Ancient
Hindus, when choosing a temple site, considered cats to be a bad omen.
Modern environmentalists want pet cats to be kept inside, to protect
birds. "Stop scaring the birds away," my cats doubtless want to say to
humans: "
You stay inside."
Indoors or out, my cats treat a human lap like a temple, humming their
mantra till the sacrilege of human busy-ness destroys nirvana.
I'm
not religious. Even generic spirituality repels me by implying human
relationships and goals are "attachment" or "desire" (did your yoga
teacher trot that out?) If you have any aim, it's to act like neutral
countries in World War II: pretend to be Switzerland, above-it-all and
chill. Speaking of WWII:
"There
are no victims.... You can't change the government, you can't change
nuclear waste, but you can change what it means to you."
So says one of
Shirley MacLaine's
gurus, inspiring the actress recently to dismiss the death camps of the
Holocaust as karma. Allow me to guess why spiritual leaders "love what
is" when it comes to atrocities: these preachers want us to confuse
feeling powerful with
being powerful.
Acknowledging victims disturbs our grandiose transcendence of all
earthly things. Contrary to pretense, these gurus too are impotent in
disasters. And morality would require that the
truly powerful
attempt justice where none can suffice (as in genocide). So New-Age
leaders are amoral. They get rich telling us we're magnificent even
while we cause horrors like Climate Change.
Why would anyone say we can't prevent toxic waste? Here's one satirical answer:
"If you are critical of anything, you are using your MIND. And remember, you are so much more than your mind. Let it go. ...Dive deeper in... under my influence... and believe everything I say."
(RSD Nation, on the Sedona Method scam)
Products notably endorsed by Oprah include "
The Untethered Soul." In a workshop about it, the speaker asked me, "How can you
know that mass extinction is bad?" I said that annihilation of life
defines badness.
He countered, "We don't know that, say, a nuclear bomb doesn't lead to
something wonderful. If Hitler hadn't existed, maybe we wouldn't be here
now." (Of course I stammered something to the effect that I'd gladly
forsake my own existence to erase Hitler's atrocities.) Condoning or
rationalizing human extermination is evil.... and
chill.
Human warmth is "co-dependence" or "people pleasing" (
A.A. Twelve-Step meets Sedona Method, with hordes of us now addicted to the
"Law of Attraction.")
Partial
truths becomes lucrative charades. These lovely lies seduce innumerable
Westerners. Our culture is lousy with bastard children of Eastern
philosophies that developed where (unlike in democracies) people had
almost no hope of improving their physical circumstances. Self-absorbed
passivity is an inevitable result where "
all beings are puppets on a carousel." My
Untethered Soul workshop
leader put it colorfully: "I'm God in drag, just watching the show."
That mind-set is particularly regressive for women in the modern world.
It's already too easy for us to be passive and "in drag."
Life
coaches and entire careers are launched by the notion that silver
linings are all that glitters. They mesmerize you with what you want to
hear: the status quo is the eternal now. Soothingly, this new escapist
orthodoxy fits you in with all the locals stoned on Medicinal. Now-legal
drug dealers rationalize the bounty they reap from hapless substance
abusers: "I believe I deserve it, so the universe will serve it."
Or if not,
meh. Fatalism is
satori. Drug-like, no-drama
reductio ad absurdam "consciousness"
portrays an enlightenment where eventually the mind becomes a closed
loop: what you have must be what you want, and your narrow horizons must
be where you belong.
Conflict is someone else's issue.
Your self-esteem is so robust, if you fail to comprehend something, the
fault couldn't possibly lie in you. Intellect and discernment? That's
just "separateness" and "disconnect."
It sounds absurd
but we really are surrounded by people convinced that thoughts control
reality. They seem and in fact may be perfectly nice. But when you
mention something unpleasant to them, they actually believe you are
creating it by focusing on it, so they pity or resent your "negativity."
To acknowledge some failure of humanity is to disturb the pristine
thought creations of folks who have, say, seen “
What the Bleep Do We Know” (a popular stealth infomercial for the
Ramtha cult). Do you dare deny that writing “love” or “Buddha” on a bottle of water will change H2O into a magical
elixir? Actress
Gwyneth Paltrow is
the tip of that superstitious iceberg. (Down its slippery slope are two
hypnotists I know personally who believe that water has emotions. When
they tell their clients, it gives a new meaning to brainwashing.)
We never hear from the folks who tried the mind cure but died.
Of course your attitude affects your experience. Yet it's grotesque to extrapolate that, say, chanting "Peace" will end wars.
Pseudo-science pop
psychology draws the most far-reaching conclusions from literally
narrow experiments like double-slit science and Random Number
Generators. Yes, it's a glorious feeling to identify with quantum
physics, cherry-pick data, preach to a converted echo-chamber, and
indulge the limitless sense that the planet will be fine (if that
matters) when you feel good about yourself. But was Tibet invaded
because the monks there prayed
defectively? Disciplines that may be new to
you have been around for centuries.
Even
if "life is an illusion," moral action can keep you from sliding into
negligence and damaging your own soul. (Don't think you
have a soul? Hold all truth to be sacred, keep doing good deeds, and you'll start to feel it.)
I've seen a
ghost. Unfortunately ethics prevent me from capitalizing on such things, unlike the author of
Proof of Heaven.
As the Dalai Lama said about him, when a man makes extraordinary
claims, a "thorough investigation" is required, to ensure "that person
reliable, never telling lie," and has "no reason to lie." Taking
advantage of our griefs and our fears around death like so many
opportunists,
Eben Alexander, MD, is apparently a con artist.
The afterlife probably isn't what we'd like. Time itself is illusory.
One certainty exists: that con artists tell you what you
want to hear.
Mystical
forces exist. I often know who's phoning me without looking at caller
ID. I've met folks on the astral plane. Yeah: wow. Just because God
exists doesn't mean you should believe everything you want about Her (ha
ha). Serendipity doesn't absolve you of responsibility. There's no
proof that prayer or meditation stops disasters, in fact, the opposite:
ignoring climate change causes it, and escapism breeds consumers and
speeds mass extinction.
So I don't buy it, no matter
how it's packaged. And packaged it is. Bland, self-serving delusion has
become an industry. It's the spiritual version of "Supersize Me": the
delicious lie is cheap at first, but soon it's the only thing that makes
you feel good, like McDonalds tasting better than home dinners. It's
like when Chinese communists offered party membership to take the place
of clan loyalty. The problem with conformity is that it makes you very
sure of yourself while it eats your brain.
 |
| Shape-shifting Hindu Deity Hanuman |
Prayers, techniques and fellowship groups
can neutralize any mental agitation, and incidentally neutralize your
sense of justice and decency. You're rendered infantile, craving this
pap of innocence to which churches, cults and seminar programs are all
too eager to addict you.
Zen is hip. "You treat everybody the same. That's Buddhist," a psychiatrist said to a psychopath.
"No
Drama" creates no accountability. I attended a presentation by Carolyn
Myss, the famous intuitive, and she advised anti-civic things like, "If
anyone tries to complicate your life, turn and walk away from them" and
look beyond this world to other galaxies.
In my experience, any good educator is trying to "complicate your life."
And this planet desperately needs your devotion. Psychic ability does
not indicate ethics, especially when the DVD is available at the door,
only $69.86, exonerating you from responsibility for your own planet. If
you believe that channeled entities have super powers, why not be wary
of their misuse of said power? Power corrupts. Why wouldn't greed exist
on all levels, even beyond the Milky Way? It's easy to become pawns of
megalomaniacs who sell you the promise of recreating you in their glossy
image.
Confusing correlation and causation, here's a typical calculation from Minister
Mary Morrissey:
"Your
income is the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.
Why? Because people who spend time together share a common level of
consciousness, and the person who knows how to make fifty thousand
dollars a month is at a different level of awareness than the person who only knows how to make fifty thousand dollars a year."
...Or maybe we just hang out with our homies, Mary. I personally avoid spending time with ministers of
for-profit churches. I wonder if this is your thought process: "God is love; I love money; therefore money is God."
Someone is
milking our
sacred cows. Capitalism has married non-violent communication. Their
baby is as cardboard as a GMO veggie burger. Chewing in unison feels
like
Oneness.
Here's the latest Bible, per the NY Times:
“The
Secret” is not really a book but a series of misquotations from
historical figures and fraudulent maxims from no-count hucksters.
"The Secret" is that you narrow your focus and throw out any evidence that doesn't fit. "Law of Attraction" creates a
separate reality for
entitled narcissists where acknowledging environmental degradation
perpetuates it. "What you resist persists," eh? These wise ones tend to
empower themselves on Climate Change -- something that dwarfs anyone's
hedonistic navel-gazing -- by shrugging it off as End Times. (Remember
2012? Oh, yeah:
apocalypse was
averted by meditators. Mmm hmmm.) Till the End, let's keep chanting to
ourselves that, in between hurricanes, left-wing sustainable gardening
will cancel out right-wing weapons arsenals.
Do you disagree? Really? Or are you complaining because your fantasies got jostled?
 |
Please don't stay silent when "spirituality"
condones our killing the biosphere. |
To honor what's authentic, it takes true strength of character.
Or... a cat.
As
Chinese put it, "The Dao that can be spoken is not the Dao." However,
the meow that can be spoken is the Meow. God's Creation includes
countless other species even more fragile than humans.
Want to feel God-like? Be accountable.
Reportedly even the Dalai Lama said, “The best meditation is critical thinking – followed by action.”
Thoughts
do have substance. So at this juncture, if it doesn't stop mass
extinction, it's self-centered materialism, folks, not spirituality.
(How do you know that Heaven isn't where animals sit
in judgment of us? Save the Climate, and maybe eternity will be spent
being caressed by elephant trunks and licked by lions! Or fluffy
kittens. Yes, you like fluffy kittens, don't you?)
Of course I had to get sarcastic and counter: "Fluffy unicorns may come between the poachers and the unarmed wildlife rangers... and the elephants (60% dead since 2002)... and rhinos (700 killed this year). Better to BE an experienced gunMAN, and protect wildlife from the righteous apathy of city-dwelllers."
Bloodthirsty beasts can help women stop mass extinction: to lard up my first novel beyond that basic premise, I burrowed through as much research as I could stand. Research is not my forte - I'm better at, say, enjoying a sunset while sipping hot cocoa. So I had no way of knowing in 2009 that the central characters of my novel were coming to life, as it were, in the Gir Forest in India. There, a politician had decided specifically to hire women as wild-lion guardians. That, in a country where female infanticide is still quite common? My fantastical fiction was afoot as far from fearless feminism as it was fair to foresee!