Spiritual fetishism

There are two primary pitfalls with being involved with anything spiritual. One is spiritual reductionism, which I will discuss at another time. The other is what I call spiritual fetishism. This is where we objectify something whose spiritual essence far exceeds the physical. For example, a guru can become a substitute for the realization of higher consciousness within oneself. He may have started out as a doorway, but he becomes a roadbock.

Another thing that can become a fetish is the container of consciousness itself. A state of consciousness is the result of a delicate balance between pure consciousness, ego, intellect, feelings, senses, and the objects of perception that make up one's world. The resulting personal reality needs to have a certain inner and outer coherence, and a systemic structure and dynamic, in order to have enough stability to serve for any length of time as a platform of awareness. Naturally we get very attached to that stable "personality," but as spiritual evolutionaries we are simultaneously advocates of change and growth. That means the "state of consciousness" we are in, which is a median integral quotient of the strength and amplitude of our consciousness field, is a fetish container for its own metadescription.

Any state of consciousness can become a fetish. If we are in football consciousness, we have made the football a fetish. If we are in cosmic consciousness, we have made a fetish of the state of pure awareness as an ever-present reality along with relative awareness. If we are in unity consciousness, we have made a fetish of the merger of subject and object of perception. Let's face it: as long as we keep evolving to higher states, we are always going to find it irresistible to objectify our own subjectivity.

There is an alternative, though. Maybe we'll pop out of our consciousness fetish one of these days, like a Jack-in-the-box. We'll crack the cosmic egg of our own enlightenment. And when we do, it'll probably scare the hell out of God.