Part I of III. Are we in the midst of a mass spiritual awakening?
There are many things that motivate those who apparently have the desire for a spiritual awakening: the desire for change, for escape, perhaps for a better world. I can’t help wondering whether vanity or the wish for new experiences often play a part, as well as the desire for the new and interesting. Is that not always the case with human endeavours?
But deeply felt experiences can also move us to seriously seek knowledge and permanent change in life. A strong inner perception that the world is “not as it should be”, which sometimes makes itself felt, can move us to search for something more than attending to everyday concerns and trivialities.
This is an intuition or, you could call it a foreboding, rather than an analytical breakdown of the conditions in the world. The latter can also lead to the conclusion that, at least in some ways, conditions have never been better. Improvements in our quality of life through medical advancements have brought us the lowest ever death rates from diseases. Modern technology brings an ever greater interconnectedness. Education and literacy rates have never been higher. These facts convince the analytical mind, but I believe the basis for a spiritual awakening cannot be imparted to others in debate, cannot be reached by analysis and cannot be induced by persuasion.
And yet, happenings across the globe continue to make a strong impression on us.
Life experiences often shake us. These can lead to a desire to leave behind wrong ways of seeking, wrong ways of being, amid the consciousness of daily struggles in the world we inhabit.
The inner stirring that can lead to seeking for the often elusive “more” can seem faint in comparison to the rapid intrusive impressions of everyday life.
According to Google N-grams (which measures how often phrases appear in books) the phrase “spiritual awakening” shows a steep rise in prevalence, beginning in the 1980s, coinciding with the rapid growth of the New Age movement – which is characterized by non-religious spirituality.
It seems to me that much of the New Age movement has become a profitable business, centred on meeting people’s urgent demands: “relaxation”, “less stress”, “empowerment”, “attractiveness” or “attraction” of whatever you want. There are many products associated with it: tarot cards, pendulums, crystals, aromatherapy baths, incense burners, herbal bundles, essential oils, singing bowls, tuning forks, meditation cushions and mats.
Is this cultivating free spirits who unfold in joyful spiritual awakening, or feeding a consumerist want for “more”: consumption, acquisition, desires met? A further dependence on material items?
You might get the impression that the New Age movement is still riding the wave of its initial impulse, while the great all-encompassing view of the end of an old Age, a mass spiritual awakening, and the beginning of a great new time is no longer in the forefront. It is hardly spoken about or thought of at all, and seems to have long since petered out.
The need to “wake up” is very much in the public consciousness. UK journalist Piers Morgan titled his 2020 book “WAKE UP”. It has the tagline “OUR EYES HAVE BEEN OPENED” – “WE MUST NEVER CLOSE THEM AGAIN”. On the back cover of the book an awakening is described as “… the return of true liberalism, where freedom of speech is king”.
This is a concrete proposition that I could envisage in practice. But is there more to “waking up” than this?
Jordan Peterson lamented a general short-sightedness as it frequently manifests in the political discourse in the US, in his video “A Wing and a Prayer”, which ended with an impassioned entreaty to God. In the next parts of this blog I will look at what a spiritual awakening means. For now, here is how “A Wing and a Prayer” ended:
May what is highest guide our vision,
May what is highest open our ears,
May what is highest guide our tongues,
And may we pray fearful of the Hell we could so easily and carelessly create,
Deliver us from evil,
Shine a light into the corners of our dark hearts,
For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory,
For ever and ever,
Amen
