Mind your own Spirit! How to deal with “Spiritual Consumers”
Recently I have seen a rise in both Spiritual Consumerism and those who hate spiritual consumers. I find this a humorous dichotomy.
Isn’t the hater ironically being less spiritual than the “spiritual consumer.”?
Also hate is never valuable energy. Hating on anyone who isn’t being actually mean, just less-authentic-as-judged-by-you, comes from the ego – and we all know how much time the ego wastes in our lives. Your true fear is that these people may feel better or equal to you, but WHO CARES.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BfV6IU1lcAD/?tagged=selfish
Let’s define first what even is a spiritual consumer because this kind of vague label is bound to be interpreted by everyone a little differently. To me, this definition makes me think of 2 kinds of individuals:
The taker who doesn’t contribute
These are people who are only interested in trying to take in spiritual experiences when they go to Yoga, church or a meditation- or taking from any relationship what they can without contributing to others. Personally, I view those who are lacking in spirituality as not being ready to contribute, yet. They may never be ready. They may always be stuck in their selfish hole of taking, but do not hate them – they hate themselves enough, give to them what you can and gracefully move on.
https://instagram.com/p/BfW5JOzhDE1/
If you notice they also come with Toxic drama theatrics to try to lure you into giving them attention, cut them loose as in time dealing with their manipulative victim narrative will prove exhaustive in business or pleasure. Generally if you stop giving attention to this energy vampire they will find other humans to breast feed off of and feed their injustice mantras to.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BfWpTF-BFKL/?hl=en&tagged=energyvampires
You may be in a place where you can’t handle the taker, or energy vampire, and that’s ok. It is up to you to set your boundaries and standards with your own spirit. Complaining about them, or hating them means there is too much time spent already in their energy, which you already feel is not ideally aligned to yours.
When you cross the path with this type of spiritual consumer, it doesn’t have to be a Fuck off feeling, it can simply be a Bless off feeling.
The spiritual trend hunter or dabbler
Most of the time, people are referring to this more recent kind of spiritual consumer. With the rise of everything from Oprah’s free mediation iphone app to the Yoga-Latte craze, there is much to consume these days as capitalism and the state of the world has created a thriving place for the rat race to get a their quick, commitment-less, spiritual sample. There is a certain social class hating which assumes that the rich or well dressed can’t be very authentically interested in spirituality. There is also the commodification of Yoga and other practices.
Our Wellness Nom4d’s friend Alex Auder, has ironic dolls that are spiritual consumers, get them meditation beads pronto, for their fashion – #SOBLESSED
https://www.instagram.com/p/BdQcCoJAsVH/?taken-by=alexauder
Somehow if you have committed the crime of buying a Lululemon outfit instead of wearing your second hand, fair traded, hemp pants to class, you will be judged. If you eat a ham sandwich after your meditation group, beware the angry vegan discourse “Organic and free range is still MURDER!!”. If you learned reflexology locally, and not on the top of a Chinese mountain, no one will trust that you are – authentic. There is however a certain really cringe-worthy form of spiritual commodification from people who have no idea why they are wearing meditation beads, other than the fact that they think they must be cool and magically attract unicorns and wealth or anything else that THE SECRET has promised them.
My answer to all of this is that nobody is perfect and neither are you.
It’s easy to say that none of these superficial arrogant shits will ever truly be vested in your practice – but there are people who were truly self-proclaimed horrible ‘type A’ lawyers on wall street who literally quit their day job and went to India for a few years and came back with a completely new relationship with spirituality. Or those who started off ‘accessorizing’ spirituality with silly fridge magnets as a 25 year old but grew into a more authentic spiritual path later in life. Think of it this way, aren’t the people commodifying spirituality still closer to those who do not acknowledge spirituality at all? On some level do we not all start off as consumers? No one is born in Reiki level 3.
Is this company into wellness or the commodification of wellness? They lost me at MEN’S RANGE lol…
https://www.instagram.com/p/BfWLaxMH81h/?tagged=spiritual
What if your yoga pants are 100% ethical but your cat food is not. What if the fancy, perfect body LOLE girl in class is actually a really nice person and simply doesn’t know yet where to get more sustainable fashion. It’s so easy to judge, I am doing it now myself but not with hate – just with humorous insight into my own inner Judge Judy.
Next time a “Spiritual Consumer” gets in the way of your perfectly contributing authentic path, just mind your own spirit, it’s the only one you have to live with.
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