The way people treated my spiritual gift was NOT okay.
And I’m here to give them a big rant about that.
In fact, I’m publishing this even if the people I have in mind don’t care to read… Because somewhere, someone else might relate to my situation and feel less alone.
I harbour a lot of resentment towards the spiritual community. It’s no wonder I gave up on everything and pretended to be an atheist for 10 years. For a long time, I believed this resentment was unwarranted, or I was somehow too sensitive or ungrateful… But eventually I learned that, no, actually there was a VERY GOOD REASON for the way I was feeling. And the only thing I’ll say to the people who still think my feeling is “wrong” is: shame on you.
Spiritual people from a western industrial background (ESPECIALLY middle class white people, which is the category where my abusers fit into) need to drop their arrogance, confront their egos, and be on timeout for a while. Yes, just like toddlers. They’re spoiled and immature. Why NOT treat them like toddlers? I’m sick of the bullshit. I’m sick of the narcissism. I’m especially sick of repeatedly blaming myself for these failed friendships, when in fact I was not the problem; But ya know what people always say about having empathy: only the empathetic are open to the idea that they might have room for learning and growth; the arrogant and narcissistic do not. Instead, they keep blaming the empathetic. And the cycle continues.
It took me many months of talking to the black and Asian diaspora, as well as truly native white folks like the Sámi and the people of Gaeltachtaí… to understand that REAL spirituality is not this phenomenal bullshit the white middle class people make it out to be. Real spirituality requires going against your ego, not feeding it. And by not feeding the ego, I don’t mean “oh, meditate and recite like a parrot mantras that talk about selflessness as if you weren’t a motherfucking hypocrite and actually walked this talk”; INSTEAD, what I mean is: before you TALK about selflessness, practice it; Before you TALK about altruism, practice it; before you TALK about open-mindedness, fucking practice it, you idiot.
A whole load of talking and not enough doing, oh, where have I seen this before?!
The way things are, all I see is fake masks of “spiritual wholesomeness” hiding very immature and selfish real people. Instead of addressing this immaturity and selfishness, they pretend it isn’t there; they adopt a very fake, exaggerated, over-the-top “sweet talk” and anxiously hope that no-one will notice it’s an act. I’m sick of pretending I don’t notice it just to keep the peace.
No, I will not apologise for the anger. It’s warranted. People deserve it. I’ve been nice for far too long, and look where this niceness has landed me! Now I am leaving NOBODY off the hook. If the shoe fits, put it on, use it to walk the hell out of here, and think about what you’ve done. Just like a toddler on timeout.
I’m not saying that “only the indigenous can have spirituality because they were born indigenous” — that’s a projection middle class white people make, because THEY think everything is about blood, but as always, they’re too fucking coward to admit that, so they project it into others. What I’m actually saying, to dumb it down and finally make myself understood for the people who might be too obtuse, is that “the reason only the indigenous have authentic spirituality is because they don’t have a motherfucking superiority complex, karen”. I hope this drove the point home.
When you grow up listening to a History written by *your* ancestors as if they had always been victorious over everyone on the planet because of some BULLSHIT innate superiority, of course you’re going to internalise the idea that everything YOU think, feel, or do, is always virtuous and good, and you can do no wrong, make no mistakes, or have no need whatsoever to learn with the people your History books are othering. Okay? Hard as this may be to swallow, you can no longer ignore this pill.
So, no, you don’t actually need to seek initiation in existing traditions in case you weren’t born into it; You can if you feel a genuine calling, but there’s no *absolute need to fit in*. The world is our oyster when it comes to learning; we never stop learning! Who knows what other, new traditions can start? Who said everything had to start in a distant past? Who knows, maybe the “aliens and pleiadians and whatnot” aficionados have a point…
What you need to do, instead, is adopt the MINDSET that indigenous people have — and no, it has nothing to do with specific cultures. I’m talking big picture: the mindset that “my people exists here on this piece of land. Other peoples exist over there, on other pieces of land. They are not superior to us, or vice-versa. We can all learn from each other if we care to listen more than we assume.”
That is the mindset you need. Listen more than you assume. Simple as that.
It does not require a Jesus or Buddha or Pachamama level of sanctity and selflessness. On the contrary! A lot of indigenous people are immature too; that’s a human flaw we’re born with and need to learn to outgrow, regardless of culture. So please don’t go romanticising indigenous people either or thinking they’re somehow superhuman or holier than you. There’s no need for any of that! All I’m saying is they don’t have a coloniser lens to look at the world — precisely because (oh, who would have thought! Gasp! What a novel conclusion!) they did not fucking colonise the world. They’re minding their own business. When you spend a long time minding your own business, collectively, you sort of learn that your worldview isn’t the only valid one; that other ones exist and have as much merit as yours. If conflicts and war occur between different indigenous nations, you don’t go like, “oh, I know what’s on their mind, and those other people’s minds too, etc”. Instead, you know your business; And you know what the interaction brought you; but you still don’t assume you can read other cultures like a book just because you briefly encountered them.
Now… contrast that to the Neopagan and newage people today: they read ONE BOOK (to be FUCKING GENEROUS. Usually it’s just ONE PAGE) about this or that culture, and automatically start assuming, “oh, I can make links to this and to that, and I fully understand this tradition here, and I fully know what it means now, and I’m an expert now”.
You see, that stems from the internalised colonial mindset I was talking about. It happens even if you pretend you’re “against” Capitalism and Imperialism and whatnot. That just means you acknowledge the OVERT kinds of colonial attitude are harmful… But what about your internalised bullshit? Are you keeping THAT under the rug forever?
I met many people like that, who thought they were such hippies and so wholesome and very “peace-and-love”… But whenever I talked about any of my spiritual experiences that didn’t match what they already assumed, they immediately corrected me. And it wasn’t even their lane. For example, they knew a lot about Buddhist meditation, but when I remarked about a totally different thing (my oracular practice; a specific thing that happened during it), instead of welcoming it as a lesson FROM me, they’d “correct” what I said about my own path that wasn’t even their lane, just to feel in control and smarter than I.
And the last guy who did that still has the nerve to send me emails pretending he doesn’t know why I don’t wanna talk to him anymore. (I can say this here because I’m pretty sure he’s not reading. He assumes. He doesn’t listen).
Assumptions, always assumptions. That’s what internalised colonialism does to you. It gets you addicted to making assumptions, to “always being right”, to consider learning from the other “a waste of time” — or worse, in an even more psychotic distortion, “going against intuition”. Uhhhhhh no. That’s not intuition. That’s arrogance. I’ve written about that. The fact it isn’t obvious to some people and they even mistake the two, is a testament that everything I said in this article is true.
I’m not writing this because of a specific person, by the way; I’m simply remembering them as I go along. The motivation for this article was in recent experiences of mine. For example, the fact I have learned a new (more “natural”, if you will) way to allow spirit possession… And it taught me that there was a very good reason why I had difficulty with formal meditation. When I said that to one of those fake-nice hippies, he gaslighted me and said I wasn’t trying hard enough. Motherfucker, I’m built different, I need to stick to mindfulness because anything more thorough opens me up. But of course he didn’t know that. It wasn’t his lane, and due to internalised colonialism, he wasn’t willing to learn from me. Oh, no, god forbid, who am I to teach anything? *Eyeroll*
I’m pretty sure that if I explain the reason for my unease with meditation using academic citations from “acceptable” white middle class men, people will listen. But if I simply lend my experience and say “I still don’t know why this happens, it just does”, no-one believes. Oh, what a “cute” double standard, ISN’T IT? What THE FUCK do you think respectable authors would even accomplish if empirical evidence had never existed? Huh? Bunch of elitists.
That’s just one incident, one example, by the way. I have countless. Most involve mysteries, so I’ll leave you wondering. They all, however, boil down to: I fucking knew something “still unknown” was going on, nobody believed because I couldn’t find an explanation in the existing corpus of “acceptable” knowledge (duh, of course not), and instead of listening, they assumed. Instead of helping, they left me to my own devices. Instead of having compassion, they abandoned me.
I’m sick of that bullshit. And as I heal and embrace my own spirituality more, I need to let this out. Did it hurt? Well, too bad. I’m choosing ME, for once. Deal with it.
