The Commercialization of Spirituality
Living with spirit long ago was once considered a part of everyday living and being before institutionalized religion. It was incorporated in how one simply was present in the world and lived their day-to-day lives. Now, modern day spirituality is a capitalistic movement. Being spiritual is an identity, a category, a label. Spirituality is consumable.
People believe spirituality is something to be obtained, like wellness. That it exists externally and can only be maintained through doing and buying, such as yoga, sound baths, ‘healing’ sessions, purgative plant medicines, juice cleanses, and buying spiritual and wellness objects, etc. The spiritual products industry is valued at around $3.9 billion and quickly growing.
Identifying with being spiritual now has little to do with embodying true soul and energetic connection, and has more to do with a person’s ego and how one identifies in the world. Being ‘spiritual’ has become a form of self-identification. Reinforced by how one looks and dresses, the words and language they use, the assumed behaviors and adopted personalities, the roles they take on, the activities they participate in, and the products and services they consume. Spirituality is commercialized and consumable for people to purchase a new sense of self when the old one doesn’t work anymore.
While these consumable products and services can certainly be resources and avenues for beginners to explore, ultimately no person should be reliant on them for the long-term as they don’t allow a person to grow. Over-relying on external things keep a person stuck as they haven’t assumed responsibility for the work they need to do themselves. You can buy all of the crystals and sound bowls, and go to all the 5-day retreats and cacao ceremonies, but ultimately those are just glimpses and band-aids. They are the equivalent to buying prescription meds—they may temporarily ease the pain but they will never heal the root of the problem. How could they? Dedicating 1 week to your healing or development is simply not nearly, even remotely, enough time. Try a minimum of 1 dedicated year. And if you’re not doing the work of being alone with yourself; dedicating space and time for meditation, introspection, and reflection; exercising your intuition abilities; working through programming, patterns and beliefs; and the complete courage to reject external advice, validation and distractions…it is easy to become overly reliant on consumable products, whether they are products, retreats or ‘shamans’. If you are hoping it will fix you, you are outsourcing the deeply personal work to someone or something else in the hopes of them/it doing it for you. Our society programs us to expect a quick fix to problems, a fix that consumerism advertises it can solve, without having to do the deeply uncomfortable and challenging hard work for themselves. The right people can absolutely help, guide, teach and equip you with the necessary resources and tools, but ultimately no one can heal or change you. Only you can do that for yourself. Everyone needs to go on their own journey and learn their own way—through personal experience, alone time and introspection.
The other challenge is the wide quality and level of maturity of spiritual and wellness healers, guides and coaches. While the intentions are good, not everyone is in a healthy place to help people. I have noticed a continuous pattern with many self-proclaimed healers and coaches in the spiritual and wellness space: many tout wellness but do not know how or take the necessary time to care and fully heal themselves. Some run away from their own problems and instead focus on other’s. Or some are still controlled by and plagued by concerns of the ego such as worrying or conforming to societal standards of beauty and acceptable perception, or hyper-focusing on validation, money, and external standards of success. How can someone help others and serve as a higher example if they cannot effectively heal and free themselves?
The products and the services industry of spirituality has a business model still largely built on ego and consumerism. Spirituality as a business is fair game, but with spirituality, it needs to be balanced with responsibility and values. If spirituality as a business operates in the same way as any other industry, what’s the point? We’re just selling something that looks and sounds like spirituality but it’s not. Ultimately spirituality is about energy and higher values. But if the values being sold are low, than is it actually spirituality?
A majority of spiritual products and services can be discovered via social media and the internet. Any person with an appealing persona, great marketing, and massive following can become a self-proclaimed spiritual ‘guru.’ That massive following gives them permission to publish books and take on speaking opportunities in media, regardless if they actually know and embody what they’re talking about. These days no one values higher virtues. We see it in the lack of virtues and higher qualities in influencers and world leaders alike. It’s every man or woman for him- or her- egoself.
The point is, is that do not just read or follow what is easily obtainable or accessible. Mainstream media and social media favors conformity and the status quo, and its decision makers and algorithms favor the people most willing to sell themselves in a way that reinforces societal standards and what easily sells, now. Remember, it is a business. But what sells now, is what is already known and accepted. To move the needle forward, we need to expose ourselves to knowledge and wisdom that is not in the mainstream. It takes a bit more effort and work, but wider perspectives and new knowledge allows you to develop and grow. So I encourage you to seek out alternative blogs, publications, profiles, content, etc. that may not have a massive following or be in the mainstream. Always exercise healthy judgement and discernment, but it’s worth exposing yourself to alternative perspectives and new knowledge. Sometimes the esoteric blogs have the most interesting knowledge. But at the end of the day, a majority of knowledge and wisdom downloaded did not come from books or other people, it came through my meditations. Meditation and learning to connect with the soul voice and higher intelligence of the Universe is the clearest way of knowing—straight from the source.
You can give your money, energy and time externally in the hopes of some miracle or solution, or you can invest your money, energy and time internally to properly do it yourself.