Is It Spirituality? Or Is It Capitalism?

Hello Friends!

Over the next three weeks, I want to have what may be a bit of a tough conversation.

I want to explore how our 'spirituality' in the New Age may not be as spiritual as we think.

I want to explore how spirituality has historically been coopted by the power structures of the time, and used as a weapon of keeping people compliant to a system that serves no one but those at the top. I want to explore how we are being gas-lit into believing certain things are liberation tools, when they are in fact tools being used to keep us complacent.

I'm going to explore the idea that what we've been SOLD as spirituality is actually consumerism and how we can start to weed capitalist culture from that which is actually supportive of our spiritual growth.

Here is part one, and I'll see you next week for part two!

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Some food for thought:

Our spirituality trends have tracked right alongside the trends of capitalism.

I know this isn’t going to be a popular viewpoint, but I think we must acknowledge that a LOT of what we seek in our spirituality isn’t really spirituality - rather, what we’re seeking are the rules to follow so that we will be rewarded with what we need to survive/feel good in life. Ie. We’re not actually seeking for otherworldly, larger context meaning or truths - we’re looking for a guide on how to have pleasure/survival.

We pray for goods, resources, blessings, good things to happen to us, protection from harm, community, understanding, peace - all because we are life that’s self aware. We get that there are limited resources and we have complex social structures that make survival challenging - we can predict not having what we need and remember not having what we need - and to a degree we can control and manipulate this, but there are also the elements that are out of our control that will always make us feel insecure and unsafe. Suffering is possible, not something we can fully manufacture out of our experience, and we’re aware of that and want to avoid it as much as possible.

Also, we don’t know what happens when we die, adding to our existential fear. We want to know what's coming after this life, yet this awareness is essentially impossible to come upon with any certainty. We can have ideas, convictions, experiences that give us a feeling of being sure - but we can never really KNOW. We don't know if we will experience more pain after this life or less. We aren't sure if we will be fully annihilated or if there will be awareness. Infinity? And end of time? A limited time somewhere else? We can't know - and that's the scariest of all.

Thus we want to feel the maximum pleasure and the least amount of pain while alive and we want some form of promise that when we die we will also cross over into something better, safer, purer and less traumatic than life. 

Ultimately, we want what we want because we think that having what we want will give us SAFETY. Provision so we don’t have to suffer. Protection from disease, famine, loneliness, the elements. A guarantee that the future contains pleasure not pain - even through death.

 

We're Often (Not Always) Mistaking Humans For God:

Most of us don’t realize that our current systems where the elite, who hold the means of production, control who lives and dies are actually the ones making the rules we’re all trying so hard to figure out. Yes there are things like weather, disease and other natural factors - but to a large extent we have developed the technology to protect ourselves from these elements. Those who don't have access to what they need are by and large, in that place due to man made systems of hoarding, power dynamics and purposeful exploitation.

It’s not God. 

It’s not the Universe. 

We are working within a MAN MADE system of capital that chooses based on who serves the system best, who will have access to goods and resources, as well as community and the capacity to work one’s way up. 

All of life is not valued equally - rather again those who are at the top of the system are making choices to serve themselves, and anyone who doesn't is left behind or is intentionally exploited.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t natural laws and cause and effect - there is and long term we are all suffering the consequences of our totally out of whack survival strategy of competition and exploitation - but day to day, we’re not dealing with the elements, we’re dealing with each other and not realizing it because ‘individuality’ as been so celebrated and has brainwashed many of us into believing our lives are a personal choice alone/the result of a cosmic narrative playing out with us in the all important centre - with an arc meant to deliver us into our highest outcomes. Many people groups who ARE dealing with the elements are such because they aren't seen as valuable to those who have so much more than is needed. Or their poverty is serving others wealth in some way. Humans being corrupted, leaders being war lords, a global divide where we don't see one another as a human family but nations to compete with - all leads to huge amounts of people going without when the resources and technology to provide for them DOES exist. SO much of the suffering on this planet is rooted in politics, not nature.

We are, for the most part, looking to spirituality to give us the rule book for how to get what we need - without realizing that this rule book is actually written by man not God. We are asking for what to do on a cosmic level without acknowledging that much of what we experience is due to the very humble structures of mans ignorance.

We are all aware that fitting in and being loved is a part of survival - part of getting what we need in this system where man controls the resources, while also wanting to express ourselves and live in ways that feel GOOD to US and seeing how these two things conflict.

It’s a lot.

And of course we're going to turn to spirituality to try to help us make sense of these predicaments. Our spirituality is, in large part, our attempt to try to make sense of and figure out the rules of what we are perceiving to be the rules of the cosmos - instead of seeing that really what we're trying to do is figure out the rules of society. And we're not seeing how religion and spirituality is being USED BY society and those who hold high positions within it to keep us stuck where WE are - blaming ourselves and looking for fixes where fixes don't exist, instead of demanding that the system change.

This isn’t to say that ALL of spirituality is this - but if we take a step back, we may see that a LOT of it IS this.

We want to figure out the rules so the suffering will stop - the mental, emotional, physical or combination of all the above suffering we face. We want a guarantee that our pain is leading to some payoff when we don't know how to make the suffering go away. We want answers for how to be abundant and safe. We want community. We want a promise of a better afterlife. We want to be able to express ourselves and not lose our lives. All things that, at this point, come from society not God.

We want a good survival. 

How Spirituality Has Served The System, Not The People:

For a LONG time, survival came from finding your place within society.

Following the rules, having a role you played within the rules so that you would have a chance at access to goods and resources required for survival.

What helped us get out of pain the MOST was having a rule book to follow - a code of ethics that we could understand and predict, that would then lead to the societal reward of goods/access/acceptance.

This was because the means of production were held by the elite few, who then had the power to dictate who got what - who survived and who didn’t.

Fitting in and following the rules were methods of control. The more people were convinced that being humble, meek and not asking for much, the more power the rulers could hold without conflict. The more poverty and going without was celebrated as a virtue, the more those in power could hoard for themselves. The more our bodies were demonized and our natural impulses made out to be 'sinful' the more we were stuck navel gazing and trying to control OURSELVES - and in this we were less rebellious, had less time to fight for better treatment and were literally trapped in self policing that made the rulers job easier. Our spirituality made us feel like being weak, powerless and just a face in the crowed there to serve the WHOLE were the best ways to achieve spiritual enlightenment and reward both in this and the next life, the more the power structures were maintained. Religion was being used to keep the people in servitude to the system, and they were being convinced that this was spirituality itself.

In these times our spiritual books were general. Our rules were universal. It wasn’t about figuring out how you were special or what your special role was - it was about figuring out which were the right rules, the right morals, the right codes of conduct that would then allow you to have goods and resources. About sacrificing yourself for the whole - so that those in power could sustain their incredible wealth. There was a general narrative that human life was at the centre of all things - but individual human life? No. We prayed to a God to bless us with good health, good harvest, good luck - all the while not really seeing that these things weren’t so much dictated by God, but by society itself. Health, wealth and resources - the things we needed to have a good life, came from society. As we were developing technologies, better medicine, deeper understanding of ourselves and the natural world, we were becoming more and more empowered in the sense of being able to survive things we hadn't been able to before. But this awareness didn't benefit everyone equally - and this pattern continues to this day. Those at the top reaped the most reward, and those at the bottom the least.

The more we evolved in our awareness and technology, the less we were dealing with nature in a one to one relationship - we were dealing with a State - and in this, again, fitting in and following the rules was the way to survive - have pleasure.

Having access to wealth, technology, resources, medicine and sanitation thwarted our existential dread, gave us a feeling of community and safety, made us feel like life was going to be ok - all things we were looking for in our spirituality. So many of the things we labeled coincidence, good luck, bad luck and what we had superstition around - who got sick, who has success in business, who ate and who didn’t - came down to access and your place in society. Not all, but a LOT. This has only become MORE true as we’ve advanced our understanding of nature and honed our societal structures. Being 'in' made more and more of a difference the more advanced we became as a society.

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Let's take a pause here, and come back for part two next week!

<3