Spirituality is trash

How the profound has been turned into a vacuous capitalist industry

We should all be spiritual, right? To be spiritual is to recognise this world of ‘things’, this world of matter and material is not as important as the world of meaning and morality, the transcendent world of being from which we come and to which we go. It is the product of much religious introspection, self reflection and borne through the examples we find in sacred writing, poetry and art.

Yet in the modern world spirituality is bundled up with modern individualism. Rather than being at its core self-renouncing, ‘spirituality’ is a catch all world for the centring of self, the desire for self-improvement and image centred obsessions with what it looks like to be spiritual, in addition to all the other things you have. Thus most iterations of the spiritual we find in modern jargon like ‘manifesting’ somehow ignore the apparent incongruity between wanting to pursue spiritual self-renouncement and the sheer narcissism of much of ‘spiritual’ practice. Spiritual influencers make videos like ‘financial abundance guided meditation’. Yes, really. Apparently if you meditate hard enough you can become rich. I’m sure that’s in the Bhagavad Gita somewhere.

There are big names in the spiritual world, besides all the ‘influencers’ of instagram and every other social media platform selling superficiality through the spectacle of image and platitudes- apparent gurus such as Eckhart Tolle sell books in their bajillions to those who wish to experience the ‘power of now’ or ‘the power of now II, how to access the high powered now power of now, right now.’ Ok I made the second one up. But despite the incoherence of many of Tolles points, and the underlying simplicity, and the fact that what he is selling is not spirituality but self-help for the prosperous (readers include Paris Hilton and Katy Perry), something significant lies in the kinds of audiences these books are for, indeed that most of Western spirituality has become for.

Modern spirituality is aimed at those who want spiritual benefits as a kind of ‘extra’. It is part of a world of optimisation, a world where having is not enough, yet sacrifice is too much. You can hardly imagine Tolle standing in the slums of Africa telling people who are starving to manifest or awake to the power of now, rather his audience depends on a kind of LA style spiritualists looking for optimisation, looking for ways to feel better.

And this is the problem of the core of ‘spirituality’ in its modern forms. Whatever meaningful spirituality is, it’s outcome is a meaningful and a moral life. More than this, every religious tradition comes to the conclusion that meaning, happiness and substance are not to be found in the successful or the rich, but in the humble, the lowly and the moral. The kind, the self-sacrificing, thoughtful, unnoticed people who just do things for others without expectation of thanks, recognition or reward.

To put it more simply, the enlightened don’t write New York Times best sellers. This is for two obvious reasons — one, if people are unenlightened they won’t recognise it and wouldn’t read it, or two, lots of people would read it and we’d live in a different world. Neither have happened, spiritual gurus top reading charts and the world remains unenlightened. See the conundrum? Paris Hilton may have read the ‘power of now’ and got some benefit, but she is still posing with designer handbags on instagram. ‘Spirituality’ is not ‘spirituality’ if all that results is you feeling a bit better, like a kind of nicely packaged antidepressant. The outcome of spirituality is love, and love doesn’t get you instagram followers because you can’t dress in it and you can’t sell it. Love doesn’t look like a person in yoga pants with a Hindu tattoo taking a selfie to show their followers how spiritual they are, it changes the world one person at a time, quiet, beautiful, and unnoticed. The world would be a much better place if we really were spiritual.

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See also: Eckhart Tolle and the snake oil of modern spirituality The confusion of non-duality ‘Spiritual but not religious’ — the catchphrase for the last days of the West Why I still believe in God