Apologies in advance to my readers, for this post might seem more be more of a long ramble or a rant, than anything else.
Divine Feminine, Empath, Tantra, Ecstatic Dance, Psychedelics, Ayahuasca, Crystals, Yoga- So many terms that have recently come into the vocabulary of any one interested in spirituality. As a practitioner, I am glad that certain spiritual practices are becoming more popular and being made accessible to more people, but I am also concerned about the amount of noise this creates for those new to the spiritual path.
The dilution of sacred knowledge is something that concerns me. I am no guru myself, and definitely do not know all there is to know-in fact, the more I learn, the less I realise I know anything about anything-, but I am convinced that many practitioners out there are conveying a watered down version of traditions and practices to make them easier to market and more palatable to the masses. The needs of humanity having changed, spirituality and access to this knowledge has become more open and democratic. However, many practitioners, consciously or not, are giving seekers only part of the picture and not equipping them with tools to explore on their own, or even encouraging further exploration. All the different styles of yoga are an example… Yoga has become an industry and many people involved in it buy into it for aesthetic reasons. (these are the people I affectionately call the Lululemmon ‘yogis’ ).
In fact, the reason I decided to write this post was my discovery of a reality TV show about Ayahuasca!
The other thing that concerns me is that practitioners are feeding people with false information. There are so many websites and people on social media pushing out nonsensical messages. Recently I saw one defining an ‘empath as being someone who can read tones, body language and understand beyond words-nope, that’s just natural human communication. Linguists have known for decades that most human communication is about tone, facial expressions, gestures. Not about the actual words used. If human communication were entirely verbal, why would we have the need for emoji to clarify what we are saying through text? We have all at some point inadvertently offended someone who didn’t realise we were texting something sarcastically. A simple and relatively harmless example of how false information is being fed to people, but I’m sure there are more damaging examples out there.
What is the consequence of all of this?
People don’t take spirituality seriously and see it as yet one more thing to consume. The fact that is accessible to many is to be celebrated, but what are we as practitioners offering to our clients? Are we offering something for their highest good and that of humanity’s or something to simply consume and be done with?
False Light- More seekers are lead down the wrong path or have to cut through the noise to get to the truth. This is the seeker’s karma and there are much bigger mechanisms at play surely, but I take it as my responsibility as a practitioner to impart as much Light to my clients as possible.
Loss of Sacredness-the bastardisation of traditions and knowledge for the sake of the masses means that the original essence of these practices is lost. Again, we encourage consumerism, instead of a true spiritual quest, and the connection with the Divine may be diluted or lost altogether..
I receive many clients at the beginning of their spiritual path and often the Akashic Masters communicate to them that they first need to work on themselves, before exploring sacred geometry, reiki, or any other practice. They find themselves lost and confused, intrigued by the plethora of workshops and modalities on offer. Working on themselves can come in many forms but more often than not it is a simple process of looking at old wounds and beginning to release, forgive, heal. Of course this can be done via the acquisition of new knowledge about energy healing, sacred geometry, etc, but the intention to use this knowledge as a manner to work on oneself must be set clear from the start. More often than not, people do not realise that the spiritual path begins from within, it’s not about becoming a repository of certificates or an encyclopedia of metaphysical knowledge! Many practitioners encourage their charges to ‘go with the flow’ and ‘follow their intuition’ which I feel can sometimes be very bad advice to give- how does one trust one’s inner compass when we haven’t made the effort to calibrate it to true north? All the spiritual clutter out there makes it more difficult for seekers and practitioners alike.
So a word of advice for those on the spiritual path: streamline, declutter, and begin from within.