When we are drowning in notification dings, Facebook messages and poo emojis, why do we seek an additional form of connection with ourselves and others?
Think of the phrase ‘spiritual person’.
Any bet you barely had to blink before you pictured them: the tanned young person whose dream it is to go to Bali and “find themselves”, whether that means popping ‘Panadols’ or getting a tattoo on their bum cheek. Or perhaps you’ve thought of the more holistic stereotype of the closed-off hermit with a self-cut hairdo, who lives by themselves because they scare away everyone with their obsessions for inherently furious dialogue and strange herbal teas.
These two stereotypes seem worlds apart. Chalk and cheese, apples and oranges. You get the point. If not for that magical, shimmering linking word – spirituality – they’d have nothing in common. Not in values, beliefs, or ideas. One functions on appearance and ego, and the other on hardcore self-definition to the point of close-mindedness. And yet, they both seek to label themselves as a ‘spiritual person’. But like any vague umbrella term, it’s… Well, a vague umbrella term.
As with any other stereotype, it’s my understanding that the two examples of a ‘spiritual person’ you probably thought of are caricatures, hyperbolised truths for the approval of social groups, or simply, to look interesting for the purpose of an Instagram feed. But I know there must be something deeper to this term which is so vaguely mystical and fascinating that it cannot be boiled down to mere labels. There must be something more than Kylie Jenner saying, “I feel like this year is really about, like, the year of realising stuff, and everyone around me, we’re all just, like, realising things.”
To help me clear these foggy intuitions I phoned a friend (literally).
I sat in Willow’s compact car in a parking lot, facing dull grey picket fences splayed with abstract graffiti. I noticed a black woven dream catcher hanging from the indicator, and on the other side of the wheel, keys with an amethyst crystal dangling from the ignition. She opened the front windows slightly, to let in fresh air and outside noises: echoed magpie caws, the breeze gently gliding between trees, abstract chattering voices.
“Everything has a spirit,” she began thoughtfully, fiddling with a metal button on her overalls, staring out of the window. “[Spirituality is] tapping into and realising what your reality is… and acknowledging your surroundings, to then act upon them.” Her rings, each one adorned with symbols, geometric patterns and crystals, made soft clinking noises as they came into contact with the button. “Learning to love yourself and accept yourself is the first main step into opening that world.”
So we can deduce that spirituality nowadays is a way of achieving self-acceptance, as well as understanding where you fit in with the rest of the world. But when we are drowning in notification dings, Facebook messages and poo emojis, why do we seek an additional form of connection with ourselves and others?
It’s a question that can only be answered by looking at why modern spirituality has come about, especially among those who were born and grew up in the era of the Internet. More and more of us are becoming less embedded in traditional religion, favouring secularism over established rules and regulations of an ordered faith. Take a look at the previous Census, for example. Around half of those who reported having no religion were under the age of 30. And that number, when compared with previous trends, is only rising.
To me, this speaks volumes. Online, we can obtain any answer to questions we would otherwise consider endlessly; we can choose whether we believe in aliens existing or the Illuminati controlling pop stars. We no longer have to rely on parents or grandparents to pass down theories about the world, because while our families largely determine our childhood views, by the time we are young adults we begin to answer these questions for ourselves.
Modern spirituality – separate to religion – is one of those answers that young adults may consequently seek. And though the Internet gives us part of that answer, it could also be one of the reasons young adults look for spiritual peace in the first place. After all, the Internet is an inherently artificial thing. At the end of the day, a tweet is just a bunch of pixels illuminated by a man-made screen, and when you consider how much time we spend in front of that screen, it’s easy to see how someone can be overwhelmed by digital facades. Profile pictures, statuses and likes can be seen simply as sources for the hungry ego to thrive upon, which replaces the desire for self-love with selfish triviality instead.
Perhaps, then, the reason we seek self-love is precisely for it’s non-physicality – for its subjective, interpretable abstraction. In other words: it is what we make of it. It doesn’t rely on a Holy book, nor is it artificially based in a screen. And if spirituality is a way to reach that non-linear idea of self-love, then it is more than understandable why young adults are inclined to identify as ‘spiritual’ but not ‘religious’.
But what do those who don’t identify as either have to say on all of this?
Meet Edward: an Anonymous-admiring, strictly scientific friend of mine who is a self-described “hardcore atheist”. Ironically, through the physical barrier of a screen, we spoke about his thoughts on modern spirituality. With his earphones plugged in, he fervently exclaimed, “You’re just matter! Matter can be destroyed, matter can be created. There’s nothing else to it. There’s no way to explain how that relates spiritually [to the rest of the world].”
Though he speaks with humour, there is an underlying stream of concise, political thought to what he says. “You can believe whatever you want. You can believe that, y’know, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a thing – whatever floats your boat. I just draw the line when it comes to controlling people. Imposing thoughts, beliefs, rules based on religious context on people is what I’m strictly against.”
He reminds me that religion isn’t just a ‘To-do List’ (although, interestingly, I did once have a teacher tell me that ‘BIBLE’ stood for ‘Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth’). Religion is a structure. It is power for those at the top. It is control over masses.
Perhaps that’s the reason that today, we are less religious than ever. We seek something that we can easily believe or disbelieve in – something that can be decided by ourselves, instead of dictated to us. You’ve got to admit, the Westboro Baptist Church is slightly rigid and outdated. And maybe – just maybe – this is another reason why younger people are more readily identifying as spiritual.
Edward acknowledges, “When it comes to religion, it’s not just control. You’ve also got: it makes you feel good! Spirituality makes you feel good. It makes you feel like you’ve got some connection to the world, makes you feel like you’ve got some control over what happens.”
Listening to Edward, my train of thought finally goes down one path of the fork in the tracks. I understand what spirituality is. It’s a deeper understanding of self-love, devoid of artificiality or subservience. It isn’t the person who claims to be spiritual for their Instagram – they still seek approval for the ego. On the opposite side, it also is not the person who is so fixed on being locked away by themselves, so intent on following rules, that they forget spirituality is all about connection.
Although Edward isn’t a spiritual person, at the end of our conversation he said, “I guess [the goal of spirituality] is finding your place in the world.” Straight away, I was transported back to the car in the parking lot, looking at the dream catcher swaying slightly and wondering what it all meant. As Willow put it, “There’s no wrong, there’s no right. It’s your way – it’s your perception of it all. And once you accept that… the doors open up from there.” ✦
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