Spiritually poor in a capitalist world

On spiritual capitalism, collective bypassing, and facing the hidden politics of spirituality, as seen on season 3 of The White Lotus (includes spoilers).

If you felt vaguely uneasy watching the latest season of The White Lotus, you’re not alone. The show has always thrived on discomfort, particularly around money, sex, and power, but this time something else emerged for me.

The depiction of our Western approaches to spirituality hit a nerve. It touched something raw around what I’d name as the performance of spirituality in the West, with its curated aesthetic, individualism, and materialism. For those of us who’ve sought meaning through Eastern spirituality, plant medicine, yoga, or any number of alternative spiritual paths, the show asks uncomfortable questions about how we engage with these practices.

What does it mean to be spiritual today? Are our practices as transformative as we think? Or is our spirituality making us more spiritually poor?

This essay is my attempt to make sense of this discomfort by exploring the shadow of spirituality, its commodification, and deceptions behind our search for meaning and transcendence today—through some of the themes in the show. It’s a heavy thing to write as a transpersonal psychotherapist with an evolving relationship to spirituality and my own therapeutic approach (you may have read some of my previous essays on this theme), but it’s a valuable exercise in facing illusions and bearing the truth.

So if you like discomfort (and don’t mind spoilers), you might like this essay.

What does it mean to be spiritual?

Ask someone if they’re religious and you’ll get a sense of their cosmology: their values, their image of the divine, what happens after death, and how to make sense of suffering. You’ll vaguely know whether they prioritise family and community over individualism, or whether they believe in sin, karma, salvation, reincarnation, or nothing at all.

But ask someone if they’re spiritual, and you might not get much beyond an amalgamation of practices: sunset yoga, cute crystals, gong baths, tarot cards to look into why the love interest isn’t texting back, and the dates of their next ayahuasca retreat. You might get a hodgepodge of cherry-picked beliefs from Buddhism, Hinduism, and an influencer who gets downloads from the Pleiedians in light language. It may not all consolidate into a coherent philosophical theory, but, paradoxically, it might still serve them more than not having any beliefs at all.

But why does it matter if someone is religious or spiritual? In Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion, authors Jeremy Carette and Richard King (who are both professors of religion and culture, and theology) articulate this difficulty in defining what spirituality really is. They track its emergence to the 17th century’s European Enlightenment as a phenomenon of the “privatisation of religion”—an individualisation of religious affinities and practices meant to reflect one’s own values and aspirations, rather than the collective’s. The term is associated with a more personal relationship to god, marked by devotion and contemplation.

Unlike religion, spirituality can be seen as more introverted. It doesn’t naturally come with a shared mythology, ethical code, or set of practices and rituals. It allows us to choose belief systems that resonate with us, which can be liberating. But this is its key flaw too. Because it can be anything, it’s less of a coherent worldview and more like a personalised playlist that Kanye West still somehow features in (despite everything).

Although my tone may suggest otherwise, I’m not interested in making an argument pro or against religion here, nor in criticising anyone’s approach to spirituality. For many of us, the secularity of some Buddhist teachings or the polytheism of Hinduism have been doorways to meaning, community, and a sense of belonging in a universe that isn’t ruled by a patriarchal god. It would also be hypocritical to place myself outside of this picture—for I also often fill my spiritual plate at the same belief buffet as many others.

However, it’s important that we take an honest look at our spirituality. When we pick our beliefs and practices, we often pick what feels good, what resonates, what soothes. We curate a nice plate of beliefs and practices that fit our individual needs and validate our choices, rather than making us look deeper into them.

We see this well in Laurie, who (after a week of yoga, sexually charged energy healing, heavy drinking, and overall feeling less-than her more accomplished or attractive friends) has one of the most disappointing epiphanies on TV.

She confesses how she tried to make work, love, and motherhood her religion, and how they all failed her. She is questioning her life choices. Now, let down by her expectations to be redeemed by Thailand in her middle age, she settles for meaning coming from just “being at the table” with her childhood friends. It sounds reassuring and sweet, until you realise that she is in fact avoiding the discomfort of examining the shallow choices she has made in her life—including the very friends she’s sitting with at the table.

We also see it in Chelsea, who in many ways is an archetypal image of what we picture when we think of a young spiritual woman today. Although I loved the character’s innocence, I found her spirituality just as hollow. She uses Sun-sign astrology, the idea of soulmates, and the Chinese philosophy concept of yin-yang to justify staying in a relationship with a troubled man entirely possessed by his inner demons. Her shallow understanding of the spiritual ideas she bases her life on leads to her spiritually bypassing the danger she’s actually in and eventually leads to her tragic death.

So we really have to ask ourselves: what purpose does our spirituality serve? And how much of it is just self-deception?

Spirituality as commodity

Most of these characters live in bubble. Their quest for meaning is largely a search for salvation from the privileged, but soulless and isolated lives they live. They can “purchase” spirituality and engage with it on their terms. They can get their epiphanies and then happily return to their original lives—unchanged, but with a cool story to tell.

The White Lotus shows us capitalist spirituality at its best. In this conceptualisation, spirituality is no longer about the values espoused by religion: self-sacrifice, self-discipline, and community service. Spirituality is a set of practices that aim to soothe our anxieties and make us more productive. In many cases, it also has to do with the accumulation of wealth and consumption—disguised as manifesting, “knowing your worth”, or holding a high vibration.

“In an environment where many experience a lack of meaning in their lives, spirituality offers a cultural sedative providing individual rapture. What is masked behind this addiction to private religion is the way in which it exacerbates the problems of meaning associated with materialism and individualism in the very desire for some kind of escape from the world. Such capitalist spiritualities thereby end up reinforcing the very problems that many of its advocates seek to overcome.” (Carrette & King)

We do this too. Much of the spirituality available to us today is a commodity to engage with in between work meetings or on a weekend retreat, often meant to help us be more productive.

A lot of the spiritual ideas we participate in are marketed to us through appealing branding. Religious ideas are repackaged and sold as a lifestyle or aesthetic, without the ethics, paradox, and complexity they once contained. God becomes a benevolent shop keeper who wants you to have that £400 designer bag because the universe is infinitely abundant and you shouldn’t think too hard about this. Ancient symbols, once infused with sacredness, have become merch that helps us flaunt our spiritual egos to others—often printed on cheap, plastic fabrics sold in the millions and eventually ending up in the landfill in some country we’ll never see on The White Lotus.

It takes a lot of honesty to admit that much of our spiritual practices serve a function of what Carette and King call “accomodationism”—the personal alleviation of anxiety caused by socio-political inequalities, rather than an active involvement with these issues. We meditate, go on retreats, and ingest psychedelics to transcend the pain of the world and see a larger perspective. We find soothing in recontextualising this great suffering in mythopoetic terms. From a cosmic distance, we can watch the world burn and call it a rebirth, the death of the old way, the alchemical operation Nigredo. We find, as the authors write, “short-term cures for contemporary social angst.”

These perspectives aren’t wrong, but they are incomplete. Spirituality gives us the illusion of dealing with the suffering of the world—either by “seeing through” it or simply transcending it. Its focus on the individual, often mediated by self-development practices, tricks us into thinking that privately changing ourselves is enough to change the world.

Thus, it creates a convincing impression of being divorced from politics and economics—that being enlightened can ever mean being apolitical.

Church and state

“Private spirituality, as opposed to an understanding of spirituality as linked to issues of social justice, is dangerous precisely because it conceals the underlying ideological effects of individualism.” (Carrette & King)

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the one season that emphasises spirituality is also the season that, unlike the others, completely detaches from the world of politics and social justice. Unlike Season 1, which explored racial and economic privilege through the lens of white tourists in Maui, and Season 2, which brought sexual politics and male power dynamics into open discourse, Season 3 is strikingly introverted. Aside from the brief shock of hearing that Kate had voted for Trump and is now a Christian, we don’t get to hear or see much about the world outside the Garden of Eden. Even her friends’ disbelief seems to be less ideological and more like a betrayal of an identity they had once shared.

But religion has always been political. As Carette and King write, to see spirituality, politics, and economics as discrete categories with no relation to the other is an over-simplification. This political myopia masks uncomfortable truths about how individualistic our spirituality truly is—and how much it is driven by the socio-political interests of neoliberalism.

This goes beyond the £80 yoga leggings or overpriced psychedelic retreats for “visionaries” who want to change the world by creating “intentional communities” for CEOs only. This is about our everyday distancing from the pain of injustice and inequality. It’s about the ideologies hiding in plain sight behind the spirituality that we buy into.

We’ve already seen how the vagueness of the term spirituality has allowed for veiled political ideologies to seep in—just think of how the concepts of divine feminine and masculine have been used to promote antiquated gender roles, rather than an exploration of fundamental, non-gendered energies that permeate existence. Ideas that promote not engaging in “low vibration” activities to protect our energy can be a wonderful excuse to not take the trash out or, on a larger scale, not engage with your depressed friend. “Awakening” can isolate you from your flawed, but unenlightened family, cutting important social relations of support.

Retreating to work on our private suffering, for which we are told we are solely responsible for, disconnects us from seeing the collective sources of our suffering. It gives us pacifying philosophies to make sense of the injustice we’d rather not face. And it feeds us private solutions for the discomfort we’re inevitably left with, either through the accumulation of possessions or experience.

Does it even make sense to be spiritual?

After spending only one night in the Buddhist monastery, Piper returns to her parents defeated by the harsh conditions (their vegetables weren’t even organic!). It’s slightly comedic and disappointing to watch her give up on her spiritual quest so easily—only 5 minutes later, she’s off on a luxury shopping spree with her mum. It’s also comedic to see articles inspired by the series suggesting “8 sundresses that channel Piper’s style” (what’s next, “5 bikinis to look snatched on your first near-death experience”?).

We can laugh at the poor rich girl breaking down when her spiritual aspirations fail when faced with the reality of the commitment. But in many ways, Piper is all of us—dabbling in pick-and-mix Eastern spirituality from the comfort of our Western lives and struggling with the inevitable dissonance.

However, her intentions to challenge the beliefs she inherited from her family and culture felt genuine. Her failure strikes me less as a character flaw, and more as a reflection of the difficulty we all face when attempting to live a spiritual life within an unexamined capitalist framework.

So what can we do? Should we collapse in shame over our corrupt, capitalist, selfish selves? Throw out our yoga mats and palo santo? Is there even such a thing as a “true” spirituality? Should we go back to traditional religion? Or which psychedelic medicine should we ask this and can we book our flights to Costa Rica already?

An alternative way

I wish I had an answer. The problem, as Chögyam Trungpa highlights in Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, is that the spiritual path is hard and it has no simple answers. In many ways, we might regret ever starting it, because it continues to confront us with new problems. It strips us naked. It embarrasses us by exposing our self-deception. And if we’re lucky, we might use the pain it causes us to deepen—at least this is my hope.

So while I don’t have a simple answer, I have a few ideas to share about how we might engage with spirituality in a different way. If you have other ideas, please let me know in the comments.

1. No such thing as “pure” spirituality

As Carette and King suggest, we should give up the hope for finding a true spirituality. Religion and spirituality have always been flawed because we are flawed. Neither is better than the other. They are products of the historical, cultural, and political time that they exist in and they evolve alongside us. But just because they’re flawed, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t engage in them.

However, we can become more discerning about the privatisation of religion and its individualistic agenda. We can find different types of spirituality that aren’t atomised and capitalist-driven (they exist!). Carette and King draw attention to revolutionary or anti-capitalist spiritualities that reject neoliberalism and ground their beliefs in a commitment to serve this world. They also highlight a different type of spirituality anchored in business ethics and reformist spiritualities, which engage with the system by infusing it with ethics, but without necessarily questioning its ideology.

2. Hold your spiritual ego in check

We live in a culture where it’s profitable to flaunt our spirituality by showing off how much we meditate, microdose, fast, heal. But what does this achieve, other than inflate our spiritual egos? The wellness industry profits off our longing for wholeness and belonging by selling us healing as a performance, rather than genuine transformation.

There’s nothing wrong with engaging in these practices. However, there’s value in being more discerning and honest about why we’re doing it and who it serves. Are we curating a spiritual persona or are we actually allowing ourselves to be cracked open to the pain (and beauty) of the world?

3. Understand that spirituality is political

Understanding that the socio-economic context is not separate from our spirituality feels fundamental. This allows us to confront the accomodationist aspects of our practices—whether we’re using spirituality to soothe the anxiety we naturally feel when facing injustice and suffering in the world.

This means that we have to become more politically informed. Most of the issues we suffer from are collective (including your personal childhood trauma)—and while meditation, yoga, and any other spiritual practice can be incredibly helpful to our ability to engage with these issues, they need to be accompanied by some form of social involvement. This must mean facing the pain of what’s occurring in the world, rather than distracting ourselves from it. Thinking about those who are excluded by our spiritual worldview. And facing all the ways we spiritually bypass our discomfort.

The oneness we believe isn’t just a nice tagline. It has to be demonstrated through our actions.

“When the individual self is seen as a node in a web of social relations, one can see the need for pastoral care, New Age healing and the helping professions to become politically informed activities that seek personal health through social justice and social amelioration. Individual mental health can only be established through socially embedded structures that seek justice for all and not gain for the few, because individuals depend upon each other and evolve together and not in isolation. Individual dis-ease is always in part a dis-ease of society (especially when it comes down to the allocation of social resources).” (Carrette & King)

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