As We Think : Greatest Thoughts - Let’s talk about Spiritual Materialism

Let’s talk about spiritual materialism, a phrase coined by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a mad Tibetan monk who came over to the West in the 1970s, and inspired some of the greatest western Buddhist teachers, like Pema Chodron and Tara Brach.

By 'spiritual materialism' I think he means the way we smuggle our worldly ambitions into our spiritual quest.

Whenever we have had dramatic spiritual awakenings, we expect it to convert rapidly into some sort of worldly success. We expected it to shake up our external life and lead to sudden, radical improvements - like suddenly meeting the love of my life, for example, or be offered a new job, or a book deal, or something.

When we begin to pursue the spiritual life, we want all the good things of a conventional life - a rich love life, a successful career, a happy family, a lovely home, a sexy body, delicious cocktails, wonderful holidays, fabulous dinner parties, and so on. We want all of that, plus soulfulness.

Like Rod Tidwell says in Jerry Maguire, we want the kwan: 'it means love, respect, community... and the dollars too. The package. The kwan.

We pride ourselves on our spirituality and on being counter-cultural, but in some ways we're just as hung up on conventional success as everyone else - we want the prestige, the prominence, the great love-life, the sexy body, the beautiful home, the glamorous holidays, the Instagram life.

Like Bwyneth Paltrow, we want the gratification of our ego desires and soulfulness - what could be more gratifying than that!

The fact is, the rules of the spirit world are not the same as the rules of this world. We think they are, and we want to win at both. But they're not the same at all. What looks like abject failure in this world might actually be incredible success in the spirit-world. And what looks like total victory in this world might actually be utter failure in the spirit-world.

We want to maintain our status as all-powerful superhero who control our lives and get what we want. But that's not surrender.

The wind bloweth where it listeth. The medicine does exactly what it wants to do. You have to trust it. It's not predictable, and it won't necessarily make it easy on you. But you have to trust that in every experience, however unpleasant, there is wisdom to be found in it.

We can't necessarily tell what is good for us and what is bad for us. And perhaps we need to go beyond these instant judgements of good and bad.

We confuse the two worlds. We think there is a correlation between how prominent a person is in this world, and how wise and gifted they are in the spirit-world.

Greatest thoughts from:  Jules Evans a writer, speaker and practical philosopher and blogger@ Philosophy for life a Jules Evan website.