{"id":1621,"date":"2018-10-14T23:31:57","date_gmt":"2018-10-14T23:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/healingandtransformation\/?p=1621"},"modified":"2018-10-14T23:31:57","modified_gmt":"2018-10-14T23:31:57","slug":"spiritual-snobbery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/healingandtransformation\/2018\/10\/spiritual-snobbery.html","title":{"rendered":"New Age Spiritual Snobbery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Via<\/a>Do you call yourself \u201cspiritual?\u201d<\/p>\n

Is that a religion? What does it mean?<\/p>\n

Does it mean you judge people because they don\u2019t understand how elevated you are\u2014because that\u2019s what you are now, elevated\u2014above other people?<\/p>\n

Swami Satyananda taught (regarding the uncertain concept of the immaterial):<\/p>\n

\u201cSpiritual life begins with a question: Who am I? Where have I come from? What is my path of arrival? What will be the dock of my departure?\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This seems a more authentic way of being spiritual in that it merely acknowledges the important existential questions.<\/p>\n

We need to keep coming back to our origin: where have we come from? Honour that part of our journey, and then see the expanse of our lives in terms of where we are going to end up. How will we depart this earthly venture?<\/p>\n

Basically, ambition and success have become the new \u201cen vogue\u201d spiritual movement. This is spiritual materialism, and bypasses the essential question, \u201cWho am I?\u201d Yet, the ego self says: \u201cIt\u2019s just a creation anyway, so who cares; I\u2019m going to play this game!\u201d
\nWe also need to acknowledge our identity is made up by the conditioning of our parents and society, and finally, us\u2014until we kill our ego, and kill who we thought we were. Or, simply, recreate ourselves. Superficiality and ceaseless spiritual shopping sprees avoid the real work.<\/p>\n

It seems spiritual notions are causing a great deal of judgement and confusion in our modern world. People who have studied yoga, become yoga teachers, meditate, visit ashrams in India, study religions, become teachers, or devotees, or who simply read a few spiritual books are still wracked by judgements and insecurities, and their woundedness continues. Their shadows grow longer, their darkness ever more repressed.<\/p>\n

They want to escape themselves\u2014but they can\u2019t. They fail, and they\u2019re angry.<\/p>\n

They divert their anger at people who are \u201cnot as spiritual\u201d as them, who have not suffered like they have\u2014the people who have had less tragedy, who can\u2019t relate to their lofty status.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve often been told, \u201cYou can\u2019t understand me as you haven\u2019t been (fill in the gap) like I have been, so your opinion is meaningless.\u201d<\/p>\n

The woundedness has become a reason to push people away, so we don\u2019t have to face the awkward truth of being so uncomfortable with our wounds that we can\u2019t bring another close. When we feel unlovable, we push people away. It\u2019s like we don\u2019t want to be reminded of this feeling of being unloved, even though the more we push people away, the more unloved we are.<\/p>\n

Toko-pa Turner writes in ‘Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home’:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the New Age has awakened many to the power of creative intention, it has simultaneously pathologized the so-called \u2018negative emotions\u2019 and stricken them from our social palette of acceptability. We live under a kind of hegemony of positivity which emphasizes pleasure over pain, gain over loss, happiness over sadness, and the creative over the destructive. We are taught to \u2018rise above\u2019 things like anger, anxiety, sadness\u2014and by whatever means necessary, stay in bliss and light. This kind of bypassing is dangerous because it teaches us to not only dissociate from the multiplicity of ourselves but from the magnificent spectrum of life itself.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is a bypassing of conscience here. I have felt judged because I ate fish, that I\u2019m not spiritual enough. A conscious person would never eat flesh after all. One day everyone will be raw vegan as that\u2019s the most spiritual path\u2014or breatharian, because we can live off air and sunshine.<\/p>\n

Maybe I\u2019m not on your level, I\u2019m sorry.<\/p>\n

I do breathe the same air, walk on the same earth, and drink the same water. Sometimes I don\u2019t even meditate at all. Some days I do no yoga or stretching. Some days I\u2019m just bone lazy. I\u2019ll admit it, I am not perfect (surprise, surprise).<\/p>\n

I am just so tired of all the judgement and hypocrisy from so-called \u201cspiritual\u201d people or \u201cconscious\u201d people who go around telling people they are looking for a \u201cconscious\u201d man or woman. Run away.<\/p>\n

The worst judgement I\u2019ve experienced lately was at the hands of a \u201cconscious woman\u201d who on repeated occasions got mad at me (no apologies if she\u2019s reading this). One time because I said \u201cCome to India\u201d on my Facebook feed and she thought that meant I wanted to travel with her. When I admitted that wasn\u2019t my plan, she become furious. I wasn\u2019t on her level.<\/p>\n

Another time she asked me about her profile picture on Facebook\u2014what did I think? I told her it looked a bit serious, \u201cI would love to see your beautiful smile.\u201d She was so angry\u2014seething. I wasn\u2019t appreciating her radiant light. She admitted to me that it was her \u201cspiritual ego\u201d\u2014and urged me to appreciate her spiritual ego\u2014because I needed to honour that part of her.<\/p>\n

All I got from the exchange was that she is above reproach and can throw her fury around because it\u2019s just her \u201cspiritual ego.\u201d Who could be worthy of such a towering spiritual being?<\/p>\n

Spiritual bypassing happens when people can\u2019t be real with each other\u2014or themselves. It\u2019s an escape from the self, an escape from being raw. Pretending is easier than facing the truth, that the person who stares back at you in the mirror is a human being like everyone else.<\/p>\n

Perhaps for our real \u201cspiritual life\u201d to begin, we must first ask the questions:<\/p>\n

\u201cWho am I? Where have I come from? What is my path of arrival? What will be the dock of my departure?\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe we need to just remove this \u201cspiritual\u201d concept from our vernacular and identify in a different way. The old religions seem unable to hold people to their narrow worldview.<\/p>\n

So, the new age has taken people hostage\u2014and these people are the new \u201cspiritual.\u201d Let\u2019s just be human. Being human is more than enough for me!<\/p>\n

\n

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\nPlease follow me on Facebook:\u00a0davidstarlyte<\/a>\u00a0and Instagram: davidstarlyte<\/a><\/p>\n

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Do you call yourself \u201cspiritual?\u201d Is that a religion? What does it mean? Does it mean you judge people because they don\u2019t understand how elevated you are\u2014because that\u2019s what you are now, elevated\u2014above other people? Swami Satyananda taught (regarding the uncertain concept of the immaterial): \u201cSpiritual life begins with a question: Who am I? Where…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":570,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,192,140,35,220,51,49,17,12],"tags":[792,1133,1165,1167,1166,826,825,1129,1132],"class_list":["post-1621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awakening","category-belief","category-mindfulness","category-perception","category-personal-growth","category-self-development","category-shadow","category-suffering","category-transformation","tag-being-human","tag-breatharian","tag-bypassing-of-conscience","tag-emotional-bypassing","tag-rise-above","tag-spiritual-bypassing","tag-spiritual-ego","tag-swami-satyananda","tag-toko-pa-turner"],"yoast_head":"\nNew Age Spiritual Snobbery - Healing and Transformation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/healingandtransformation\/2018\/10\/spiritual-snobbery.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"New Age Spiritual Snobbery - Healing and Transformation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Do you call yourself \u201cspiritual?\u201d Is that a religion? 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