Spiritual Consumerism

Art by Mark Henson

Colorado based artist Adrianne Tamar Arachne brings to our attention a form of consumerism we may not often recognize - that which purports to promote spirituality and self-healing.

She says,

"I’m no longer interested in any forms of spirituality, self mastery programs, success mentors, coaches, healers, spiritual thinkers, or activists that don’t ultimately lead their communities back to responsible association to tending the Earth.

 

The never ending quest for self-realization, personal brand mastery, self-success “soul”-preneurship all strike me as bypasses that have only served to keep us disassociated from what’s actually going on here.

 

Which requires us to exit the cult of individual success, whether seen through foggy spiritualized goggles or not, and get our hands dirty in the immediacy of our grounded environmental issues around us.

 

The world dies while we buy in to yet another charismatic voice telling us how to heal some yet unmastered part of ourselves even more deeply into narcissistic individual “success.”

 

The world dies while charismatics make millions on their self help platforms.

 

Sure.. and for that matter, Please: do your personal healing.

 

But if my healing only keeps looping back to myself, and doesn’t ultimately lead to reassociation with the Earth and my work to be part of it, then I’m just a casualty of healing-themed consumerism.

 

And still contributing to the problems that are destroying the planet."

 

Many years ago Henry David Thoreau pointed out that there is not much use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on. 

More recently, Adrianne Tamar Arachne implores us to ask something similar. What good is a spiritual practice if you don't have a tolerable planet to practice it upon?