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When You Shop for Enlightenment Like an adding to Your Amazon Wishlist
Imagine walking into an all-you-can-eat buffet of spiritual practices. You’ve been starved of meaning and hungry for enlightenment, liberation, and a side-dish of unity and Love. The choices are endless: power yoga in a cute boutique studio, mindfulness served on an empowerment podcast, a sprinkle of ancient shamanism with your morning coffee, and a side of reiki with a dash of astrology—just to top it all off.
“Where’s the harm in that?” you might ask. “After all, I’m just exploring, expanding, finding what works for me, right?”
Is this spirituality, or is it just your favorite Instagram influencer’s brand?
Spiritual Capitalism has turned some corners of social media into an endless menu of easy-to-pick choices. It could only be easier if you could go to the Amazon website and search for “Happiness: 3-day shipping, please.” There’s this illusion that you can cherry-pick beliefs, piecing together a perfect system that fits you like a comfy sweater, without considering the complex cultural roots from which these practices come or the sustainability of the end product.
Real talk: a comfy sweater might have been knitted by someone who’s been exploited, whose culture has been commodified, twisted, and sold as an accessory. We’re not just shopping for enlightenment; we’re shopping for a product we can wear like a badge, without fully understanding the sacredness behind it or the journey needed to support lasting growth.
And this, my friends, is where the imperialistic entitlement creeps in. The idea that we can take whatever feels good, ignoring its true meaning, historical significance, and bypassing the need for real inner work. It’s a direct echo of the colonial mindset: the “winner-takes-all” mentality rebranded as “spirituality for consumers” in the capitalist era. We forget that spiritual practices were never meant to be stripped of their depth or sold in bite-sized chunks for the modern consumer.
Spirituality is not an Amazon shopping cart. You don’t get to check out with your “spiritual gifts” without understanding the origins, the sacrifices, the wisdom, and the interconnectedness of the practices you're borrowing. Because, as tempting as it is to click ‘add to cart’ and move on, true spiritual growth demands much more than a click.
It’s time to stop acting like we’re picking up souvenirs on our spiritual vacation. You can’t just hop on a plane, snap a picture, and call it a journey. You’re not a tourist in your own soul.
Survival Spirituality: The ‘Supermarket Sweep’ of Transformation
Now, imagine a different kind of rush. Picture this: the frantic game show Supermarket Sweep, where contestants race through aisles, their carts piled high with expensive products. The goal? Grab as much as you can in the shortest amount of time, no matter the cost. It’s a mad dash, a scramble for the most prized items, with no real thought about the bigger picture or long-term impact.
Now, let’s talk about Survival Spirituality—the spiritual equivalent of that game show. People dash from one quick fix to another, desperate to release trauma as fast as possible, collecting peak experiences like badges of honor. They binge on plant medicine ceremonies, sign up for back-to-back breathwork sessions, and chase that spiritual high like paparazzi during the ‘Britney Meltdown.’ The problem? Just like the contestants on Supermarket Sweep, spiritual seekers end up with a cart full of fleeting moments—nothing that lasts or has any sustainable impact.
Stick this in your stories: you can’t Black Friday your way through human growth and development, racing through a catalog of experiences, grabbing everything in sight, only to get home and realize that nothing really fits you properly. The most meaningful transformation doesn’t happen in the quickest, most effective releases or emotional “cleanses.” It's not about collecting trauma releases like points on a scoreboard. Spirituality isn’t a checklist of “to-dos” that can be ticked off in a weekend retreat or a 10-day, blindfolded, chanting, galactic re-birth on frog shit.
It’s about what we learn from the experiences. It’s about the integration—the real, often messy, clumsy, stumbling that comes after the peak.
Real spiritual development is like cooking a meal from scratch instead of ordering from Uber-eats.
We’ve all seen it: that person who’s been through a dozen plant-medicine journeys but still seems stuck, jumping to the next big thing with the same blind spot as before. The modern spiritual seeker is often trapped in a cycle of retail therapy, where the “new” experience promises the next great fix. But here’s the truth: it’s not about the fix. It’s about living within the flux. It’s about both.
Trust the Process: Slow is the Way to Know
Now, let’s shift gears for a moment. After all, these patterns of entitlement and survival consumerism are not about pointing fingers—they’re about offering a new perspective. It's about helping us step back from the race, take a deep breath, and trust that there is another way.
What if, instead of rushing through our spiritual grocery store like a contestant on Supermarket Sweep, we allowed ourselves to be present in the process? What if we embraced the wisdom of patience, knowing that true transformation unfolds at its own pace, often slower than we expect, but with far more lasting depth?
The real work is not in the chase for the next peak experience but in the integration of all that we’ve encountered. It’s about finding trust in the rhythm of our own growth—the trust that each moment, each choice, each challenge is part of a larger, natural unfolding. True spiritual development doesn’t happen in a rush. It happens when we slow down, take time to reflect, and learn to listen to what’s happening in our bodies, our minds, and our hearts.
Slow is the way to know.
It’s not about filling your cart with experiences and hoping that something sticks. It’s about nurturing yourself with what truly aligns with your path, allowing it to sink in, grow, and settle deep within. Like planting seeds in fertile soil, the fruits of your inner work may not appear overnight, but with time, they’ll flourish in their own unique form.
The journey is slower, yes, but it is also deeper. And in that depth, we find wisdom that stays, growth that transforms, and peace that endures.
So, next time you find yourself in a hurry to reach the next "spiritual milestone," ask yourself: What if the best things in life aren’t the ones that come quickest or easiest? What if the deepest truth is found in the moments of stillness, in the patience of allowing your journey to unfold naturally, without needing to “have it all” right now?
Remember: Slow is the way to know. And when you trust the process, everything you need will unfold in its own time.
