I’ve been trying to keep up with spiritual blogs for the past year or so. They were hard to find in the first place. But when I did find them, many of them seemed concerned with things that don’t seem spiritual to me at all.
Let’s make it clear: this isn’t a value judgement. There is obviously a place for trying to be successful in life. There is obviously a place for ambition. When we face economic hardship because of selfishness glorified and rationalized on a grand scale, it seems hardly realistic to focus on the spiritual.
What I do wonder about though is why seeking success in life has become a concern that needs to be labeled ‘spiritual’. Is that merely because spiritual teachers really just want to be rich, just like the rest of us?
In the scientific discourse on New Age there is the label ‘prosperity spirituality’. This refers to the stuff some people see as a reason to be optimistic about our time: namely new age spirituality targeted to managers and leaders of industry. I guess this means stuff like ‘the secret’.
But what’s so spiritual about this stuff? Can anybody explain that to me? Are we in the same conversation?
Hi, Katinka.
Good questions! While I believe that some people are missing the point and others are just trying to cash in on the passion The Secret generated, I also see a connection between spirituality and prosperity. The problems arise when people don’t reality know what either one is.
What we experience in our outer reality is a reflection of the state of affairs within. From that perspective, it certainly makes sense to take a look at our finances. The point that many people miss is that the outer is the result of the inner, not the other way around. No success program will work without first changing something inside.
I don’t agree with “prosperity spirituality” because prosperity is a natural result of proper spiritual alignment. There is no specific spirituality for the different aspects of our lives. Most people just don’t want to do the work of looking within, addressing the uncomfortable, and changing their internal status quo. As usual, they’re looking for the shortcut. This is why most of them fail.
Prosperity is not the accumulation of money and goods. It is a state of being in which one is in alignment, in harmony, with the nature of the universe, not fighting against or forcing anything. With proper and consistent alignment comes the fulfillment of worldly needs and desires.
I believe it is vitally important to focus on spirituality during difficult times. The more critical people’s personal lives and the conditions in the world become, the more people focus on spirituality because they are looking for answers, for hope, and for a way to make things better. That’s why most people experience a spiritual breakthrough during their toughest moments. It’s when we finally surrender to the fact that the way we’ve been doing things doesn’t work. Then we reach for something beyond the egoic mind, beyond what we know, beyond what the world can offer. Tragedy is many times the long-needed catalyst for change.
So, do prosperity and spirituality belong in the same conversation? In proper perspective, yes. Spirituality is the core, prosperity is one expression of it. Everything about life is spiritual, expressing our spirituality outwardly. Focusing on getting rich and calling it spiritual however, is completely missing the point.
That’s very well put. I thought it might be something like that. From my perspective however, real spiritual people don’t mind if they live in a shack or a castle. Some of them even live on the streets.
Why would externals even matter?
I think it has a lot to do with supersticion. “If we get it right, we’ll get the car.” And, hurray, there are commercial opportunities in spirituality. But the hijacking of ‘spirituality’ and reframing it in self serving agendas is nothing new, of course.
In a sense it might also be a weird validation of our acquired abundance. “Abundance is good, there are even spiritual paths dedicated to getting cars and dream jobs and hot babes, so I’m fine…can’t be bad karma if them spiritual people are after the same thing.”
Seeing money and the gathering of this as a symbol for a certain aspect of your life seems like an interesting strategy. Bottom line might be that either everything is spiritual or nothing is. I also remember a story of a Buddhist monk who just wouldn’t get enlightened. They put him in a room full of luxury and *poof!*, he got enlightened 🙂
The idea behind viewing success and money through a spiritual lense may be to detach from it all, and to then become a skilled master at manipulating energy, not to become increasingly invested in the idea that accumulating money is spiritually enriching.
Your point is a poignant one.
But you must observe this phenomena from the gestalt perspective.
When you do you will realize that spirituality has long been the portal technology for observing and engaging in existence from higher frequencies of resonance. Our minds operate at 15% capacity, our eyes cannot even witness the fuller spectrum that even animals can see.
True spirituality is the portal to witness and exist within fuller resonance and frequencies.
Because the western zeitgeist is obsessed with abundance in all forms it takes a true master spiritualist to help others ascend to perceive the portals of higher resonance that they have no paradigm to comprehend or detect.
Therefore many spiritualists that are not as skilled, bring the message down to the public’s perception which is focused on constructs of “abundance”. This is a language that the westerner understands.
Hopefully those teachers that resonate altruistic portals to love and ascension will quickly graduate their students from “control and fear” abundance constructs that reinforce the power of ego… others have sold out or have lost their way in a haze of vanity, narcissism and opportunism.
Bare in mind that spirituality is like art, there are many artists but few masters; their are many spiritualists but few masters, but they exist, you need only to place the wish inside your heart form a perspective of complete freedom and mercy (i.e. true love).
You have a keen sense for the truth.
Warm wishes and peace to All.
– b