real thing. At first I was embarrassed by the audacity of such an order, but since my pendulum was my sole source of income, I had no choice but to submit to its demands.

Practically overnight I was catapulted into the realm of guru. I billed myself as "A remedy for the Black-Heartedness of All Womyn" and received preferential booking at Starcrow Witch Camps and Kali Empowerments worldwide. I lectured on the devouring feminine and taught ugly chicks how to cast spells for attention. Best of all, I had all the New Age babes I wanted 24 hours a dayóóand if I was too busy for them when I was awake, they came to me in my sleep. Even Manipuka wanted to be me. I was finally self-actualized.

Then Oriona entered my life. Oh Buddha, she was hot and dry, like silver in the high desert. Very Santa Fe, right down to her Hopi jewelry and Lynn Andrews hair. She walked into my office and my pendulum spun out of control, which meant trouble, but how could I possibly send a babe like her away. In between sobs, she told me of her husband, explaining that he didn't believe in animal guides and wouldn't let her cook seaweed in the house; she couldn't even go to boundary dissolving ceremonies or inner peace rallies unless he was on a business trip, which wasnít very often since he was unemployed.

"He's keeping me from the New Age," she said, her tears forging a river of blue eye shadow down her cheek. "How will I ever get off the reincarnation cycle with him in my life."

"There, there," I said, tracing her hand with my rose quartz. "The two of you must have a pastlife agreement to work out some of this unpleasant karma. I'm certain there is a ceremony that will help you reconnect with your inner goddess and secure your bed, I mean earth, in the flower of life."

"You mean...you can...help me," she said, her velvet eyes peering at me through wet eyelashes.

"Ma'am, you are talking to Dr. Midnight Angel, superman of the human shadow, crusader of coincidence," I said in my deepest SNAG voice. "If anyone can help you, I can."

We scheduled an appointment for 10am the following morning, and I spent a sleepless night, tossing and turning with only her face on my mind. I asked my pendulum for guidance, but it refused me, standing still as a corpse in protest of my disobedience. I guess I should have known that she was worse than the Texas tornados back home, but I was blind to everything but the thought of her naked body in my 8^th house. With or without my pendulum, I was going to give her a healing that would bond her to me for life.

The next morning everything was going as I'd planned. She had taken off her clothes and was lying on my light beam generator with goggles over her eyes. I had my Kirlian camera set up to photograph her internal aura, when her husband stormed into the room.

"Vat are jou doing vith my vife?" he shouted, his eyes boring holes in the walls. "Vat? Vat iz that thing? Vat are jou doing vife? Vat are jou doing?"

Before either of us could answer, he picked up my life-size copper meditation pyramid and smashed it with his bare fists. He then came at me with my ozone machine. I did my best to out maneuver him, but yoga was no match for his reptilian brute, and the next thing I knew, I was lying in a hospital bed with an extra hole inside from the ozone tube he tried to shove up my butt.

The months that followed were the worst in my life. The babe of my dreams was gone, my pendulum still wouldnít talk to me, and all of my New Age friends dropped me because of the discordant vibration patterns I created through my attachment to maya and "that crazy womyn". There I was, stuck in a hospital roomóno crystals, no incense, no community; all I had was television to connect me to the rest of society. Then, on the evening before my scheduled release, an odd man wearing a red and white striped button-down shirt entered my room.

"Do you mind if I talk to you for a while," asked the stranger as he sat on the edge of my bed and took out a notebook from his back pocket.

"I guess not," I replied, surprised by the slight hint of good ëol Texas that came through in my voice.

"Good. It might not be too late for you to get your mind and spirit back," he said just above his breath for emphasis. "I am here to tell you about an organization called NAA, New Age Anonymous, a fellowship of reformed energy junkies who've given up manipulating others for personal power and are now living honest lives. I'd like you to join us."

"Are you a guru or an angel," I asked.

"Neither. Even a fool knows that he can only save himself. Youíve got to snap out of it, son. You are a human being, there is life before afterlife," he said, softening the impact of his words with a pat on my shoulder. "Your name is Chuck, not Midnight. You have a nice mama in the state of Texas, and this is nothing to be embarrassed about. It is time to return to your roots and stop waiting for some Higher Power to plant you in the sky."

I told him that I didnít think I could live without my Higher Power, but he assured me that, if he could do it, I could too. He sat with me all night, but by morning I was convinced that I needed to join NAA. I checked out of the hospital, headed straight to a re-humanization house set up by the founders of NAA and prepared for a slow and painful landing. I began to work NAAís Twelve Steps to freedom.

Sure, I fell back into automatic writing and used a pendulum a couple of times, even dreamed about dolphins, but my friends at NAA never left my side. Today I can honestly say that I'm proud to be an ordinary human being, a Texan no less. Itís been three years since I entered recovery, and I'll tell you and anybody else hoping to kick the New Age, every step, no matter how difficult, was worth it. Thank you NAA, I donít have to pretend like Iím happy anymore because now I really am happy.