Can Spirituality and Materialism Co-Exist?
Sometimes I think it’s a great shame that spirituality has been “mainstreamed”. Don’t get me wrong, I think that if we encourage peace and kindness in an often hostile world then it is a really good thing that spirituality is becoming more the norm. The problem, as I see it, is that ideas like manifestation and abundance are so often linked to material things that the true essence of spiritualism is becoming a bit forgotten.
Plenty of people go to classes for meditation or yoga and other spiritual based practices and then promptly forget to practice what they’ve learned in their everyday lives. It’s not a whole person approach, but compartmentalised into pockets of “me-time”.
I know that spirituality can mean many things to different people. For some it’s deeply religious. For others it’s a belief in something bigger than ones-self. For me, it means being kind and caring about people, animals and the planet.
Sometimes to spread the messages about kindness and make significant changes to the planet we need money so that we can fund the travel or the message. Money is an enabler, a tool. So I do get that it’s difficult to separate spirituality and materialism completely.
I do quite often hear myself saying that I’m not materialistic, but am I really not? I do have some nice things, I own a comfortable home and I have access to a decent car and I do get to go on holidays and other experiences. That is a lot more than a lot of other people have and can do. Although I am careful with my money; (being a finance bod kind of makes you like that!); if I need something, I can just generally go out and buy it. Obviously nothing major without some planning, but I don’t have to make choices between putting food on the table and a new pair of trainers. Could I cope if I had a lot less? I would like to think so, I have had to manage in the past when things have been tough but I honestly won’t really know unless I have to face it.
The last few years I have been a lot more considered about what I buy, and the various lock-downs were a massive experience in terms of what we really need to live with and what’s important in life. It’s made me think about wasting less food, consuming less in general and being more minimalist than I already am.
I’m not going to judge someone who does want to buy nice things, if they can afford them, and if it makes them feel good. As long as they aren’t harming anyone else in the process then it might mean a great deal of happiness to them. It might be how they experience spirituality in the physical form; it might help them make lovely memories with their family.
I simply struggle with the messages on social media about spirituality and manifesting money and opportunities when we still have poverty and famine in existence in the world.
I do also have to consider that it would be good if more wealth was in the hands of people with a social conscience. That would be great. If there were more rich people who cared then eventually wealth might become more fairly distributed. Maybe Covid-19 will be the seismic shift needed for people to wake up and stop accepting the things that are happening and we could start seeing more positive action to tackle our world problems and less fear mongering to keep us all in our place; or maybe it won’t!
Maybe it’s just that I am being drawn to the wrong places along my own spiritual journey, so that I am encountering too many articles and texts that seem to me to have a more materialistic endgame. So the responsibility is mine, I’ve fallen down the proverbial rabbit hole. I’m talking about articles about the Law of Attraction and the idea of using it to attract all of your desires because that would make you happy rather than just being grateful for what you already have. If your gratitude practice is only done to attract more good things, then is it genuinely experiencing gratefulness for everything you have now?
In his book, “Cutting through spiritual materialism” Chogyam Trungpa explains the common pitfall that most people on a spiritual journey fall prey to; spiritual materialism. The universal tendency, he explains, is to see spirituality as a process of self-improvement and reinforcing the false sense of self — the ego. Ego is able to convert everything to its own use, even spirituality”. We are often “deceiving ourselves into thinking we are developing spirituality when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.”
I watched the documentary “Walk with Me” a while back, which was a journey into the world of the monastic community in France that practices mindfulness with Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh. It was a deeply moving film actually and I watched it in the hippest cinema I’ve ever been to, we are talking sofa seats made out of pallets with old “cwtchy” welsh blankets like my Nan used to have over her knees and your own pillow! (Amazing right!).
Anyway, there is a part in the film that made me realise that a spiritual journey isn’t easy for even the most devout among us.
A group of monks and nuns from the village travel to the States to spread the word about mindfulness. One of the nuns was from America and she only gets to go home when they make these trips which is really infrequent as they give up all their possessions when they join the community. Well, she visited her father in a home and it was really very emotional to watch. Her father was clearly overwhelmed seeing her and you can only imagine how much he misses her. It struck me then that was an enormous sacrifice and was it a bit selfish on her part to leave her elderly father all alone?
Obviously, I could be accused of being judgmental here and I may not know all the facts of her situation. No one is perfect, all the choices we make impact on other people somehow. All you can really do is to keep learning from your mistakes.
For a while, I have been going round in circles myself spiritually but I think I have accepted that life is always going to throw challenges at me and that’s how I’ll continue to grow as a person. It’s not about being the most positive person in the world all the time and it is okay to make mistakes, you don’t have to be right or perfect all the time.
If I can give you one reference that I keep coming back to since I found it, it’s a book by Don Miguel Ruiz: The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom. I won’t go into too much detail now but it’s based on ancient Toltec wisdom.
The Four Agreements shows us that by breaking free from societal expectations we can make new agreements for ourselves.
The first agreement is to be impeccable with your word, and never use it against yourself or others. Your words transform the way you think, and affect the opinions of others, so choose them wisely.
The second agreement says that you won’t need to take things personally if you have a strong sense of yourself. The reality is that nothing people say or do to you is actually about you — it is about them. Everyone looks at the world from a different perspective.
The third agreement is that we should not make assumptions. (I can not tell you how many times this has been a lesson I needed to learn in the past!). We should ask questions instead so that we don’t jump to incorrect conclusions.
The fourth agreement is to always do your best. It’s also okay if your best changes, some days you will have more energy and more patience but if you always do your best to apply the first three agreements then you might start to change your own life narrative.
“Life is like dancing. If we have a big floor, many people will dance. Some will get angry when the rhythm changes. But life is changing all the time” — Don Miguel Ruiz
