I started gravitating towards the family religion last year. The religion is known by a lot of different names, but I prefer to call it “psychic stuff.” I grew up around it. My mother wrote a book called Psychic Dangers when I was 11 years old. She interviewed a lot of psychics, and then “picked up a bad entity.” She was in a panic, fearing for not just herself, but my stepfather and me, too.

After tearing the manuscript into pieces, my mother then asked us all to join her while she drove down to the Vallejo Marina, at the mouth of the Napa River. She put the torn manuscript into a garbage bag, added a few bricks, tied it shut, then threw it into the water. The bag burst open, scattering the pieces of paper all through the Marina. They floated mockingly on the surface of the water like a thousand white lily pads. Frightened, my mother herded us back into the rust bucket and drove us back to the trailer.

When Mom later discovered Tibetan Buddhism, it was a relief. I used to get punished for “giving off bad vibes,” but now I was just asked to sit quietly, which was easy, especially when the WWF was on cable. So when psychics and channelers and Reiki Grand Masters paraded back into my life last year, I maintained a healthy skepticism.

I was feeling like crap, so I figured it would be a good idea to listen to the free psychic shows on the Internet. They did help, particularly the shows that included a guided meditation. While listening, I noticed a lot of unspoken memes that were reverberating across the crackpotsphere. Here are some observations:

1. All angels speak with an Indian accent
2. There was “a cosmic shift” in 2012, according to younger psychics.
3. Older psychics maintain that the shift happened in the 1970s.
4. We are “currently living in the fifth dimension,” and “science has shown it to be true.”
5. Reality appears to many people as a grid.
6. The grid contains “sacred geometry”
7. Powerful practitioners can transfer a grid across time and space via the telephone or the Internet.
8. Many people came to psychic stuff after reaching a spiritual bottom in the Entertainment industry.
9. The Christ Consciousness IS the 5th Dimension. Science has not backed up this assertion.
10. If the current psychic stuff movement were organized, it would be presided over by Esther Hicks, and Abraham the Angel.