Ten years ago, if I had met someone who told me they were on a spiritual journey, I would have been enthralled. Now, I’m more likely to run the other way. It’s not that I hate spirituality. I think it’s amazing. I even follow @theholisticpsychologist, although sometimes I wish I didn’t. It’s just that when I think of a spiritual person, I think of someone humble, deep, and capable of experiencing life on a whole different level. What I usually get is someone who hates their father and is too busy finding themselves to commit to lunch plans.
It just seems like spirituality has become a trend, and while a helpful philosophy becoming popular should be a good thing, that tends to not be what happens. Whenever something becomes mainstream, it automatically loses a lot of its nuance. It has to in order to be accessible to average people who haven’t looked at the subject in depth and probably aren’t interested in making radical changes to their lives. Susan who practices five minutes of daily mindfulness wants to reduce her anxiety, not find the source of all human suffering.
It’s not bad to simplify concepts to help a normal person live a better life. But we have to be careful. While we acknowledge that religion can easily be misused or misapplied, spirituality isn’t regarded with the same suspicion (despite spawning its own fair share of sexual predators).
One of the first problems with the current discourse around self-help and spirituality is that the same messages are being sent to very different people, who may not have enough self-awareness to determine what applies to them and what doesn’t. There is a lot of focus on being yourself, saying no, and not being responsible for other people’s feelings. That’s exactly what some people need to hear. However, it’s not as many people as you might think, despite the vast number who will tell you their toxic trait is “being too nice.” After all, the problems in our lives tend not to be caused by having too many unselfish people around us. Many people would benefit from being less self-centered—being encouraged to help others and think less about their own desires. When only the first message is circulated, everyone picks it up, and what happens is much like when a narcissist or psychopath sees a therapist. They don’t change, they just learn how to dress up their self-centered behavior in fancy words that make it harder for others to argue with. Disagree with someone like this and expect it to be labeled gaslighting, shutting down all further discussion because a difference of opinion is now a psychological manipulation tactic. Expect a certain standard of behavior from them, and you will be treated like you’re codependent, trying to change them, or too attached to whatever aspect of the conventional world best dismisses your point. To the toxic woke person, the only emotionally healthy people are those who don’t ask anything of them.
The second big problem is that the spiritual quest is often seen as seeking your authentic self, but what gets left out is that the authentic self in a spiritual sense is the part of you that is closest to God or a higher power. It’s not your personality or anything we mean by the self in the usual context. Monks and nuns sometimes practice cultivating an inner and outer silence in order to more clearly hear the voice of God in their heads. You probably know the voice they’re referring to even if you wouldn’t describe it as God. Essentially, the personality needs to be subdued for the higher self to emerge. This means abandoning your ego and surrendering to something greater than yourself. When this distinction about the meaning of the true self is lost and you remove the connection to some type of higher power, even if it’s just the universe, the result is a radical change in purpose. The end goal becomes you and figuring out what you want. But the destination at the end of the journey should not be you. It should be letting go of you.
This isn’t because it makes you a better person or more pleasant to be around, although it does both of those things. It’s because this is how spirituality will make you happier in the end. The person who goes for a walk in the woods or sits by the ocean and feels lighter and freer feels that way because they’ve been reminded of how unimportant their own worries are compared to the vastness of the universe. They feel small and insignificant, but not in a bad way, because they are also a part of the world that has just left them wonderstruck. This person has just let go of a bit of their ego and felt connected to something more important.
These are the things that bring a person peace–connection to something more, seeing our problems with perspective, feeling that we bring something of value to the world, loving and being loved, and being in control of ourselves. None of these things are easy, but any path towards fulfillment that doesn’t include them is going to be incomplete.
For some reason, spirituality has a reputation for being Religion Lite—all the fuzzy feelings associated with it without the annoying parts. No rules, only vibes. In reality, spirituality is the purpose behind the rules of religion. In his book The Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley discusses the concepts all religions have in common, and it’s not things like having one god or respecting your parents. It’s that rules and spiritual practices like praying and fasting are designed with the goal of diminishing your ego so that you submit to the will of God. All religions are meant to achieve this. People would rather argue about what the rules are or whose rules are better than look at the big picture, which is that the rules are there to teach you discipline. This matters more than the rules themselves.
I don’t say this to glorify religion. I just say it to illustrate that the idea of the spiritual path being easier than the religious one is based on a misunderstanding. Spirituality is the ultimate goal of religion and choosing it means taking responsibility for your own development instead engaging in rituals mindlessly. This is actually harder than just being religious. The spiritual person prays because they know it’s good for them. The religious person prays because they think God will punish them. For most people, threats are much more effective.
Spirituality that brings you only to yourself and your desires isn’t real. Any philosophy that results in you focusing on your own feelings all the time isn’t going to make you a better person. It can be necessary somewhere along your path to go through a period of self-absorption, but the purpose of understanding your trauma and emotions isn’t so that you can indulge them—it’s so that you overcome them. The next step should be moving forward.
If that next step isn’t reached, if the goal is focusing on the self for its own sake, you will get the problems we see around us. People will break commitments because being authentic to their (passing) feelings takes precedence. They will mis-interpret self-acceptance as an excuse to never grow, and a reason why no one should ever criticize them. Boundaries will be set from a place of avoidance instead of courage. You might have met examples of this in real life, perhaps in friends who think they should never be uncomfortable, or men who tell you how unenlightened you are when you ask them to stop sleeping with other people.
This type of spirituality involves avoiding discomfort rather than facing it, except perhaps the discomfort in cutting off relatives who vote Republican. I think we should bring back the type of spirituality people have to suffer for. What happened to meditating forty days under a tree, giving up your worldly possessions, or taking a vow of silence? Some monks clean as a form of meditation. In certain convents nuns are not allowed to look at themselves in the mirror to discourage vanity. Most people now would say, “There’s no real point to doing these things,” not understanding that the whole point is that it’s difficult. Doing hard things changes you, or at least teaches you something. I don’t believe you need to go to these lengths to develop a beneficial level of spirituality in your life, but if I’m going to be taking advice from someone, I’d rather take it from the person who spent a year challenging themselves than the person who spent a year doing whatever they wanted.
Human beings are better off when they don’t make themselves their own gods, usually because they aren’t very good at it. Much like children, we are happier with limits than when we follow our every whim. Relying on a consistent set of principles frees you from the burden of constantly evaluating your inner state to determine what to do next. And understanding how little we can control, even about our own futures, puts us in the frame of mind to accept what happens with grace. Religious people are often happier because they have given up the burden of believing they are the ultimate authority on their lives. Whatever is planned for them may be what’s best, even if it isn’t what they thought they wanted.
In the end, the easy way out is never real. Selfish people will always find a way to continue being selfish if they want to, so perhaps blaming it on poorly explained spirituality isn’t going to change them. But maybe looking at a more nuanced perspective will help the people who encounter them. Don’t be impressed or guilted when someone hits you with words that could have been picked up from the explore page of Instagram. Instead look at their actions. Is their life a good example of strong values? Has their brand of spirituality changed them for the better? Perhaps more importantly, has it affected the people around them positively? If not, smile, nod, and run the other way. The wolf who admits he is a wolf can be dealt with. The wolf who believes himself to be a sheep is impossible.
Half-Blood Kuwaiti 