Narcissism and Spiritual Materialism: The New Age Legacy

From EngagedZen.org:

Leafing through the books and looking at the titles, I was struck by the heavy emphasis on the notion that the vast majority of them were offering people something other than reality. The theme of altered, higher, better states of consciousness occurred repeatedly. I was surprised at the number of books dedicated to "angels." The recurrent thread throughout was that of personal entitlement, getting something, reaching or attaining something. All of it seemed demeaning in a way, a tacit acknowledgment that there was something missing, that an individual could find and possess by reading the book. I could not help noticing some of the customers browsing the titles, most appeared to be dissatisfied people desperately seeking some sort of answers.

There was a bulletin board, covered with advertisements for dozens of "healers," "body workers" and various "schools" of "mystical arts." This was very much what Trungpa Rinpoche used to refer to as "the Spiritual Supermarket" a plethora of offerings appealing to our sense of spiritual poverty, offering relief in the form of spiritual commodities, "higher" states of consciousness, travel to higher realms, secrets of the universe. All of it appealing to the underlying diaspora of separateness and disconnectedness that is all pervasive in the human condition.

The overriding theme in this spiritual supermarket was that there was something missing which could be provided by the products being sold. Nowhere was the notion evident that perhaps the real problem was that we had too much to begin with, and what we really needed was to let go. 

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