Today, it is an idealistic imperative to throw off labels and be generically “spiritual.” We might take a yoga class, or read a book about Zen, but we see little reason to belong to any one tradition. We prefer to travel alone on our self-made path, and keep ourselves on guard against the ego’s need to be made special with a label that would only be superficial anyway.   

And true, unless we live in a place like Sedona or San Francisco or Ashland, we might not know many people like us. We might, in fact, feel a little isolated, a little lonely…

No, wait, let’s face it.  There are many days when we feel very lonely.  As Elizabeth Debold wrote in her eloquent essay on “Spiritual But Not Religious” (What Is Enlightenment, Nov 2005), while independent spirituality gives her “enormous freedom,” she has realized “the price I pay is that I’m all alone.”

Now, if the problem ended at loneliness, we might say freedom is worth the price.  After all, we assume freedom expands our ability to grow, and allows our spirituality to deepen. But as it turns out, too much freedom and individuality end up preventing growth. 

Spirituality practiced in isolation with no aim other than self-actualization eventually stops us dead in our tracks.

Nowhere to go

Three thousand years ago the Greek poet Homer spoke of “the divine for which all men long.”  The postmodern world is only now catching up with the insight into the fact that our brains seemed to be hardwired with “The God Gene," or what Debold calls the “transcendent craving.”

With the advent of the counterculture and the New Age, many of us discovered that traditional religions, made sterile by dogma, did not adequately satisfy this craving and went off on our own in search of authentic mystical experiences. And many of us indeed experienced insights of Oneness and believed, as Debold did, that “this changes everything.”

Yet after exulting in the feeling of ecstasy, the experience of freedom and satisfaction, we of course find that this feeling fades as all feelings do. So we keep trudging along the same circular path, looking to satisfy the transcendent craving again, then again, in a neverending quest that inevitably ends exactly where it begins. Or as Andrew Cohen put it, that we’ve become “self-centered experience junkies.”

“Without a larger raison d’etre than the desire for self-satisfaction, we will only find narcissism – an endless hall of mirrors – at the end of our spiritual search,” Debold writes.

Social observer Tom Huston (also writing for What Is Enlightenment?) noted that our emphasis on individual experience has resulted in a “depth-deprived” spiritual culture. “We all go about our lives with our own unique personalized belief systems, values, and identities in tow… secure in the bubble of our easy isolation.” We have thus become “comfortably numb,” choosing to abide in the “flat” and gray areas of life, with inadvertently sedated souls. 

Huston echoes Wilber’s description of the “flatland” of postmodern spirituality. Although we begin with the intention of growing and evolving, because our efforts are not joined to any tradition or community, there is no context -- no handholds to grab, no stages to master, and no reason to grow past our own needs.

At first glance, this is sort of an amusing dilemma – indeed, it would be almost fun to sit back and laugh at ourselves, gliding along in our narcissistic little circles and calling it “growth.”  But the moment we look away from our own reflection in the mirror, amusement fades because we are forced to notice that the problem does not belong just to us. 

Indeed, as soon as we take a look around, we find, in Huston’s words, there is “carnage all around.” 

Blocking progress

An idealist understands that run-amok materialism is a deadly threat to our environment, as well as the driving force behind the disastrous economic disparity between nations. An idealist understands that religious dualism has all but destroyed any chance of harmony among us, and brought war and terrorism to our doorstep. An idealist understands that our only real hope for a sustainable future is if more of us look at the world through different eyes, and approach our problems from a different angle.

We idealists want nothing more than to do “something” about societal problems, and we are full of good intentions, full of fierce passion for change. And we all want to see ourselves as part of the solution. And yet, year after year, decade after decade, solutions remain hovering just out of reach -- not because we don’t know the solutions, but because we are unable to implement them. 

The upshot is that we have actually become part of the problem.  If the only way to change society is to usher in a wave of idealism, but all the idealists are refusing “on principle” to join any wave at all, then we instead form the wall that blocks this necessary wave from forming.

We are literally standing in the way of progress, which cannot flow through us, closed off as we are in our individual little closets, practicing our unnamed religions of one.

We are invisible

How can we bring idealistic values into our collective way of life if we do not identify ourselves – don’t identify who are and what we believe and what we want?  How can we challenge the status quo, let alone transform it, if we merely trudging along in quiet ambiguity? The simple truth is: we can’t.

Because we choose not to be counted as a particular something, we literally do not count.  And by default, all our desires, our dreams, our hopes -- our agenda for a better society – they do not count either.  As bestselling author Marianne Williamson acknowledged in an interview, the "huge cultural revolution in this country… remains unnamed and therefore pretty much invisible to the old order." 

Indeed, the 2005 Newsweek story on "Spirituality in America” shone spotlights on Christians, Pentecostals, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists, along with several other traditional expressions of religious feeling. But even their own poll showed that 24 percent of us are "spiritual but not religious," not once in the 16-page article did those 24 percent receive a mention. Only in the last paragraph, of the last sidebar, of the last page, is there a short description of the type of spiritual journey being undertaken by this huge slice of America.

We are ineffective

Unnamed, unidentified, uncounted, is it any wonder we are so woefully ineffective?  

For one thing, a group that does not accept that it is a group cannot communicate as a group, and cannot even begin to reach a consensus about the goals worth pursuing, let alone a strategy by which to pursue them.  (Read all the stories lately about the decline of true liberalism in the Democratic party, which is floundering for an agenda?) 

But even if we did have an agenda, we’d still be completely unable to access the power of our numbers. 

Unlike religious dualists who proudly identify themselves and unify behind their conservative ideologies and organizations, we idealists have rarely bothered to declare ourselves since the 1960s. We do not rally together so much as drift about, dabbling here and there, for this cause or that, whenever the mood strikes.

And on election nights, we sit stunned, wondering why our government and institutions do not reflect our ideals.

Our numbers cannot grow

Perhaps the most debilitating consequence invisibility is that it prevents our idealism from "catching on." Without a common identity, we have no common ideas or vocabulary to express our convictions to others, and we cannot help others to grow in similar ways.

Those who might be dissatisfied with the view of the world they have inherited from the religion of their parents or the convictions of the science community, face a difficult search to find a clearly-delineated alternative in the hodgepodge of subjects that make up generic, noncommittal spirituality.   

In fact, this morning I clicked on “Spirituality Home” on Beliefnet, the largest spirituality site on the Web, and these are the options I was given:  A lead article called, “Alarm Clocks are Bad for the Soul,” links to astrology, numerology and Tarot sites, a treatise on how to get in touch with my angel guides, advice on how to keep a dream journal, a list of the winners of Beliefnet’s Spiritual Film Awards (the big winner was “Chronicles of Narnia”), and a photo gallery feature called, “The God Who Knits: A Spiritual Craft Gallery.”

These are all interesting and worthy features, but nowhere can I find anything that helps me gain a workable understanding of an actual philosophy, or belief system, or spirit-based worldview.

Generic spirituality is a dead end.  Real idealistic principles – the principles with the power to transform us -- get lost in the shuffle.

And so our numbers do not grow.  We remain stuck at 24 percent of the population – an invisible minority living in a society where the rules are made by the fearful majority.

Clearly Sutcliffe is right when he says the instinct to refuse identity is "the gravest obstacle to the lasting inroads on the primary institutions of the modern world that this spirituality would dearly like to make."

For my children’s sake – for all our children’s sake -- I find this unacceptable.

Go to Becoming the Solution.