Into the Wildwood

It’s beautiful, intriguing, and stunningly innovative how spirituality can be translated into the way we look.

Mala beads, crystal necklaces, yoga leggings, hemp clothing, numerous tattoos, piercings, man buns, dreadlocks, esoteric symbols …

All of this stuff is interesting, and some of it I’ve tried in the past to express my inner spiritual values externally. But it doesn’t fit me.

It’s also beautiful how there are so many drum circles, yoga spaces, new moon rituals, reiki healing offerings, crystal healing, divine feminine goddess retreats, shamanic journeys, and other such offerings becoming more mainstream.

But they don’t fit me.

In fact, I’m starting to realise more and more that the skin of the “spiritual person” I’ve been wearing for so long is shedding from me like a snake sloughing off its scales. I just don’t find any interest in maintaining this image any more.

Something is happening on my path where I’m less interested in looking like or doing “spiritual person things,” and instead, I’m interested in the nature of the self and reality, and the deep truth underlying all things.

I feel an inner call to release more than gain; let things dissolve rather than accumulate more.

I’ve tried searching for so long for the answers in various spiritual circles. But yoga, crystals, tarot cards, rituals, spirit guides, plant medicine, magic, and even psychology will only take you so far …

In fact, I’ve come to one important realization recently, and that is that:

Wearing the “spiritual person” costume is exhausting. It is thoroughly fucking exhausting. Feeling pressured to look, do, or be a certain way (no matter how “elevated,” “conscious,” “high vibe”) is just another ensnarement of the ego.

One of my favorite teachers by the name of Adyashanti talks about the ego being a shapeshifter. This means that the ego can easily shift and appropriate spirituality for its own gain, morphing into a spiritual ego that appears a certain way to the outside world (hemp clothes, crystal necklaces, esoteric tattoos, raw vegan, yoga teacher, etc.).

Now, I‘m not saying that everyone who look’s stereotypically spiritual is ruled by a spiritual ego — those who don’t look spiritual and still value spirituality can also have a spiritual ego.

What I’m just saying is that I’m personally sick and tired of the whole spiritual person shtick. It feels like a distraction, it feels like a reinforcement of the separate sense of self which is at the root of our suffering.

So I’m on this strange journey of letting this stuff go. I think anyone on this path has a spiritual ego to some extent, and I certainly have one. Being a spiritual educator, it can be hard to see through this patterning.

But I’m happy being ordinary. I’m happy walking around in my mediocre T-shirt and pants. I’m happy not feeling the pressure to go to moon circles, and crystal healings, and quantum upgrades, and shamanic divine goddess groups, and satsangs, and meditation retreats and other such spiritual activities (not like I’ve done all of that stuff anyway.)

There is so much freedom in this: in the willingness to let go of the “spiritual-me.” This is an identity I’ve carried around for so long, and I’m sure it won’t be easy to fully let go of.

But I prefer to search deep than to go broad. I recognize that so much of what we do in the spiritual journey reinforces the artificial story of “me,” the ego that is the very thing we are trying to see through. To go beyond.

I’m interested in the deepest truths of life such as “Who am I?” and “What is reality?” and “What is true?”

I’m tired of spinning around the ringer of self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing forms of spirituality that create a sense of insecurity and inner lack.

I look out into the world and the spiritual landscape feels like a minefield of traps, snares, and delusions, all dragging us into a sense of needing to get more, do more, and be more.

Again, dabbling in different areas of spirituality can be helpful and empowering. But for me at this point, they feel unhelpful. They feel exhausting.

I don’t have any resolution to this post, other than simply sharing where I’m at. The truth is that I don’t relate to spiritual wellness people all that much, nor do I feel like I fit in with them. And that’s okay. After all, perhaps that is why I run a website called “lonerwolf”!

To end, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes by Adyashanti who talks about, what I feel, is the essence of spirituality:

Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretence. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.

Do you struggle to relate to spiritual looking people?

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