I have been reluctant to share this as it requires that I come out of the spiritual closet, in which I’ve been hiding for many years. Most recently the reason I’ve wanted to hide has predominantly been - in my opinion - the absolute horror show of what modern spirituality has become within capitalism, where anyone can put themselves out into the world as a spiritual teacher, healer or coach without any checks and balances to assess whether they’re in a position to guide others in a responsible and beneficial way. Most often than not, they are not in this position, and the onslaught is messy and often dangerous to people’s mental, emotional and physical health.
The complexity lies in the fact that the ‘assessment’ required is not the western, medicalised and colonized version we have been led to view as the most valid. This assessment is often best made by community, by elders, and by the person themselves - if they are able to view themselves with clarity. Most of us cannot, and that’s not necessarily our fault - we haven’t been taught how to, and on the whole, we lack healthy communities and eldership.
Witnessing what is happening in the name of wellness and spirituality has caused me to feel repulsed, angry and incredibly concerned. And the repulsion part is what has led me to hold back my own spiritual experience, my own story, and the core tenets from which I live my life, because I don’t want to be viewed like this. However, I have come to realize that this attitude is not beneficial because it means I stay silent when I could actually speak. It means I keep the foundation of my work hidden when it may be able to help someone - even if that person is me.
I’ll start by sharing my story. I was brought up in a Indian Gujarati family who are mostly practising Hindus. The first image of the divine I saw was the Goddess Durga, riding a magnificent tiger and brandishing symbols of both war and peace in her many hands. When my mum died of leukaemia, I was nine, and within two months my father had started a relationship with a school friend’s mum - the daughter of a man who had served in the British army in India, a born-again Christian, and - as I was to later realize - my long-term abuser. My Hindu roots were eroded and I soon became a Christian, attending a born-again Christian school and church, truly believing that Jesus was the one and only saviour for many years. I didn’t realise that I was being colonized in my own home on every possible level until decades later when it was safe enough to disentangle myself from the people who had caused and enabled it.
During my teenage years, and despite my belief in Christianity, I also carried a deep mysticism, naturally understanding astrology on a fundamental level and gravitating towards the deep symbology of the universe which showed itself to me through dreams and everyday life. I knew things that I couldn’t have possibly known but I had no-one to speak to about it, so it was only revealed through my diary, art and poetry. This deep inner guidance led me to naturally start questioning the patriarchal exclusivity of Christianity and led me to leave the Church, as well as through comments I had received along the way, such as ‘your Hindu family is going to hell if they don’t believe in Jesus’ and ‘you can’t enter heaven if you’re not baptized.’ My stepmother had a deep preoccupation with the apocalyptic end-times in a way which caused deep fear within me. Yet I now knew the Bible enough to question every aspect of it, with its many contradictions and irregularities. I knew it had been written and rewritten to serve whichever leaders were in power at the time, and I also knew that dogmatically believing in one doctrine was not the route I wished to go down.
I also desperately missed the Mother aspect of God. The feminine. There was something deeply wrong with what I had learned - something which erased not only my existence as a woman but the existence and beautiful complexity of the Earth herself as our sacred home.
My journey of self-exploration had begun, and I delved deep into the feminine mysteries, allowing life and my intuition to guide me. Meditation and subtle energy work soon followed as I started to see the years of grief and abuse that had been deeply patterned into my system, and how most of what I thought was my personality was actually a trauma response. As well as learning what worked for me individually, I also found a teacher to guide me through the subtle energetic and grounding work, and learning how to release the trauma from my high sensitivity so that I could embrace the many gifts it brought (including how and why I do this work). I can read the energetic archetypes of people, often at first glance. I can pick up on dysfunctional energetic dynamics very quickly, and I can read the room sometimes more than I would like to. Despite not subscribing to any particular religion or spiritual doctrine, I have spent years diving into practices from many spiritualities, and have a deep respect for those which genuinely seek to connect humanity to a remembrance of our divinity and our responsibility as stewards of the earth.
My devotional and energetic practices are what take up the majority of my time, contrary to what some may believe when they engage with my work. Everything else comes from these deep communions and conversations with the Divine, the earth, my ancestors, guides, and with my deepest being. And even whilst sharing this, I am reminded of how even these phrases and words have been appropriated and overused to the point where they have been almost rendered meaningless and devoid of the sacred. But still, I reluctantly type them anyway.
On my spiritual journey, I have seen the destruction caused by religion, not only through my own personal experience of Christian conversion, but by standing in the Ghanaian dungeons where enslaved people were held in pitch blackness, bar the small hole which led to the church above, so that while they sung their praises to white Jesus, the churchgoers could hear, smell and see the horror of what was going on below and somehow justify it in their hearts and minds. I have witnessed how this very Jesus is still plastered on the backs of most vehicles there, monitoring everyone silently, churches still dominating the streets; the aggressive tongue-speaking that is belted out through the microphones throughout the day to a people who only centuries earlier, had deep and rich ancestral spiritual lineages and practices, now considered heathen and sinful.
We are all seeing how the ‘divine’ claim of God’s promised land to His promised children, over 2000 years ago, is being used to dismember God’s children in real time.
We are seeing cults being formed and exposed on an almost regular basis. Spiritual leaders being held to such a godlike level that it is impossible to remain connected to their humanity. And we witness their inevitable fall.
We are seeing people film themselves ‘channel’ the galactic federation, who tell them that the second coming is about to happen for those who are stepping into the ‘new earth’, for those doing parasite cleanses, for those cutting out all vegetables from their diet and only drinking filtered urine. One says this, another says that. Carrots are evil this week, potatoes the next. They contradict each other and they all make extremely harmful claims, all while pocketing our money. They prey on our fear, and the belief that we are disconnected enough from our own discernment and intuition to see the delusion.
We see white people appropriate indigenous spiritual practices and use them to bypass their own responsibility to the people and the land from which they extract from. We see their spiritual tourism, used predominantly to support their own ‘ascension’ journey at the expense of Indigenous people’s sovereignty, their sacred practices and their right to financial compensation so that they can feed their families. We see how these practices are sold on to more westerners at extortionate prices, ultimately serving themselves, but not being used to help the many people of the global majority who have been spiritually, physically and emotionally colonized.
Yoga has been reduced to stretches on rubber mats. Entire industries have been built upon leggings. Ayahuasca is now in our modern lexicon, yet we see very little of the sacred wisdom that it is supposed to bring about, only further illusions and disillusionment from reality. The issue is not with the plant itself, of course, but how and why it is being used, as with all plant medicine.
We’re leaving our bodies to explore the astral realms, but we can’t even have healthy conversations with each other when conflict occurs. We’re dissociating when we hear bombs are dropped on families or when we hear that we’ve caused harm to someone.
We are seeing insanity occur, over and over again, under the guise of spiritual goodness and wellness. Capitalism has given the go-ahead for anyone and everyone to put themselves out there with their so-called spiritual gifts and promises, but without one iota of wisdom.
If our spirituality is not helping us become more human, more compassionate, and grounded enough in our bodies to witness both the beauty and the atrocities of the world, to stand what we see, and to respond to this in our own unique way, whatever that may be - then who and what does it actually serve? This isn’t a call to activism by any means. This is a call to sanity. The sanity of knowing that everyone has the right to believe what they believe, to live on their ancestral lands, to exist in a body of whichever colour skin they have, to love whomever they want, and that we don’t have a spiritually justified right to oppress them by imposing our values onto them. Nor do they have the right to do that to us.
Rather than be used to punish ourselves, to hold ourselves to an impossible standard of goodness (and inevitably fail), to feel morally superior to someone or to simply bypass everything altogether, I believe that our spiritual beliefs and practices can help us come back down to earth, to our bodies and to the love which already exists around us and within us. To bring it into our day-to-day actions such as giving back to the earth, being mindful of what we extract, and to try and align our words with our actions. To honour our ancestors while also being mindful of the harm they may have caused. To practice surrendering to the mystery every now and again. To have boundaries, to cleanse ourselves energetically so that we’re not carrying more than we need to, and to fill ourselves back up with loving energy and life force. To create healthy relationships built on honesty and reciprocity rather than extraction and abuse. To honour that while we may not like someone, they are as divine as us. To speak with ferocity when innocence, and the innocent, are being destroyed. To laugh. To soak up the sunlight. To remember why we’re here. And to find a sacred reverence and self-respect again, so that we love ourselves enough to keep going and growing, even when it feels hard.
Love knows what needs to be born and what needs to be destroyed, so that life can thrive in its fullness. And I’m reminded once again of the first image of God I ever saw, and how She held both symbols of destruction and creation in equal measure.
And this is why I’ve come out of the spiritual closet - to say what I have been longing to say, but silencing within myself, for a long time.
For leaders of colour who wish to dismantle empire by healing the empire within themselves, I offer consultancy sessions to provide gentle guidance through the process. The website is currently under construction so please contact me if you wish to work together.
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