There is a persistent falsehood being preached in the new age spiritual community. It isn’t a new lie. Christianity has its own version of it. Maybe it is common to all human endeavors, but it is deeply harmful. It is the lie of ease. It goes like this: when we are “in tune” with what Spirit/God/Divine wants for us everything flows and is easy. (And the corollary, when we are experiencing struggle or hardship it is because we are out of alignment with Spirit.)
This is bullshit. I’ll say that again: this is 100% bullshit.
Life isn’t easy and being spiritual is not a cure for this fact. Having experiences of the Divine (however we relate to that) is not either. Ask any prophet. Ask Buddha, Moses, a rabbi, or just about any monastic from any tradition you like. Ask anyone who isn’t trying to sell you something. In Christianity this lie comes in many forms, one of the most visible, called the “Prosperity Gospel”: that when you are doing what God wants (usually giving enough money to the preacher) God will send all the money you need your way. You’ll prosper when you are in right relationship with God. The two ideas are very similar and you can probably name a similar concept from the fringes (or not so fringes) of your own tradition.
There are a number of issues with these teachings, aside from them being false.
Struggle, privilege, and mortality
First, they entirely ignore privilege and tend to be taught by those unaware of their own. Skinny, white, cis, straight women from upper class families who become yoga instructors and new age gurus selling the ease of their success to people without any of the advantages they started with is harmful enough. But it also leads to victim blaming. Because when you life invariably isn’t as easy as theirs it isn’t because you are black, queer, or from a poor household, it is clearly because you weren’t “in tune” enough with the Divine/Spirit/ancestors, or whatever. It couldn’t be that you started out with two strikes while they started on third base.
Suffering is real, and it is inevitable. That doesn’t make the world evil or bad, or something to be escaped. But it does mean that there is no perfect path we can walk that will save us from difficulty. There is no perfect formula for a pain free life.
What’s the alternative?
I write this on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian season of Lent. There is wild diversity in how Christians approach both the day and the season but both are a reminder that we are human, and that means we are both fallible (we mess up) and mortal (we will suffer and we will all die). Now the point isn’t to depress a person, but to face these realities.
Spiritual bypassing is using spirituality to avoid the unpleasant parts of life. Like facing our own mortality, or the reality of suffering. And things like prosperity gospel, or the new age concept of “flow” or “ease” are just shiny new forms of spiritual bypassing. But there’s an alternative, modeled for us across spiritual traditions. From Christian Lent, to Yom Kippur in the Jewish calendar, to the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, to indigenous practice: spiritual practices that face the reality of life and give us a way to say, suffering is real and yet there is beauty. We are mortal and will die, but for today we are alive.
Sometimes the wrong things are the easy things, sometimes right things are incredibly hard. Knowing this, and understanding the normal human desire to avoid suffering, can free us to make better choices that are more aligned with our spiritual and religious values. And it can free us from harmful victim blaming when things aren’t easy.
Consent in a spiritual life
But there’s another issue behind these beliefs: they assume a Divine who does not care about our consent or choices, only our compliance. If there is one Divinely chosen path we must find and follow (regardless of our own desires) then we are merely puppets who haven’t been given clear marching orders. Worse, we will be punished by suffering for making any choice but the divinely preferred one.
And that friends, is toxic and harmful theology.
I met an Episcopal bishop once who was seated at a table with a bunch of eager folks trying to figure out what they were called to do with their lives (I was one of them). And he listened to us talking about where God was calling us, and how we could know, and worrying about getting it wrong before he quietly spoke into a lull in the conversation. He said something like this:
I do not believe there is one “calling” or path for each of us, that would be arbitrary, cruel, and ignore our own agency. Instead I think that in every place we find ourselves, in every relationship or situation, there are multitudes of invitations to partner with God for a better, more just world. We need to get good at looking for the invitations in each moment, not hearing a magical singular call.
(Episcopal Bishop, name forgotten)
I can’t even remember which bishop said those words now (it was 2007 and I met him just that once) but his wisdom stayed with me long after his name and face had faded away. And I have found much truth in it. There has not been a singular path in my life into ease and away from suffering. But there has been, in joy and in sorrow, invitations to growth, generosity, compassion, relationship and more. Chances in moments of ease and suffering to weave meaning into the fabric of my life, and to make choices I am proud of, choices that make the world better for those around me (and myself!).
Often those choices are to not escape the discomfort. Often the choices that will lead to a more just world, a better world, a more generous and compassionate world require me to stay in the discomfort. And yet I find the Divine I love in those moments. Because They are there too, making the choice to step into what is not easy and to stay there with those who don’t have an option to escape.
I can tell you as an ordained person who has served diverse communities that everyone struggles. Rich and poor, as strange as that sounds. Privilege insulates us from some things but there is no amount of money, wealth, or power that can change the reality that our world is full of heart breaking beauty and breath taking suffering. These things exist together, they are woven through one another. And we will all suffer.
We mourn only because we have loved. And who, who among us would give up love to avoid the sorrow that proves we continue to love even after loss?
Beloveds your struggle is not a sign that you are out of phase with the Divine, or that you are ignoring Spirit. It might well mean that you and She are in the trenches together, shoulder to shoulder. And your ease, dearest one, probably has more to do with the privileges you have been lucky enough to enjoy (we all have some) than any alignment with God’s will.
What would it mean for you, instead of searching for a magic perfect path aligned with the Divine to simply put one foot in front of the other, to learn to trust yourself and your best community of care? To accept invitations to change and growth as you are able. To rest without apology. To let go of perfection and instead choose responsibility and change when things go awry. To seek the presence of God in the darkness of the unknown, in the quiet of all that is unclear?
What could it mean to know that struggle is not punishment, and equally to face the ways our “blessings” are often privilege and hold them lightly and with humility.
This is not to say there isn’t a kind of ease, a joy, in discovering the Divine is with us; or in walking a path aligned with our values and passions. Of course there is. But we should remember when trouble arises that it does not have to mean we are on the wrong road.
