I am very sad this weekend after reading the news about two people dead, and nineteen others hospitalized from attending a “spiritual warrior event.” Beyond Growth blog comments on this story here, sharing the perspective of magick gone wrong. My heart is heavy, thinking of the participants who paid a lot of money in the hope of spiritual transformation, that will make their life better, and the loss and confusion that the family and friends of the deceased are currently experiencing.
I have been wary of the rise in gurus and shamans in the West, promoting a better life in exchange for large sums of money. I do not think that most of these people are business oriented charlatans. I believe that many of these teachers are really wanting to help people to live with courage and joy in an increasingly complex and challenging world. I do believe that many of these teachers are naive about the power they can invoke in the unseen world, and are overly confident about the abilities they have attained from attending courses and seminars.
I have gained a healthy respect for other-worldly existence of psychic phenomenon, spirits and non-human entities, that we in the West are not exposed to, as the people of other ancient cultures are. I have heard enough stories from the culture of my ancestors and had my own personal experiences, to not be lured into dabbling in these realms for entertainment. There is much that we westerners do not understand. I know of teachers and healers who suffer physically and emotionally after working. One very gifted teacher went through a period of experiencing vomiting and psychic disturbances that would arise suddenly. It disrupted her life, where for example, she would be attending a social function, and needed to leave abruptly when the feeling came upon her. Another very capable healer, when she first started her practice, would end up laying on the floor as in a heap, unable to move for a long time after a healing session.
Many people are seduced into learning about shamanism and attaining psychic powers for ego purposes, to make their lives better or to become a healer. This can be dangerous, for here in the West we are psychologically ill-prepared to deal with the world of psychic forces that we do not understand. We see documentaries of shamans and witch doctors going into trance, frothing at the mouth perhaps, totally surrendered to the forces of the unseen. In that world, the shamans have been trained from childhood with the knowledge to straddle the worlds, and have the support of the elders of their tribe to hold the energy with dances and incantations to appease the spirits while they travel. On returning, they are taken care of with the use of herbal potions and prayers to sustain body, mind and spirit. These shamans have a different world-view about transformation and the arts they practice. They are surrendered to life and death, and the risks involved in their arts. Here in the West, shamanism is practiced to make life easier, to get happier, and to attract material things.
Perhaps I am cynical about spiritual teachers, westerners claiming that they are teaching about spiritual subjects, dabbling in the arts of psychic manipulation. I believe that spirituality is much different from these practices. In this blog, I attempt to write about what I believe spirituality to be. I have come to the conclusion after studying over the years, that spirituality is about self-inquiry. Asking the basic questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? The journey includes dealing with our feeling states and obstacles in the mind that get in the way of clarity. Inevitably we come to these questions because we are depressed from searching for joy on the outside. After attaining some measure of happiness, we are still dissatisfied and continue to search until we feel depleted, troubled in knowing that something deeper and more fulfilling is within our reach.
Our search takes us to all kinds of teachers. All these teachers give us a piece to the puzzle and we begin to recognize that there is no quick fix, no matter how much we are willing to pay for it. We are a culture of instant gratification; whatever we want, we can get it now, and there are teachers out there who pander to that need. We learn meditations to clear our chakras, awaken our kundalini energy, open up our third eye, to channel, and prepare our light bodies for ascension. All these are about working with our energy body. If we are visual types we begin to see colors and lights, if we are auditory, we begin to hear celestial music, if we are kinesthetic, we begin to feel energy. Then there is The Law of Attraction that teaches us how to get stuff. These powers are just that, they have nothing to do with spiritual attainment.
In an earlier post, Self-Attentiveness, I wrote about the true practice of spirituality and I referenced the sage, Nisargadatta Maharaj, saying that spirituality is very simple, that understanding life properly is the essence. He said that everything else that we do in the name of spirituality is pure entertainment. Even the notion of attaining enlightenment is nothing but an ego boost. When we practice self-inquiry we ask ourselves what is the underlying need; perhaps it is a desire to attain enlightenment or a desire for some material thing. When we inquire deeply, we would recognize that we are looking for the experience of love and fulfillment, whether it is through having a new car or because we want some psychic powers. We have to go deeper than having visions and psychic powers, for the ultimate fulfillment comes when we stop seeking and simply try to understand life and our part in it. Nisargadatta said, “Spirituality is nothing more than understanding this play of consciousness—try to find out what this fraud is by seeking its source.”
There are many seekers looking for answers and not knowing where to look, they are vulnerable to being misled by the many loud voices in the spiritual marketplace. I have been seeking all my life, and now I come to a place of acceptance that there are no answers, but only questions. The knowing that we do not know has great comfort and strength. It opens us to surrendering the ego, to opening to trust that there is a force that is loving and protective that will guide us. We will be guided to teachers and situations that will help us unfold the mystery and beauty of this existence, as we walk the path to the return home to Beingness. I am ever grateful for the teachers and allies that have helped bring this powerful lesson home, that truth lies within, and that what we are seeking is the one who is seeking. Come home to love, come home to Self!
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Miruh – thanks for writing on this topic, I too was so saddened by this news, and couldn’t help feeling that it was inevitable something like this would eventually happen, based on all the trends you mentioned. And although I actually teach chakra meditation and kundalini techniques, I agree 100% with your separation of these from awakening or seeking truth. Personally, I use the word ’spirituality’ broadly, to include just about anything, since that’s the way it’s used nowadays by so many, but I do think it’s important to draw a distinction. Experience is not realization. There are all sorts of fascinating experiences to be had through various awareness and occult techniques, but these have nothing to do with self-understanding or ego surrender. I DO think however, that sometimes ‘energy techniques’ help capture people’s attention, and open their awareness, and have other healing benefits, and that’s personally why I teach them, but I also think it is so important to make a distinction between these and what you are calling the ‘true practice of spirituality’ (although I have to admit to being somewhat uncomfortable with that phrase…)
I’m not trying to make an argument for what I do, I hope it didn’t come off that way…but I think you have broached a very interesting subject, one I’ve been thinking of posting on too, of the promises made by teachers, and how this word ’spirituality’ has come to be used…Thanks for that….
I am in complete agreement with your philosophy of self-inquiry.
Thanks for the link, and keep on writing such words of simple wisdom.
~Duff
nobody dies, except a wacko or two every year, in the world capital of fake gurus, tiruvannamalai, south india, but it is filled with the trendy spiritual lifestyle consumers which are such easy pickings for both kashmiri clothing sellers and neo-advaita satsang-givers …
this stuff is a mental disease, just hasn’t been named yet …
and what is the most iron-clad defense against having to actually change oneself? call yourself “spiritual” ..
Hello Lisa,
There was a time when meditation was viewed by some as the work of the devil and may still be so in some circles. I totally agree, teaching courses like yours is a way of making it safer for the wary and it is important to make the distinction, as too many teachers sell enlightenment courses to the innocent.
Visualization and Energy healing techniques are wonderful tools for clearing difficult emotional states that arise. They can be allies on the spiritual journey to help deal with the mind, particularly at those times when we feel stuck, and need a break to keep moving forward. As you know, they are techniques just as meditation is a technique to deal with the mind;the true healing comes from the process of being with difficult states, inquiring into them and opening to the truth of our divine nature that is masked by these mind states.
My use of the phrase, “true practice of spirituality,” is an exaggeration
to distinguish self-understanding from the many techniques that has come to be associated with spirituality. True spirituality can take many forms, where wisdom and awareness merge in the experience of unity consciousness, the I Am.
As always I am inspired by the depth of your sharings. Thank you!
Hello Duff,
Welcome, thanks for dropping by!
I will do my best to write about wisdom and keep it simple. There is a need for blogs like yours and mine to let people know that it is a lot simpler (not easy) than what it is made to be.
Happy weekend!
Hello Gregory,
Welcome!
This is true. I have heard that a teacher once said something to the effect, “I give people what they want in the hope that they will want what I have to give.”
Spiritual materialism is alive and well.
Thanks for dropping by.
Beautiful post. Mahalo for your thoughtfulness and clarity. I will be back for more.
~Aloha!
There are people who prey on those seeking spiritual understanding. There are also people who go from energetic experience to energetic experience without gaining any spiritual understanding.
I get frustrated too, by this, because in doing so, they are giving over their spiritual journey to someone else. They aren’t taking responsibility for their beingness.
Having said that, energetic work can be a valuable tool for spiritual work. It’s one tool among many, reflection and engagement in the world being two more that I’ve found helpful.
Hello Gina,
Welcome!
Thanks for dropping in, I will be stopping by your place later.
A warm Aloha to you too!
Hello Bridget,
Welcome!
Yes, and I remember my own resistances and I give other people space to do what they have to, because I know how difficult it is to take responsibility.
I clarified my thoughts about energy work in a follow-up post. You might want to check it out.
Thanks for dropping by and sharing your thoughts.
Deep peace to you!
Just read this piece and wanted to let you know I appreciated it tremendously. I just wrote a post over at Brave New Traveler about the subject yesterday, http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2009/10/13/sweat-lodge-deaths-accident-or-negligence/, but you really filled in where I left off.
Gonna add your site to my links now. Keep up the great effort!
Hello Christine,
Welcome!
I am glad you like the post. The accident that happened in Sedona caught the attention of many people. I especially was concerned, as you pointed out in your article, that people would be scared off from attending a sweat lodge after this event.
This was a teaching about how to respect and honor the sacred rituals of the ancient traditions, and not to make them into commercial products.
Thanks for your kind words of encouragement.
Deep peace to you!
There is a screening of a film made on Nisargadutta maharaj. It was my luck that i met the person who made it.
http://abideinself.com/events-activities.php
Jai Gurudev,
vinod
I look at initial stages of spirituality as the search for spirit. The search its self is the sign that one is in lack of spirit. However, at some initial turning point in one’s life, one feels what it is like to be alive and then goes searching to find it again. We are so trained to look outside the self that what it really takes is to fully digest that is which inside the self. Once the mind is cleared of debris, the mind can be lifted to reveal the essence of the soul.
I, myself, rarely pay for spiritual information since information is not owned by anyone or created by humans. The library has hundreds of thousands of sources for beginners to begin the discipline of searching, so that they may one day stop searching and begin feeling what was always there.
Hello Vinod,
Thanks so much for the link, I enjoyed looking at the trailer on YouTube. I will have to look out for the DVD.
Be well!
Jai Gurudev!
Hello Bern,
You articulate the process of the spiritual journey so well. In a nutshell,
“Once the mind is cleared of debris, the mind can be lifted to reveal the essence of the soul.”
“The library has hundreds of thousands of sources for beginners to begin the discipline of searching, so that they may one day stop searching and begin feeling what was always there.”
It is true one does have to leave all teachers and books and experience for oneself. At the start of the journey, it was transformative for me to meet teachers who embody the spiritual journey and were a living testament to what was in store for me.
Thanks for sharing your deep insights.
Love and blessings!
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