If you've really had a powerful experience, it's hard to take the conventional rat race of life seriously again, but at a certain point, you do need to integrate that experience into your daily life. After enlightenment, we chopped wood and carried water. Particularly since America is, as you say, both so profoundly religious and so profoundly skeptical. We believe that it's good for you to be spiritual as long as we don't have to hear about it. That can be a cause of spiritual inflation.
Spiritual growth is just the opposite.
I do a lot of work with Elder Hostel. There's a lot of interest in this field, and I believe that interest will grow as the baby boomers continue to grow older. But I don't think this is limited to one particular age group. The Call doesn't come in a predictable way.