The spiritual entrepreneur: cop out or authentic agent of transformation and healing – PART 2 (see Part 1 here: thepoliticsofspirituality.blogspot/2014/07/the-spiritual-entrepreneur-sell-out-or.html) In an earlier post, I raised suspicions related to the justification and logic of bringing one’s gifts and talents, such as promoting psychological techniques of transformation and healing, and spiritual methods and promises of existential significance, such as going beyond suffering, realizing a liberating or profound dimension of reality, etc. In that piece, I wanted to highlight how those spiritual self-help pursuits are bound up with a consumer-driven culture and pose all kinds of problems and suspicions in our contemporary health and wellness social space, in what Philip Rieff calls “the triumph of therapeutic culture”. I further pointed out that, despite the best intentions and even hard-won genuine insights and gifts offered by such talented individuals, if the problems of social justice and the many systematic asymmetries (even malpractices) tied to their enterprise are not addressed directly and fiercely, then the spiritual entrepreneur’s “goods,” so to speak, may very well be contributing more to the problems than the solutions that confront the human condition and planet. Further, I suggested in that earlier post that the spiritual outlook and justifications of such spiritual entrepreneurs definitely lack a certain kind of robust public literacy and ethical discernment, which is indispensable for any projects that “claim” to bring the spiritual, the sacred, a sense of divinity or simply the Good into the world, into a dynamically engaged life. After all, since spiritual entrepreneurs by definition need to emanate confidence to be successful in the marketplace, this brings about a real conundrum with respect to certain areas of growth, dysfunction, corruption and honest assessment of oneself and the human predicament that, admittedly, none of us have figured out—all the less folks trained and seasoned in spiritual council after the counterculture of the 60s.. This latter point inevitably brings the subject of politics, economics, and social justice to the fore. Today, in the spirit of MLK, instead of elaborating on the critical concerns I raised in my earlier post, I want to make some further observations and confer some words of support to spiritual entrepreneurs, those of us struggling to live a meaningful, compassionate, spiritual life, those of us striving to embody a deeply caring moral sensibility and deliver relevant spiritual insights that can have real impact on the world, on the concrete and messy conditions of reality, on the front lines, as it were. In what follows, then, let us highlight some of the obstacles that haunt such genuine spiritual aspirations and instead create a space for more understanding and sympathy for the many spiritually inspired friends trying to have a positive impact on the greater social good by bringing the best of their insights, skills and potentials to the world, to the lived experiences and struggles of so many lost souls, stuck between traditional religions and purely secular (materialistic rational) culture. In a conversation with my girlfriend, who is an accomplished author and has had multiple opportunities to thrive in the neo-liberal consumer driven spiritual culture of health and wellness (LOHAS) but has usually turned down such opportunities, I realized that there are many reasons why spiritual entrepreneurs tend to bring a lot of ambition, confidence, idealistic promises, and marketing to their work in the world. Why? Because contemporary secular society does not afford opportunities and legitimate pathways for economic flourishing and public recognition. Unless one chooses to become a committed participant in a conventional religious tradition or if one chooses to become a psychologist, the only other options with respect to the humanities and social service revolve around becoming an educator, lawyer, a (starving) artist, and so forth. In other words, spiritually inspired folks suffer from a problem of legitimation. In short, we can relate this problem of legitimation to the disadvantage of being a minority (obviously not in the racial, gendered, or economic sense of the term). For example, if you tell someone you are a spiritual teacher, a guru, a healer, or a self help coach, that means you must necessarily be highly individualistic, and it probably means you are either striving to make it big, such as getting on Oprah, or settling for a very humble life with a small clientele to pay for your mediocre needs. And let’s face it, most spiritual people have a large dose of healthy confidence and lofty or optimistic ideals, a large dose of both healthy and unhealthy inflation – in other words, confidence and positive self-biasing seem to be prerequisites for the well-meaning spiritual entrepreneur. But the therapeutic culture and in particular the health and wellness sector—even though it is quite a large sector in society and exemplified, for instance, by Oprah’s Sunday spiritual program, among so many other trends in contemporary society—is still a minority in terms of concrete institutional support and legacies; and thus one has to work real hard, individuate forcefully, live in certain ways “on the margin” of the secular norms, and, above all else, succeed by virtue of exceptional qualities and skills, such as interpersonal charisma, presentation of credentials, and very strong confidence in their own self-perceived value regarding what they are doing and how they are purposeful participants in social space. What I realized, then, is that spiritual entrepreneurs have it very hard, and while we have a liberal progressive society with “differentiated spheres” that have given rise to a much broader range of individual opportunity, prosperity, and diverse options within the democratic modern west, nevertheless the spiritual entrepreneur is displaced—neither fitting quite here nor there, neither traditional priest, nor clinical psychologist, neither old school philosopher (I mean Old School!) nor esteemed Shaman. However, in addition to the problem of legitimation—which breeds an every-gifted spiritual-person-for-themselves atmosphere amidst a competitive social landscape that demands you compromise your spirituality with marketing strategies and persuasion tactics—there’s the controversial question of authenticity itself. Truthfulness, reliability, trustworthiness, validity—however we frame it—all of us can relate to the ups and downs of everyday life (and there can be some serious ups and some devastating downs) and these ups and downs have a direct bearing on the different professionals and experts in society, that is, who we turn to when times are rough or driven my restlessness. On the one hand, everyone can attest to the simple fact that there are more or less honest people, more or less caring people, more or less empathic and considerate people (we won’t get into the troubling topic of sociopaths), more or less seasoned experts in different fields. For instance, we’ve all probably experienced a shady dentist, or a negligent doctor, or a teacher that treats students sourly, or an administrator who has ambitions to eventually become a superintendent and thus everything administered is about the testing results of his or her charter school. He or she doesn’t give a damn about the students (in fact, some will find ways of filtering out students who are less likely to succeed). Such an educator does everything to appear to care when in actuality the opposite is (more or less) the case. The point is that we all have the practical discernment and first hand experience of encountering ‘more or less’ degrees of authenticity and reliability in regard to citizens various (legitimate) roles and integrity in social life. But with the spiritual entrepreneur, they are already struggling to stabilize their living and well-being since social structures offer all kinds of professional roles that do not capture their own passion and ideals adequately. In other words, even to be deemed inauthentic you need to be IN a legitimate social role in the first place! Think about it. It’s a strange predicament! For these reasons, I truly feel for my spiritual inspired friends, understand better their dilemma and inevitable compromises. As I realized this during a discussion with my partner, I thus began to have much more sympathy and tolerance in my conscience for my talented and well-meaning spiritual friends, however ambitious and confident they may show themselves to be. And, to be clear, I am anything but a stark materialist, atheist, or conventional secular citizen, which is to say that I myself have partaken, and continue to partake, in the liberal spiritual world of healing, transformation, and existential meaning-making in service to a larger vision and possibility space for the human condition and planet. Next, and this is a critical insight, I realized that when spiritual entrepreneurs—really, I want to change the label and call them “spiritually inspired friends”—when such spiritually inspired friends try to engage in the world, this goes against a massive historical pattern or trend. What is this historical trend? It is the manifest tendency to separate the spiritual from the worldly, to siphon off the profound and mystical from the profane and instrumental, the sublime and beautiful from the realistic and practical, the pure and holy from the political and militant. To keep this short, I now have a deeper respect that, rather than settling for a monastery, or entering the forest (metaphorically speaking), such spiritually inspired friends are doing their very best to engage in-the-world, which entails all the problems and obstacles mentioned above. This is no easy task, and this requires courage, and the odds are against such efforts. It’s never been, and perhaps never will be easy to engage the world and pursue change based on fierce compassion, spiritual wisdom, and a deeper vision that resists purely materialist, naturalistic (read: scientific) and practical-instrumental (the technical word is ‘utilitarian’) perspectives of the Good life, especially in modern times. In other words, these spiritually inspired friends are aspiring to reverse the ‘other-worldly’ impulse that has characterized thousands of years of dissociating the spiritual dimension from civic life, that has designated monks, mystics, religious adepts and genuine spiritual seekers to the back-burners, that has sidelined their spiritual status and pursuits to private affairs or mystifying hogwash, or merely fantastic seductions (even though, of course, the spiritual and religious have always been bound up with political and economic procedures and social maintenance, however hidden). Finally, the last insight is that my spiritually inspired friends, given such hard and complicated circumstances, have all kinds of good reasons to ban together, to form alliances, to endorse each other, to build networks of trust and mutual support. Not only is this a natural dimension of the human community—that is, being-together meaningfully or what we usually call social belonging—but it’s a necessity to band together according to shared passions and efforts that revolve around these spiritual and moral ideals, ideals that have been strongly privatized and often marginalized over the past few centuries. To reiterate, in a strong sense, such spiritually inspired friends are battling with legitimation issues which directly impinge on their identity, credibility and hence authenticity. And even if the age of independent contractors, cultural diversity, and therapeutic culture are en vogue in our contemporary democratic milieu, this does not negate the challenges and alienation that the spiritual entrepreneur confronts. Further, such spiritually inspired friends are taking the spiritual impulse and trying to square it up with worldly engagement—which includes all kinds of messy problems and controversies—and this goes against the massive historical record. So, therefore, we ought to support, respect, and generously give feedback to such spiritually inspired friends. And the banning together, the agreements, mutual support and reciprocity of such overlapping spiritual communities and figures all need to be seen in the wider context of struggle, marginalization, best intentions and experiments in manifesting new possibilities. Of course, this does not erase the problems and suspicions and concerns with certain naive, idealistic, overly optimistic, and other misleading features of the spirituality and self-help arena. But it can broaden our understanding and patience, allowing us to know that many of our spiritually inspired friends are just beginning to find (and perhaps legitimate) their identities, and they need (and use) each other—as all human beings need (and use) each other. While there are a host of questions and conversations still to be developed, I can say I’m more appreciate and in support of so many of my friends and their various communities in their spiritual efforts and idealistic visions for a better tomorrow, however clumsy, compromised, suspect and imperfect (as are all things in the world). The current times mark an exponential influx, an overwhelming array of asymmetries, injustices, deception, and obstacles—along with extensive possibilities and new hopes and resources—all of which call for great courage, many mistakes (falling down and getting back up again) and ongoing learning and character building. Many of the obvious injustices and crises, and there are many, still plague and haunt our society. But when it comes to the realm of the spiritual or the sacred, such problems and obstacles exist no less, even though they are often hidden underneath seemingly plausible voices and good intentions. Yet most of us are no less complicit in these mistakes, misunderstandings and naive idealisms, all of which impact, however indirectly or subtly, the more obvious and pervasive crises dealing with race, gender, class, warfare and whatever else stymies our path to planetary well being and equity.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 23:46:41 +0000
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