Validation, Tibetan bowls and intuition: or how to dismantle spiritual materialism.

Spiritual materialism is a concept coined by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche that refers the use of spiritual concepts and practices to shield the ego instead of dismantling it. It is also refers to limiting what is “spiritual” to certain practices, fixating what is and what is not spiritual.

If spiritual materialism used to mean wearing a rosary around the neck, burning palo santo, talking about chakras and energies... today spiritual materialism smells more like hyping oneself up, validating oneself a lot, feeling oneself a lot, “putting oneself in the center” (as if our life was not already totally placed in the center) and “letting oneself be guided by intuition”, giving total credibility to an often arbitrary and selfish criteria, which rarely has to do with the well-being of others, in order to prioritize oneself at all costs in the name of self-care and spirituality.

Buddhist teachings, on the contrary, invite us…