March 16, 2008
SPIRITUAL GULLIBILITY
Spiritual gullibility (along with its headier cousin, metaphysical gullibility) is rampant not just among the uneducated, but also among those with plenty of education. So-called higher learning does not appear to count for much when it comes to the undiscerning behavior which characterizes spiritual gullibility.
For example, someone who is otherwise rational and equipped with a capacity for critical thinking, when faced with a person who claims to be able to clear their chakras or initiate them into a previously unavailable level of shamanic know-how or remove all their energy blocks, may take at face value what is being claimed, abandoning their critical faculties (not wondering: "How do I know that they know?"). And if they do somehow manage to question what is being presented, they are generally informed, however gently, that this is just a sign of their resistance or egoity, to which they typically respond by showing some sign of agreeing.
And why? Perhaps they, given their unresolved wounds (and their thus-far generally unsatisfying “solutions” to such pain), are eager to find something that will, as easily and magically as possible, deliver them from their suffering.
Or perhaps they are so used to doubting themselves (being hyperfocused on their own shortcomings) that they find themselves strongly drawn to others who, showing no signs of self-doubt, are actively marketing their teachings and supposed gifts in spiritual and metaphysical domains.
Or perhaps they have succumbed to the postmodern disease of exaggerated tolerance, not daring to allow themselves a healthy aversion, as when they hear that someone they're not so sure about is claiming to be a healer; even if they sense a spiritually-airbrushed arrogance or subtle whiff of pretense behind such a proclamation, they shush themselves, in order not to appear so out of touch as not to recognize such a person as a healer (like pretty much everyone else in the room is likely doing).
Those prone to spiritual gullibility tend to confuse skepticism with cynicism, love with sentimentality, anger with aggression, compassion with pity, kindness with niceness, submission with surrender, intelligence with cleverness, neurotic tolerance with acceptance. Theirs is an openness that in this particular area lacks healthy boundaries, a yes made anemic by their inability or unwillingness to say a robustly embodied no to the claims of those whose income and/or self-worth largely depends upon others' spiritual gullibility. And their lack of discrimination here has the unfortunate effect of throwing together both the flaky and the genuine elements of the more radically alternative elements of contemporary spirituality. Often the spiritually gullible, once rudely awakened to their folly, go to the other extreme and condemn as charlatans and weirdos the great majority of those who practice and teach spirituality outside of the mainstream (the wide-eyed devotee of all things New Age and the cynical dismisser of the very same things being but two sides of the same coin).
The spiritually gullible are perfect fodder for cultism, regardless of their IQ. People with sharp, sophisticated intellects are sometimes found in cults (where the leader's authority is not significantly questioned), mostly because they have not yet dealt in any telling depth with their core wounds and conditioning (how many cults — and every organization has cultic elements — deal in any real depth with transference issues between student and master?). And even when they do venture into such self-exploration, they may attribute their increased well-being to being in the cult, regardless of their psychoemotional literacy — anything to be part of something that delivers, or that convincingly promises to deliver, a reassuringly stable sense of belonging.
And what about those who market themselves — or at least sell their services — to the spiritually gullible? The deeper their unresolved wounds and the greater their denial of the impact of these, the greater will be their tendency — and need — to inflate themselves, whether through their proclaimed ability to repair and clean up another's aura, or their advertising of themselves as an enlightened being. There is such a glut of half-baked spiritual expertise in contemporary culture, such a surfeit of egos all wrapped up in spiritual robes, such an abundance of spiritualized shallowness and delusion, all of it giving a bad name to what is good and genuine and truly transformative in modern spirituality.
I don't care about the supposed hole in the back of your third chakra, but I do care about the pain that you are in, and the suffering you are bringing to yourself by avoiding your pain. While you await and believe in the arrival of a new type of human, as described in the various prophecies in which you have your head buried, your humanity calls to you, now and now and now, not to merely believe in it, but to at last embody , fully embody, it.
There are so many who are spiritually gullible that those who feed upon them may soon have a following or at least a clientele that unquestioningly buys what's being sold, which only reinforces such practitioners' belief about themselves as being someone very special, a someone here to be a master healer or an awakener of the masses. And those who market themselves to the spiritually gullible are not, for the most part, con-artists, since they usually really believe in themselves and what they are doing; they may even view their most blatantly obvious manipulations as no more than necessary steps in helping others heal.
Spiritual gullibility is big business in a consumerist economy. We want it fast, and those who want our business know it, and advertise accordingly (or are content simply to self-identify as one of the “gifted”). The promises presented to the spiritually gullible are often so outrageous, so banally grandiose, so bloated with predictably underlined hype, that their unquestioned reception can only be seen as credulous in the extreme. Such naiveté is but slumbering innocence, pervaded by nostalgia for a better or nicer tomorrow. It is an opening of the gates that amounts to little more than a dissolution of boundaries, an undiscriminating inclusiveness, much like what happens in typical romance, wherein the lovers abandon rather than expand their boundaries, confusing fusion with intimacy, until the rude pricks of reality blow their cover.
Spiritual gullibility constitutes not just a Forrest Gumpian openness, but also a regression, a dropping back into the prerational, magical thinking mode of childhood, leaving us not childlike but childish, indiscriminately opening not only our hearts and minds, but also our wallets, while we take in what's being sold, perhaps even thinking that we're getting a real deal. After all, doesn't the teacher say so? The answer, however, is not to become merely skeptical, suspicious, or aversive to the fringier aspects of spirituality and metaphysics, but rather to leave our bullshit detector turned on wherever we are, without, however, restricting our capacity to open, and to open fully, under the right conditions. Spiritual gullibility's slumbering innocence, when met with a discerning eye and a fitting dose of fierce compassion, simply mutates into a second innocence, a wakeful, everfresh, unexploitable openness that realigns us with what really matters.
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