Spirituality: Was that just another American fad and has it peaked?

Perhaps because America was started by a bunch of misfits who couldn't make it in England, we will do just about anything to belong.  That makes us suckers for fads.  Therefore, our various enthusiasms should make us suspicious.

Take our chase after spirituality.  Was the genius of the film "The Master" that it captured how easily some folks can set themselves up as enlightened and how just as easily other folks will buy in.

Since the early 1980s I have been a spiritual pilgrim.  I immersed myself in the Twelve Steps, the program for spiritual development put together by two recovered drunks Dr. Bob and Bill W in the late 1930s.  Simultaneously, I danced with Quakers, a set chased out of England.  When that didn't deliver sufficient serentity I showed up at a Buddhist temple on one of the mean streets of New Haven, Connecticut.  While we sat on gold and red cushions meditating, a member sat, metaphorically speaking, shotgun outside the shrine room in the event of, at best, a thief, and at worst, a mass murderer bothered to come up the three steep flights of staff.  Part of my meditation was interrupted by intrusive angst regarding the safety of my car parked across the street.  Currently, I am taking my spirituality lite with a once-a-week mindfulness group at a Hamden, Connecticut Unitarian Church.

Either my spiritual journey, the quest of the hero Joseph Campbell had talked about, is complete or spirituality isn't where it's at any longer.  Others, equally fad-addicted, have expressed weariness with enlightenment.  The economy is improving and they want to chase money again.

Someday soon there could be a "closed' sign on the buildings which served as the houses for spiritual nurturing.  The Masters will be out of business. 

One useful read on the founding of America is the book "The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between A Little Craziness and A Lot of Success in America.  It's by John D. Gartner.

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[David Leonhardt]

Spirituality is within you. Your communing with Buddhists and Quakers were attempts to ignite your spirituality, but it still has to come from within.