The Dark Side of the Spiritual Quest
By: Rev. Sheri Heller
Tags: Religion, Spirituality, Materialism, Psychology, Narcissism

Many narcissistic con artists market themselves as New Age coaches and charitable leaders in professional development forums. Their humanitarian do-gooder guise coupled with overtures of enlightenment procures worshipping devotees who are eager to please and grovel. A friend of mine is still reeling in the aftermath of having been a primary mark by a lauded teacher in a ‘consciousness-raising’ cult.

Photo by Дмитрий Хрусталев-Григорьев on Unsplash

Spiritual materialism, a term coined by Tibetan meditation teacher Chögyam Trungpa, describes the belief that suffering can be magically assuaged by hedonistic pursuit disguised as sanctifying thought systems, rituals and ideologies.

Trungpa wrote that we are often, “deceiving ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.”

Likewise, religious scholar Andrew Harvey has written about how we’ve become neurotically driven and addicted to ‘the light’. Harvey expounds on this premise, conveying that the ego clutches at enlightenment in an effort to fulfill the ego’s need to be ‘special’. He further conveys that the New Age Spiritual Movement capitalizes on this misguided self-absorbed search, by polarizing itself on the spiritual spectrum.

By denouncing ‘darkness’ New Agers maniacally align with an illusory sense of God-like power. They proclaim evil and sin are false constructs and assert that the unrestrained pursuit of ‘abundance’, bliss, ‘enlightenment, light, are the apex of spirituality. If others are harmed by these sacred pursuits it’s simply chalked up to karma, ‘bad energy’, and a low vibration.

Vulnerable to the trap of promised enlightenment we succumb to the seductive lure of Plastic Shamans.

Reaping from a smorgasbord of astrology, psychics, channeling, angels, crystals, and aliens, magical thinking and narcissistic grandiosity is exalted. Hungry for power, these self-aggrandized gurus, cults, workshops televangelists, mystical healers, and spiritual centers capitalize from the mass insatiable yearning to escape the human condition through idolatry and materialism. These charlatan Godheads strategically use mind control techniques to foster the sort of spiritual fetishism necessary to ensure lucrative tithes.

The need to naively worship so as to glean a sense of belonging, safety, and magical salvation is also evidenced in blind allegiance to the church. In spite of the church’s heinous history of aligning with Hitler and Mussolini, implementing the Inquisition and Crusades, the Magdalene laundries, the witch-hunts, pedophilia and the supported democide and slavery in the Americas, Africa, and Australia, the persistence with upholding illusory ideas of spiritual infallibility and idealized notions of virtue trump accountability and objective reality.

Here we see that in spite of concrete evidence that contradicts expressed spiritual and moral views, the reliance on primitive ego defenses such as confirmation bias collectively bolsters the deification of those in power. Confirmation bias only considers that which supports what people want to believe.

Spiritual teacher Krishnamurti wrote, “The evil of our time is the loss of consciousness of evil.”

This adage was exemplified in the 1978 Jonestown massacre, in which hundreds of devotees of the People’s Temple run by the psychopathic Reverend Jim Jones, were victims of a mass murder-suicide.

It is hubris to deny or attempt to transcend one’s basic humanity and it is dangerous to imbue a chosen spiritual teacher with Godlike properties. When we ascribe to the belief that we are magically capable of Divine feats, that we are not subject to human fallibility and foibles, we give our psychological shadow-free reign to act out. We become prostrating sheep that stigmatize, blame and scapegoat those who deviate from ‘The Path’.

This alienation from one’s body, emotions and inner depths proliferates the very emptiness and desperation that ironically made one susceptible to blindly deferring to false promises of infinite Cosmic bliss.

An authentic spiritual life is balanced, conscious, and leans towards wholeness. The collaborative relationship between the sensorial world of the body, the ego-self, and the metaphysical world of the spiritual self come together for the essential purpose of actualizing the capacity to love. This requires psychological maturity and the courage and perspective to humbly embrace the truth of our intrinsic nature.

As Gandhi imparted, “The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of truth.”

Humility respects our innate humanity and is therefore the trajectory to selfhood and grounded spiritual discovery and truth. We must keep our heart open to fallibility if we are to “admire the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.” (Einstein). Only through embodying our paradoxical nature, the light and the dark, can we relinquish fantasies of spiritual rescue and safeguard ourselves from the many duplicitous faces of spirituality that maneuver to deceive and exploit.