The Counterfeit Culture

I’m listening to another Adyashanti audiobook where he’s talking about the emergence of a true individual.

It’s not often this gets talked about in spiritual circles, focused as they are on the unity of all things and the illusion of the self.

Contemporary spirituality often asserts the whole by denying the individual. The goal is to offer something more collectivist and perhaps spiritual in response to modern culture.

But this misses something obvious.

Modern culture is criticised for being too individualistic, but how often do you meet true individuals in your days? Most people blend into the crowd, absorbing beliefs passed down by parents, political parties or just proximity. Individuality is rare.

Counterfeit individuality, on the other hand, is rampant. It says “I can do whatever I want, my life is my own business.” This is a way of idolising separation and grasping at a particular kind of freedom—not the development of individuality.

It’s the same with materiality: we revere the tangible but continually live in abstraction, pushed into it by a school system hellbent on keeping people sitting still and thinking.

People judge themselves by simple abstractions—good, bad, unworthy, entitled. They argue with others through beliefs, fighting and killing based on them.

They continually underestimate the physical, believing mental health is largely disconnected from the body, failing to make the connection between movement and well-being, food and mood.

This is a culture of the crowd and the abstraction.

We could do with a little more individuality and materiality.