Spirituality as For-Profit Health Care
My girlfriend took the day off work today, so I caught a bit of Oprah on TV - her guests were pitching something called the Laws of Attraction, and though I didn't care to follow closely, it involved lots of positive thinking and picturing your life where you'd like it to be, and then BAMF!, things would end up turning out that way. So, some of the guests brought up that in the past they pictured themselves one day being on Oprah, and what do you know, there they were on Oprah! Irrefutable proof.
I've often felt that the root cause behind the genocide in the Sudan is that the refugees just haven't pictured their lives getting any better - you gotta think positive. Same with the atrocities in the former Yugoslav Republic, Iraq, Vietnam, the Holocaust - all are cases of too much negative thinking and not enough bristol board, glue sticks, and magazine images of pretty people to go around. Plus, they never pictured themselves one day being on Oprah.
Seriously, my sarcasm is a cover for how much this kind of garbage burns me up. I think spirituality is the new religion, as people are catching on to the fact that the old religion - religion - is kinda fake.
How spiritual is it to sell help to someone? Because that's what Oprah's guests were doing, they had written books, they weren't giving away the advice for free to help other human beings, they were selling 'help' to try and get rich; that's called capitalism. And that's spirituality as for-profit health care.