08/09/2025
I was reading an article earlier about Spiritual Materialism and the 'New Age' written by a former new-ager-now-committed Christian.
None of what she said insulted me or my intelligence. The author of the article made an entirely sensible argument as she highlighted the financial and spiritual cost of a pathway that often speaks of 'Truth' whilst simultaneously applying a consumer ethos at it's centre.
Just so you know, I have no problem with anyone asking for recompense for a job well done. (Even Vicars get paid.)
I was struck by what I believe, to be the authors on point accusation that New Age spirituality carries with it an implicit materialist message; to 'belong' you feel must own certain items, attend certain courses, you must dress in a certain way, adorn your home with all those things that shout 'New Age!'...none of this is necessarily negative. However, if you feel that your spirituality cannot function without certain tools, artifacts or materials, then might you possibly be using such tools as crutches and paying a high price in the process?
To illustrate her point the author felt that passages of the Bible had been used by those invested in selling 'The Law of Attraction' to people as a way of getting MORE material stuff. This is not a new phenomenon and harks back to the Science of Mind movement back in 1920s and 1930s America. People such as Florence Scovel-Shinn, Neville Goddard and Emmett Fox, all committed to a Christian faith, ascribed new meaning to passages of the Bible, using such statements as 'All this and more shall be added unto you' (Matthew 6:33) as God's stamp of approval on using the Law of Attraction to gain material things.
I now consider the LOA movement, along with certain tools and ideas sold as part of New Age spirituality as 'entry points' to the spiritual path. If they act as a springboard or jumping off point for digging deeper into your own nature, then they can be a positive force for good. The New Age/LOA mantra is one that most modern men and women love - 'You can still be spiritual and have three houses!'
Of course you can, this is not an either/or situation.
However, you are who you are regardless of any trinkets or rituals.
Let's focus on that and try to do away with the superficial stuff. Yes, we are here to be embodied in a physical existence with all that that entails, BUT this earthly life is temporal, transient and will eventually be forgotten, along with all of the material objects that you have acquired. The only lasting gold is that of your spiritual awareness, your Soul Growth, that is what you take with you.
As Bill and Ted rightly said, everything else is just 'dust in the wind dude.'
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The further that I have walked along my own path I have naturally moved in a direction of simplification. I don't believe that it is necessary to 'gain' anything anymore and whilst 'growth' appears at first to be a reaching outwards to something new, it can also be a deepening inwards to where the real treasure resides.
What begins as a seemingly linear journey is eventually recognised as being an infinite spiral. That long walk home is a neverending return to the Truth that lies at the heart of all being. To walk it is to peel away layer upon layer of false-self. All of the things you were told about yourself or assumed to be correct are up for grabs, the process is one of spiritual refinement and it calls for less and less 'stuff' the further you walk. The things that each of us carry will be a mixture of psychological, spiritual, emotional, physical and/or material. In the process of shifting to real understanding and abiding in Self, extraneous materials are simply not needed.
The spiritual path which feels authentic to me is a turning inwards, a return to the Truth of who I Am, who I have always been, who we ALL are.
For better or worse we are constantly pulled outwards, away from our core and out into the world around us. The cynic in me recognises this as a ploy to detach us from an intimate knowledge of our spirit selves. The more shiny the advert, the brighter the TV show, the more mired we become in gossip and comparison, the more we aspire to own certain items or live a certain way, the more trapped on the treadmill of life we become. We become a cog in a larger machine of commodities, markets and consumerism.
In our modern day disposable, short-attention span, conflicted world, we need to return to the very heart of what and who we are. Whether we know it or not, we are all walking our own spiral path home. We can delay the inevitable, turn our face from the truth, but eventually we will all have to choose a path of Self realisation.
The question we should surely ask ourselves is;
Do we begin our return now or later?
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For more articles like this, please visit:
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