You have done the ayahuasca ceremony. The ten-day Vipassana. The kundalini yoga teacher training. The Reiki attunement - all three levels. The breathwork intensive. The tantra workshop. The plant medicine retreat in Costa Rica. The silent retreat in Bali. You have crystals on your nightstand, a mala around your wrist, a mantra tattooed on your forearm, and three spiritual teachers you follow devotedly on Instagram. Your bookshelf is a temple of transformation. Your vocabulary is a cathedral of consciousness. You are, by every external measure, deeply spiritual. And you have not changed.
Chogyam Trungpa named this pattern spiritual materialism in 1973. It is the use of spiritual teachings, practices, experiences, and identities to fortify the ego rather than dissolve it. Instead of using the path to see through the self, you use the path to decorate the self. Instead of letting the teachings dismantle your identity, you let the teachings become your identity. You go from I am a successful person to I am an awakened person - and the structure of the I am has not changed at all. It has just put on different clothes. The ego that used to collect achievements now collects awakenings. The ego that used to name-drop business contacts now name-drops spiritual teachers. The ego that used to derive its value from how much money it made now derives its value from how many ceremonies it has attended. Same ego. Different outfit. Zero transformation.
I keep palo santo in every room, it is one of my favorite tools for shifting energy. *(paid link)*
I know this pattern from the inside. I spent years accumulating spiritual experiences with the same compulsive energy I had previously brought to building businesses. More workshops. More techniques. Stay with me here.More initiations. More teachers. Each one producing a temporary high - the glow of new insight, the rush of expanded awareness, the intoxicating feeling of being someone who is on the path. And each high fading within weeks, leaving me exactly where I started: a person trying to outrun his own emptiness by filling it with increasingly exotic experiences.
A set of mala beads turns any mantra practice into something tangible and grounding. *(paid link)*
How to Spot It in Yourself
Spiritual materialism announces itself through a specific set of symptoms. The first is spiritual comparison. If you find yourself evaluating your spiritual development relative to other people - if you think she is still stuck in ego or he has not done enough shadow work or I am further along than most people in my sangha - you are using spirituality as a status hierarchy. The ego has simply moved its competitive energy from the corporate ladder to the consciousness ladder. The ladder has changed. The climbing has not. I've caught myself doing this shit more times than I care to admit. You'll be sitting in meditation and suddenl Years ago, I spent weeks locked in a silent retreat, convinced that the stillness would crack something open. Instead, my mind spun stories faster than ever, clutching at every subtle sensation like I was missing the point. My body grew tight, breath shallow... until one afternoon, after a long shaking fit that left me collapsed on the floor, I realized no amount of sitting still would make me whole. The work was in the release, messy and physical, not the next mental breakthrough or spiritual badge. One of my clients once showed up carrying the weight of his father’s abandonment like a storm inside his chest. We worked through breath and somatic release—shaking, grounding, letting the nervous system settle from its fight-or-flight trap. He didn’t come out chanting or claiming enlightenment. But months later, he told me he finally felt... quiet. Not because the story changed, but because his body stopped firing alarms every time he thought of his father. That’s the kind of “spiritual” work worth doing.y you're thinking about how much deeper your practice is than the fidgety guy next to you. Or you drop some spiritual jargon at a party and feel that little hit of superiority when people look impressed. Same drug, different dealer. The ego doesn't care if you're competing over corner offices or enlightenment experiences... it just wants to win. Explore more in our sacred practices guide.
The second symptom is experience-chasing. If your spiritual practice looks more like a bucket list than a discipline - if you are always seeking the next workshop, the next teacher, the next ceremony rather than deepening your engagement with the practices you already have - you are consuming spirituality. You are treating awakening like a buffet. You take a little Vedanta, a little shamanism, a little Zen, a little tantra, mix them together, and call it your path. It is not a path. It is a shopping cart. And the shopping itself has become the substitute for the transformation the shopping was supposed to produce. Paul explores this deeply in The Electric Rose.
The third symptom is identity attachment. If you cannot introduce yourself without referencing your spiritual practice, your teacher, your lineage, or your psychedelic experiences - if these things are load-bearing walls in the architecture of your self-concept - you have turned the path into an identity. And an identity, by definition, is what the path is supposed to help you see through. The Advaita teacher says you are not your body, you are not your mind, you are not your story. Spiritual materialism says: correct, I am not those things - I am a spiritual person who knows that I am not those things. The ego has co-opted the teaching and used it to build a shinier cage.
If you are serious about a daily sitting practice, a proper meditation cushion makes all the difference. *(paid link)* Look, I fought this for years. Thought I was tough enough to sit on hardwood floors or whatever couch was handy. Big mistake. Your ass starts screaming after ten minutes, your back locks up, and suddenly you're more focused on your physical misery than anything resembling awareness. A decent cushion isn't spiritual materialism ~ it's basic fucking logistics. When your body is comfortable and properly aligned, your mind actually has a chance to settle down. Think about that. The monks figured this out centuries ago.
What Actual Transformation Looks Like
Actual transformation is not impressive. It does not photograph well. It does not make for compelling Instagram content. It is the moment when you lose your temper and catch yourself five seconds earlier than you did last year. It is the morning when you wake up without the familiar weight of dread and notice, with quiet surprise, that something has shifted. It is the conversation where you tell the truth instead of performing the version of yourself that the other person wants to see. It is the gradual, undramatic, unphotographable process of becoming slightly more honest, slightly more present, slightly more willing to feel what you actually feel rather than what you think you should feel. You might also find insight in We Can Seek Heaven Without Demanding Others Join Us.
Real practitioners are not impressive. They are ordinary. They have bad days. They lose their temper. They forget their mantras. They skip their practice sometimes. They do not speak in a perpetual tone of soft wisdom. They do not have answers for everything. They are not performing peace. Here is the thing most people miss.They are learning, failing, returning, deepening - and the deepening is invisible to everyone except the people who are close enough to feel the difference. The difference is not in what they say. It is in how they listen. Not in what they know. In how they hold what they do not know. Not in the certificates on their wall. In the quality of their silence. You might also find insight in Escape Velocity and the Energy Required to Leave Your Cur....
If you are ready to face what is hidden, a shadow work journal provides the structure many people need to go deep. *(paid link)* Look, most of us need guardrails when we're excavating the messy shit we've buried. I've watched too many people get into shadow work like they're taking a weekend workshop on chakras. Without some kind of framework, you'll either chicken out after day two or turn it into another spiritual performance where you're writing pretty thoughts about your "dark goddess energy." A good journal keeps you honest. It won't let you bullshit yourself. It asks the questions you'd rather avoid and gives you permission to be ugly on the page... to actually meet the parts of yourself that make you cringe. Think about that. Most spiritual practices want you polished and ascending. Shadow work wants you raw. Know what I mean? *(paid link)*
The test is simple. Has your practice made you kinder? Not more knowledgeable. Not more impressive. Kinder. More patient with the people who annoy you. More honest with the people who depend on you. More tender with the parts of yourself that you used to exile. More willing to sit with someone in their pain without trying to fix it, teach them something, or redirect them toward a practice. If the answer is yes - even a little, even inconsistently, even on your good days only - then your practice is working. If the answer is no - if you are more knowledgeable but not kinder, more experienced but not softer, more awakened but not more available to the people in your life - then your practice has become another achievement. And achievements, no matter how spiritual they look from the outside, are not the same thing as transformation. If this hits home, consider an intuitive reading with Paul.