when swimming in a culture that doesn’t seem to want that at all
March 2025
When things aren’t working (and that feels like ALL.THE.TIME), I find myself looking for systems and procedures that can get any one area of my life under control. It doesn’t have to actually get it under control – just needs to give me a semblance of control. It gives me some form of an understanding (even if it’s false) in a world that I‘ve always found pretty messed up and hypocritical. I tell myself that this semblance of control is needed to keep me from spinning out. That’s what I tell myself, though I still seem to spin out once or twice a year no matter what.
Since I run to systems and procedures (it has been my primary solution for all my life problems), I’ve drunk a lot of Kool-aid over the years.
And as I get (supposedly) older and wiser, I can see the unspoken and hidden ways that certain systems and thoughts make their way into those other systems and thoughts that were specifically created to go against those originals.
It’s amazing how the things that are supposed to free us, just keep us trapped in the same ways as they claim to “free you.”
Example: Most new age spiritual talk.
Today’s specific example: “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
The longer form of this translates into various explanations like “everything that happens to you, is just part of your experience” or “you made this contract before you came here” or the whole “everything happens for a reason” platitude.
It’s the whole “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” nonsense.
Like most things, it looks good on a meme and sounds good as a one-liner.
But it doesn’t hold up in real human life.
I’ve also heard the argument as “Be grateful for it all” from others who have no interest in hearing about the atrocities and abuse that people regularly put up with in the name of “society.”
Or “You have to take the bad with the good.” UGH.
It is such a part of our culture to hide the mess. To hide that all our walls, structures and systems are built on abuse, fear, shame, anger, control, and dysfunctional ideas of power.
And these things still find their way into the very movements and ideas against all of them. How can it not? We swim in it every single moment of our lives.
I spun out a bit one afternoon in my car (see, it happens anyway!) after listening to a podcast talking about these sorts of lines. I frantically talked into my notes app.
Thank you for hurting me? Thank you for making me mad? Thank you for treating me like shit?
We can justify anything in the name of higher spiritual consciousness, I guess.
Let’s not kid ourselves, religion (as we have come to know, understand and refer to it) has nothing to do with the spiritual. It is about control. Plain and simple. Even the spiritual that claims to drop the chains of organized religion still ends up being about some form of control.
I’ve always been baffled that everyone is so shocked when things go wrong inside those spiritual doors, these houses of worship, these loving communities. We blame people, our sinful nature, the parents, the friends, the media, etc.
We don’t blame the society, the community, or the culture that created this dichotomy of abuse and control in the first place. And this society has penetrated everything, every part of the world, every part of our lives. Even those organizations and movements who claim to be giving us a different alternative.
We all know better and yet, we still put out and put up with all these platitudes and structures that keep people trapped. I’m no different. And then we blame those same people when they act out, when they point out how wrong things are, when they need help that we are not just unable but unwilling to provide.
We don’t want to stand face to face with our hypocrisy. We don’t want to notice how awful we really are, how we are no better than the people we believe ourselves to be “superior to”, even if we really don’t “believe that anyone is better than anyone else.” (I’m calling myself out here as well.)
I have struggled every time I reach for a spiritual home, a spiritual place to rest. I’m at the point that nowhere feels right and I don’t want to get comfortable because I know what happens next. (It’s inevitable it seems.)
But I also know that community is vital and important. Finding a community that doesn’t blame, shame or make me take responsibility for things that aren’t mine, that’s proven to be a challenge.
I know I’m not alone in this. I know there is plenty of good being done in the name of spirituality and organized religion. That there are places and lives improved and saved in the name of God (whichever flavor you want too!)
I think I want more humanness, more love and more understanding. Which may or may not be found in working in spiritual/divinity circles as we humans know and understand them.
I struggle as I’ve continually taken on moral and spiritual blame that has cast me out of my own life. No matter how many therapists, techniques, retreats, hundreds of thousands of dollars and hours I’ve spent on various forms of loving myself, forgiving myself (and others), worshipping or workshopping or ignoring…
I still feel broken and empty and wonder if it will ever feel any better.
Swimming in it and breathing it in every moment of every day…I’m impressed that there are some days I do feel better.
The fact is that it can BE better, we all can DO better, we can all BE better – to ourselves and others.
It’s the work of our lifetimes, for ourselves and others, to be who we really are so others can do the same. As whole person.
Maybe that’s what is going to change us and change the things around us.