Thank you for approving the post!
I’ve enjoyed what I read from the community here, but I do understand how my post isn’t what they’re looking for.
Some of my thoughts on the Buddhist / New Age / EA / "spiritual" movement.
Religious awakenings occur in response to crises. This is true in individual lives, and world history.
We Westerners have recently had some kind of religious awakening.
There are many possible candidates for what crisis spurred it, and the timeline of these crises. I see them as loosely beginning in 2007, accelerating in 2016 and again 2020, but somebody else may have an entirely different story. Are they social in origin? Technological, cultural, political, chemical? Who knows. All that matters... (read 2490 more words →)
Yeah I guess my feelings are more anecdotal, which is not the kind of reasoning this community prefers. I feel very passionate about this topic and have a lot of friends with what seem to be unhealthy relationships to spirituality.
I appreciate your criticisms and I think I’ll do more research. Sometimes I feel like with large-scale social phenomenon the really significant things go on in the “imaginary”, hard to define space.
It’s interesting what you say about a traveler’s diary through a place unfamiliar, and therefore (of course) unhelpful. It’s also interesting the way things we feel so fiery when writing can mean nothing to another person, if they don’t share the same set of initial feelings / the same language.
Appreciate you reading and responding!