Tag: health

Spiritual seeking or fashionable Secret

By Silvia Casabianca

You complain: “Life is difficult, unfair and lonely. My efforts are seldom acknowledged or rewarded. I don’t have the family, job, house, car or friends that I deserve. Not only life is not as it should be, but I cannot change the world to my convenience. Or, can I?” But then came The Secret (the movie, the CD, the book).

“Oh, you certainly can, because you create the world you live in with your thoughts, your words and your actions,” the masters say. “Just learn the principles of the ‘Law of Attraction’ and all you desire will be manifested. If it doesn’t work, just review if you are using the principles properly: find out what you’re doing wrong.”

“This is The Secret to everything – the secret to unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love, youth: everything you have ever wanted,” read the promise delivered on The Secret’s first official web page. A misnomer by now, The Secret carries a message that caught the attention of the world in a way that perhaps none of the former publications on spirituality, religion or how to become rich in three seconds have.

So, if you crave an abundant, a worry-free life, and you haven’t seen the movie or bought the book, what are you waiting for? Besides, it’s not the only book on the topic. You can get Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires, by Esther Hicks or The Master Key System, by Charles F. Haanel, to name a few.

In the past 50 years or so, the Americas, from Alaska to La Patagonia, have been flooded with information on spiritual, religious and metaphysical matters. Most of the material presumably comes from the East or from esoteric knowledge that was previously withheld from the public. This knowledge has been marketed through books, CDs, DVDs, movies, social media and charismatic speakers. Shall we hypothesize that spirituality provides more answers than science? Even though science has dug deeper and deeper and to the level of the most minuscule particles life is made of, it would seem that the answers it provides do not suffice. In our quest for meaning, it’s not the amazing biomarkers helping doctors in early detection of cancer, the trip to Mars, or the development of fiber optics, and artificial intelligence, but the feeling that God is reachable what brings hope to people whose lives have been stricken by disease or scarcity.

Back in 2001, the economist Paul Zane Pilzer reported that Americans were spending $200 billion annually on wellness, from fitness clubs to vitamins. Well, in 2022, the industry surpassed the $450 billion mark.

Although wellness and nutritional products have reached a plateau and have faced the threat of limitations brought about by regulation of supplements and vitamins by the FDA, the industry continues to hold the promise of getting to the trillion-dollar mark soon. However, a glance at the incredible success of such movies as What the Bleep do We Know, Conversations with God, How to Know God, and The Secret, is enough to see that spirituality as merchandise nipped at the wellness industry’s heels.

What are these products really selling? Hope? Magic? A power drawn from realizing that one’s life is totally on one’s own hands? The common ingredient is faith. Recently, a Reiki patient reminded me of Friedrich Nietzsche’s definition of faith: “Not wanting to know what is true.”

Indeed, and beware! You can use superficial knowledge of the laws of the universe, or a poorly-understood spiritual principle as a tool to deny your reality. Therein lies the danger of the trivialization of metaphysics, the commercialization of the sacred and the cheapening of spirituality.

How could anyone learn the principles that gurus have mastered in a lifetime of dedication and meditation by watching a movie, listening to a tape or attending a weekend seminar? No Buddhas or Einsteins are born in a snap. Why is the marketing of promises to make over our lives so successful? Is people’s wishful thinking replacing effort and creativity in resolving financial needs, or are we all truly looking for a spiritual life and a re-encounter with a re-defined God that exists within? Is this perhaps a unique rebellion, turning off the current paradigm, whereby only a few deserve abundance and good health?

In Where Are We Going? (ReVision magazine, spring, 2001), Mariana Caplan discussed contemporary spirituality trends: “When mystical experiences become our obsession, and we run from workshop to teacher to fancy esoteric tradition looking for the next high, we have taken a great detour from the needs of our culture – a culture that is obsessed with boldness but devalues subtlety; that is infatuated with excess but scorns simplicity; that honors selfishness while mumbling about service.”

Disconnected from our bodies

Not only have we progressively disconnected from each other and the planet, we’ve also stopped listening to our bodies. We’ve forgotten how to lead a rhythmic life. We don’t eat when we’re hungry, but when the food is available or when it’s noon. We don’t sleep when tired; that’s what caffeine is for. We turn off symptoms with medication, instead of trying to understand their roots. In addition, we’ve lost body wisdom. Our gardens are more for adornment than for receiving our daily dose of sun or for planting trees that purify our air. Instead of exposing our skin to the sun, which would transform skin tocopherols into vitamin D, we take a supplement. Instead of drinking orange juice, we look for vitamin C capsules. If something upsets our stomach, we just take an antacid or digestive enzyme instead of eliminating from our diets the foods causing problems.

We’ve also stopped trusting the wisdom of the body, no longer listening to its inner healer. We believe that our doctor is the expert in our own body, and we allow specialists to manage our health. I often see patients unable to decide on a course of action because what reason prescribes goes against what their heart, their instinct, or their dream shout. Society (which strongly echoes the parental voices lodged in your mind) sometimes prevents you from seeing the red flags or advising you about what’s best for you. We end up not doing what our hearts and souls really need and want.

I believe three types of disconnection (from the body, from others, and the planet) are interrelated and lead to deficiencies in our ability to nurture ourselves, love our neighbors, and protect and preserve the environment.

Development (a misnomer) has given rise to the adoption of new values, which have a clear detrimental impact on the evolution of the individual and the culture, and are very different from the knowledge of our ancestors, who recognized the need to preserve, honor and care for the planet. But we still call ourselves civilized.

This divorce we have created is based on an illusion. In 1973, in his essay “The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective,” the astrophysicist and author of Cosmos, Carl Sagan said, “Our sun is a second- or third-generation star. All the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes, were produced billions of years ago in the interiors of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff.”

The still-predominant reductionist paradigm feeds the perception of separation from our surroundings, including other people, and convinces us that we’re merely individual beings, divided, segments. We’ve fooled ourselves into denying we’re all stardust and that what I do to you I’m doing to myself too, that what I do to the planet affects me.

Fortunately, we’re coming to understand that reductionist science, which until recently we thought irrefutable, is questionable and that we’re enrichened by the adoption of more holistic, systemic, and comprehensive perspectives. Holon means complete, total. A multidimensional and holistic perspective of health, disease, education, politics, and our relationships with others and with the world goes beyond what current science could even now explain (measure or corroborate).

Adopting a holistic approach can transform our relationship with our bodies and the environment. If we were more open to ancient cultures, we’d see that Buddhists, Taoists, and Hindus offer us invaluable pearls of wisdom, treasured for generations, and with a universalist perspective. They teach us, for example, that a frugal, moderate discipline and lifestyle, a conscious existence (monitoring our minds), can keep us physically, emotionally and mentally healthy and is good for the planet. The four Buddhism’s components of love are joy, compassion, equanimity, and benevolence, which allow us to connect with others and the environment from a kinder heart.

The Bible also preaches frugality, which some people may interpret as paying less for stuff. The real meaning is having less (only what’s necessary), avoiding waste, and not allowing our happiness to depend on what we own. This is also good for the planet.

In psychology and social sciences, we’re also approaching a more down-to-earth vision of love and relationships, an understanding that individuals can connect with others without exposing themselves to be hurt.

I will be able to take responsibility for my feelings and experience joy in relationships as long as I can fully express my essence and be myself in the presence of another. It makes all the difference in the world if I learn that it’s healthier to choose a companion, friend, neighbor, colleague, or family member who won’t judge me and in front of whom I don’t need to hide my feelings or thoughts or appearance in order to be loved. In other words, if I learn to be with people capable of accepting me as I am, who love me because of who I am. And if I make a mistake and choose a wrong pal, if someone mistreats me and becomes a toxic presence in my life, it’s also important to know that the fairest and healthiest thing to do is to get away.

It might not be necessary to know why or when our instinct and intuition got clouded, or when or why our human relationships became utilitarian, or how we came to have a minimal or neglectful relationship with nature. But it’s crucial to overcome this rift between us and our bodies, between us and our neighbors, between us and our planet. It’s critical to regaining the natural wisdom through which we keep our inner healer attuned.

How could love and solidarity prosper in a competitive and polarized world where it’s become so difficult to bridge the gap between us and those who don’t think, live, feel, or vote like me?