Have you ever been on a diet? Or tried a food trend? Have you noticed how the 'newest' diet trend promises to help only to disappoint you like the one before? Apparently a lot of people treat spirituality the same way. How, you may ask?
One thing good about being different and being an 'outsider' is that I get to observe people. The attention was never really on me so I get to watch others. That helps me learn things about people and the latest thing that annoys me was when I noticed a person talk about leaving spirituality and saying that spiritual people are a bunch of those who just want to feel superior than the rest of us. While this is true, some people think that just because they're on a spiritual path, they're better than everyone else, which is sad, real sad! The whole thing is so messed up. It made me ask a few questions to myself.
From what I noticed, the person was disappointed and now tried to go back to their 'normal' life, start eating meat again and seeing that money is not all evil. Is this what most people think spirituality is about? Becoming vegetarian/vegan, do yoga, deny material possession and then they claim themselves holy??? On the one hand, I kind of get it that modern spiritual business and how many people sell their spiritual business is just misleading and downright gross. Some people have never questioned anything in their lives, suddenly get a taste of some kind of transformation and personal growth then jump into it and start selling it as business. Where's the wisdom? Where's the understanding? Where's experience? Some don't even possess the slightest knowledge although they claim to be a certified this or that. But on the other hand, what was this person looking for from walking a spiritual path?
I have complained about this whole mess concerning spiritual business with a few people and even said that this was how Westerners treat spirituality, like another mass-produced item to be sold. Very racist of me, I know. While I see a lot of this in the West, I shouldn't generalize it because I know that not everyone in the West does this. In fact, many magical and esoteric schools and circles in the West make their members swear to secrecy to guard their sacred knowledge, the secrets are only to be revealed to those deemed worthy. We don't even do this in the East, really. Though each master makes their own decision on who to pass their knowledge onto and how much, I don't remember hearing anyone making their apprentice take an oath to keep it a secret. What does secrecy have to do with this whole thing, anyway?
Let's start from the beginning, what is spirituality? Is about eating beans, doing yoga and saying you're some kind of a holy person or personified god from a different planet?
Spirituality is, for me (and it really should be), about working on our growth, on our spirit, so that our souls become en-lightened, so that we become closer to God, to the universe, so that we can reunite with The Light, with that consciousness that exists outside of time-space continuum, with the All-That-Is. While certain general rules like be kind, don't kill other people and so on work, each of us has a unique path to walk in a lifetime. What if your lessons in this lifetime, the things you need to learn in order to grow and get a little closer to the Light, are about learning to take, and that includes accepting money and material possession? What if in your previous life you gave so much that this time around you need to learn to accept and receive? And let's say in this lifetime I'm supposed to learn to give and let go of possessions? Can I really say that I'm holier and more spiritual than you because I'm a giver in this lifetime and you are a taker? What if a person is supposed to give and give because they have accumulated so much karmic debt in their previous life? Does that make them holier because what everyone sees in this lifetime is that this person keeps getting into the situation of having to give and sacrifice themself?
Like with many things in life, it's never that simple and we don't know the whole story, we don't see the whole truth. And yet, we judge. I admit that I can be very judgmental, and I get easily annoyed when something is 'not right' but I have come to understand that people come with different soul plans that you can't simply compare them. It's like comparing an orange to an apple, they are just different. Also, just because I'm allergic to apples doesn't make oranges better, I just can't eat apples! They're not for me, at least not now.
Same thing with spiritual path. We are all souls in human bodies, we came with a plan, and as long as we stick to that, we're going to learn something. For me, the so-called spiritual people are simply those who choose to consciously work on their soul growth. Can you grow without becoming 'spiritual', well, that's the whole point of being on this planet, isn't it? We live and we learn things through living, and when we learn, we grow a bit more. So we might be unconscious about our personal growth but we do learn something and grow all the time. The people we are now aren't the same people we were 10 years ago. So, as long as you're alive on this planet, you are going to be pushed to grow in some way, whether you realize it or not, whether you are 'spiritual' or not. But if you choose to walk the 'spiritual path', it means you choose to consciously develop yourself and be more aware of the process.
The process can look very different for each of us. Some souls chose to become monks in this lifetime, some choose magic, some choose to live a normal life but trying to become conscious of themselves and their own actions. By the way, while many people think magic is evil, magic, especially high magic is really about working with different forces in order to get closer to God/the universe. Surprised? Anyway, I think the first point is now established, we all have different paths and yours might look different from mine, so there's no comparison, really!
So, spirituality is about (conscious) soul development and growth but how do we do that? This part gets very interesting. A lot of us don't understand, at least not on a conscious level, what we're supposed to do here. So when we want to work on ourselves, we go to people who claim to know how it's done, they seem to know what they're doing. Some go to temples, some take courses for personal growth. We search for ways to grow, most often because we are in pain and we want to do something about it, and when we realize that the pain is deep within the soul, we seek meaning to life and ways to alleviate that pain. That's when we start walking the 'spiritual path'. And we start looking. Many go from course to course, hoping someone could liberate them from that pain. Some are lucky enough to find what works for them, some spend years searching and still feeling lost.
In ancient traditions, spiritual teachers only revealed secret knowledge to the selected apprentices, not because they wanted to appear elite, but because when people are not ready, no matter what you are showing them, they won't see it. Some might even misuse the
information that they misunderstood and that could create havoc, and the world is already a crazy enough place without adding more to it. If you wonder what could go wrong with telling those sacred knowledge to everyone, then, well, look around you! We went from having a master, a true teacher guiding us through our life challenges, helping shape us to become more conscious of ourselves, working with us on the path of enlightenment, which takes time and in many cases it can be a lifelong process, to taking a course on a free weekend, get a certificate, all ready to set up business and sell whatever it was we managed to learn during that weekend. A plan our soul has for a lifetime experience and we think we can buy it from a weekend course! You don't need to see or understand what it is that you need to learn and heal from, you just pay and you're promised to be liberated from your suffering or become a certified holy god from outer space. Most of the times, you get a discount, too, isn't that so very convenient???
Imagine that you still are searching your path, you attend a course, and the next, and the next, each promising you the moon and stars, but you end up feeling just as confused and miserable. It feels like another diet that doesn't really work. After a while, you feel tired, jaded and you might even come to the conclusion that all this spiritual hype is just rubbish, trash and even dangerous! Then you might even advocate against all things 'spiritual' because now you feel hurt and disappointed. But before you get to this point, if you haven't already, I'd like you to ask yourself, what was it that you were looking for? Were you looking for a way to solve an issue in your life? Were you looking for salvation? Were you hoping for someone to come and liberate you from your suffering? Were you curious to learn things and understand life from a different perspective? Or were you just following the trend without even knowing what you wanted in the first place? The thing is, often, if we don't even know what we want then what can we really expect to get?
Trends come and go, the truth about life remains and it doesn't matter what you call it or how you treat it, we live, we learn, we grow and we get a little closer to the Light. This is something understood by those before us and the ones after us will also discover this truth, in their own ways. We can be spiritual, magical or indifferent to anything outside of our 9-5 job, but we, as souls will continue to develop, until we've returned home to the Light, and while we're still here, we have to follow our paths and move forward. And before we get hung up on the disappointment because 'spirituality didn't work', let's ask ourselves that question again, what are we looking for?