Spiritualism Is Cooked: From Fundamentalism To Universal Value

When I look at the social zeitgeist, I have to say that Christians in the aggregate are displaying the highest levels of morality of any group I am witnessing. Just behold the majesty of the moment when Erika Kirk, wife of a slain husband, mother to fatherless children, publicly forgave her husband’s murderer. Eyewitness accounts from @thatskaizen and others claimed that the spirit of God, of the Christ, erupted in that moment as 100,000 people rose to their feet in a standing ovation. This religion is working in a profound way to create a shift in consciousness that is necessary for us to navigate these times of chaos. But I believe that this is because of the fundamental values of Christianity, not the fundamentalist dogma of the Religion. I’ll explain.

People are attracted to fundamentalism. A set of purportedly inflexible rules (dogma), that relieves you from the exhaustion and stress of having to decide the best path for your unique self. We think we like freedom, but most of us like being told what to do. It’s a relief from the tension of indecision, and the fallibility of thinking for yourself. But equally as attractive to the fundamentalists, is the desire to be better than other people. If following a set of dogmatic principles is what makes you virtuous, all you have to do to be more virtuous than your neighbor, is to be even more strict with your application of the dogma. This is what hides in the shadow of all fundamentalism. And fundamentalism comes in every flavor–red 40 Scientism with mRNA sprinkles, deep cacao Spiritualism, or hot-hell-cinnamon Religion.

Of course the irony is that these ‘isms’ are typically the antithesis of their original flavor. Science, for example, is the relentless asking of questions and testing hypotheses. Scientism moves to censor those who are asking questions to ensure blind adherence to the consensus. Spirituality, which I would define as the gnosis of the interconnectedness of Life, arose in contrast to the experientially vapid fundamentalist tribalism of Religion. Yet nonetheless it has become just as tribalist.

Like most religious movements, spirituality arose from good intentions. If fundamentalist Christianity says that 75% of the world is going to hell because they haven’t confessed their sins to Jesus and that doesn’t sit well with you, but you still believe in God—then spirituality is your refuge. This authentic impulse of spirituality was built upon the core belief of our own first nations people who say “Aho mitakuye oyasin” which translates as “we are all related”. Meaning ‘no one is outside the circle’.

Another inextricable aspect of authentic spirituality is that access to Spirit does not need to be mediated by an institution. This has been a core element of the psychonautic renaissance. Instead of sitting in a church, squirming in your seat, you are feeling the buzzing aliveness and catharsis of shamanic breathwork, or holding on with white knuckles to the plant medicine sleigh ride. This is a form of gnosticism under a different name. Gnosticism as a general philosophy (not the religion) is the belief that access to Spirit can be democratized, and known by the practitioner of the faith. You don’t need to hear a description of an avocado to understand an avocado, you need to eat one—and make guacamole. Now of course, not all spiritual rituals produce this kind of gnosis. I have squirmed in my own seat a dozen times while some gringo ‘cacao shaman’ bangs on about the spirit of cacao and how this gift of serving it was given to them by some various authority. Don’t get me wrong, I love cacao. But I don’t need a two hour sermon to enjoy it.

While there are both similarities and differences between Spiritualism and religious fundamentalism, all of the sudden spirituality has created its own dogma, which satisfies the same underlying urges of other forms of fundamentalism. Communion is not a wafer of bread, it is a cup of ayahuasca. And if you haven’t taken communion in your faith, you are somehow less virtuous than someone who has. The language of Spiritualism is not in latin, but instead is filled with a lexicon of ‘non-violent communication’. Witches are trendy for the Spiritualist, but the need for claiming heretics as “other” remains. The new witch-hunt is for ‘narcissists’, ‘gaslighters’, ‘the patriarchy’, etc.

Spirituality is following a strikingly similar (albeit less violent) trajectory to Catholicism in the last millennium, just using cancellation as the new excommunication. First of all, these acts of cancellation and excommunication are rife with judgment. Christianity and spirituality both warn against judgment, which is distinct from discretion. It’s okay to have boundaries and it’s okay to protect those boundaries. But it’s not okay to think that you are fundamentally better than the people who are on the other side of whatever boundary you have created. That inevitably leads to dehumanization, conflict, and ultimately seeds the poison fruit of violence. And Spiritualists and religious fundamentalists are both complicit in this level of judgment.

Picture this: a Spiritualist decked out in mala beads and a designer yoga outfit, pointing a manicured finger at a Catholic fundamentalist. He’s clutching a well-worn Bible, holding a beer, and pointing right back with conviction. The Spiritualist sneers, “You’re just clinging to outdated dogma, blind to Universal Truth!” The Catholic fundamentalist retorts, “You’re chasing fleeting trends and false idols, lost in New Age fluff!” Both stand rigid, mirroring each other’s judgment, each convinced they’ve cracked the code to ultimate truth. The irony? Their pointing fingers form a perfect circle of self-righteous certainty, each blind to the fact that neither one of them is being either spiritual, or Catholic.

Catholic comes from the greek katholikos, meaning “universal, all-inclusive, or throughout the whole”. Notice how similar that is to my definition of spirituality. But as soon as fundamentalism took hold and catholic became Catholic with a capital C, what began as an identity encompassing a set of beliefs rooted in love, quickly devolved into ethnocentric and sociocentric tribalism. Crusade against the infidels! Burn the witches! Put the heretics on trial!

Another striking similarity is the patently false pretense that Catholicism or Spiritualism is somehow separate from capitalism. The Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest institutions in the world, and Spiritualists are secretly listening to Alex Hormozi in order to max out the revenues in their online course. The problem here isn’t that the Catholics and the Spiritualists are capitalists, the problem is that they are pretending they are not. Why are they pretending they are not? Well, they want to be better than everyone who admits they are a capitalist of course! In other words, they want to have their cake, and eat it too.

Fundamentalism has been responsible for so much evil in the world, but this doesn’t mean that we don’t need a fundamental set of beliefs. In Kabbalah, the masters like Mordechai Luria, Lainer, Gafni, point to commands not to simply follow the Torah (written commandments) of the past, but to interpret the unique specifics of the moment as a living and evolving Torah–which is still rooted in the Field of Value. To understand the Field of Value, check out the book First Principles and First Values.

Evolving the Torah doesn’t require that you throw out the Bible. The Bible is a magical text. It just means that you have the flexibility to use what is still meaningful and prescient, and the wisdom to evolve that which no longer serves the time and the moment. This is how you serve the ‘Universal’, rather than serve yourself. And serving yourself, and your ‘in-group’ is the specialty of a fundamentalist.

Most recently, I was viciously attacked by fundamentalist monogamists for how I am choosing to orient myself in romantic relationships. This was quite a shock given that we have by and large accepted homosexuality as an acceptable and blessed path, but loving more than one person? Die, Satan! While these fundamentalists came from all walks of life, particularly the Spiritualists who are busy pretending they are the embodiment of the ‘divine masculine’ or ‘the Goddess’, I recently had an online exchange with a Christian fundamentalist, who took offense to me quoting Ephesians 6:12. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms”

She replied to me with non-sequitur and smug satisfaction. She wrote “Matthew 5:27-28. Don’t cherry pick.” The biblical passage she referenced is where Yeshua says “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart”.

I don’t personally know a single human being that passes that test, but that’s not the point. The point she was making was that if I was going to use the Bible at all as a reference for anything, I would need to take the Bible wholesale, word for word. So I responded, “Well then, should slaves obey their masters with all their hearts as in Colossians 3:22-25? And should those who blaspheme or pronounce the divine name be stoned to death as in Leviticus 24:16?”

She didn’t reply. Whether Christians admit it or not, they are constantly in the process of modifying and updating the Bible (Torah), just as the Kabbalist masters always recommended. Times change. Morality evolves, and the Torah needs to be evolved with it.

There are some aspects of Christianity, that do not need to be evolved. God is real. Morality (value) is real. Love your neighbor. Tell the truth. Forgive those who trespass against you. These fundamental ideas, set the scaffolding of your moral compass. If you go too far on the ‘questioning everything’ side, you can easily slide into the same moral relativism of the atheist materialists who have no fundamental beliefs at all. This leaves you susceptible to making a decision like Thanos, who sacrificed his own daughter, and snapped out half of life in the Universe because he had convinced himself that was the best thing to do. The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions.

What we need now is a new set of beliefs, that are both fixed and evolving–that are true, loving, and universal to the best of our knowledge. We need as Gafni says, a new world religion as a context for our diversity. This means that Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Taoist, Kashmir Shaivist, Spiritualist, they all have a way home to incorporate their beliefs and deities into an overarching set of principles and values. This was what Aldous Huxley attempted with the project of creating a Perennial Philosophy. As Gafni points out, it was a noble effort, but one of the things he missed was simply that the Perennial Philosophy is both a fixed and an evolving perennialism.

This is a project not only worth dying for, it’s a project worth living for. Spirituality has played its part. But it has become corrupted by the same impulses of fundamentalism. The gong has struck, and the gong show is over. The future is a new world religion as a context for our diversity.