The Business of the Spiritual

The Divine has always been big business. The wholesale distribution of God, the unseen, the illuminated. Many have gotten rich and powerful off the God thing, the manipulation of gullible people who will worship almost anything if you subject them to enough mind control. They may be beat either physically or psychologically into conformity. The ages have produced an incredible array of sect's and esoteric anomalies. What is today's cult is tomorrows cultural necessity. How is it that one gets caught up in such dogma and suppression of intellect?
Does one go with the crowd because one does not want to be left out? Do you not want to miss anything that would leave you outside the flow of ones perceived beliefs.  The desire to be identified with the latest fad, to conform to non-conformity. The seeking of non-conformity is the deepest and most psychologically damaging type of conformity. A person may think that this is not following through non-conformity, but one is caught in and consumed with the desire to be acknowledged through difference. Desiring that others should conform to ones difference, thereby creating a sense of power and exclusivity.
This is the mentality of so-called "New Age" guru's. They take what has been taught by truly enlightened person's and put there own spin on it. They make up stories about how they attained some kind of realization and from that they paraphrase the writings of others and attempt to create some formula to an awakening that they themselves have not had. It has been observed how that these persons take the profound teachings of others and attempt to make them their own. This is why they sound so convincing, because they copy and repeat through modification that which is truly profound. There is nothing original from any of them.
If an authority writes books and lectures others on the way to a new life, you should be suspicious of there motives. Most are seeking self aggrandizement and do much to convince all that they are only interested in world peace and harmony. But can the world find peace and harmony through the words of another? Can the conceptually clever ideas of another create peace? Such activity only creates suspicion and opposition. Because a person is caught in the conceptual one cannot escape the conflict of position. One must defend that which one believes. You must be constantly coming up with a "strategy" to dispel opposition. So a person is caught in the conflict and violence of ones own self created "Spirituality".
As has been said, one must have a realization that peace and harmony comes only from within. One must project and create that which is within. But one must be free from images and concepts of so-called awakened and enlightened individuals. The truth of what is, is in the absolute moment. There can be no movement of the self as time, for there to be the realization of that which is beyond knowing and known. When all else is not the truth is.