Capitalism Isn’t Blocking Your Spiritual Growth—You Are.

The misunderstood magic behind capitalism is it incentivizes businesses to produce what you want—for better or worse.

The Indian spiritual guru Sadhguru jokes that America is where spirituality goes to die. "When anything comes to America," he warns, "it takes on a different form." He offers the example of yoga. In the Indian tradition, yoga is about "union": to practice yoga is to enter a state of such complete oneness with the outside world that we "obliterate the boundaries of our individuality." But in the United States, we've watered it down into things like goat yoga and beer yoga. As Sadhguru quips, beer yoga is for "Yogis who have [a] drinking problem and drinkers who have [a] Yogi problem."

The idea that America is where spirituality goes to die doesn't hold 100% of the time, but there's more than a kernel of truth to it. The consumerism that dominates our society seems to crowd out meaningful spiritual connection. Or to put it another way: consumerism is where real spirituality goes to die. Before we go into why this is, let's define consumerism. Investopedia defines it this way: 

Consumerism is the idea that increasing the consumption of goods and services purchased in the market is always a desirable goal, and that a person's well-being and happiness depend fundamentally on obtaining consumer goods and material possessions.

There are two corollaries to this. First, in a purely consumeristic model, the North Star of sellers is to sell more consumable goods. Second, the North Star of consumers is to buy more consumable goods. More screens, more gadgets, more dopamine. Why settle for the iPhone 14 when the new iPhone 15 Pro just came out?

The common scapegoat for why consumerism has risen (and a crisis of spirituality has followed close behind) is capitalism. This is the first wrong turn on our society’s road to spiritual growth, as it makes the error of conflating consumerism and capitalism, when the former can exist without the latter, and the latter without the former.

While capitalism incentivizes people to create things others want, we as individuals are ultimately in control of what we want. 

While an economic system that doesn’t incentivize people to produce new things for us to want might seem more aligned with spiritual growth, history complicates this simple solution. While the men and women who lived in a commune in the New Testament (Acts 2:42-47) seemed to forgo materialism, the historical worldview of Karl Marx and its instantiation in 20th-century Communism was materialistic to its core. And while it's easy to assume that capitalism leads to profligacy and credit card debt, savings are the basis of capitalism. The very term “capitalism” refers to delaying consumption to accumulate savings so they can be reinvested.

Living in a capitalist society gave all three of us the freedom to seek out spiritual teachers and resources. Capitalism also gives those spiritual teachers the ability to devote their lives to helping other people to understand these concepts. But to pursue spiritual growth in a capitalist society, we must understand that consumerism isn't an economic model, it's an individual choice. As William Cavanaugh, professor of Catholic studies at DePaul University, writes in Being Consumed, consumerism is a "spiritual disposition"—"a type of spirituality, even if [we] do not recognize it as such." The question is not how much power government should have over commerce, but where should we as individuals put our focus? Should we focus on God, or on money? On a connection to Spirit and to our highest selves, or on keeping up with the Joneses? The inconvenient truth is that we cannot do both.

This is the misunderstood magic behind capitalism—it incentivizes businesses to produce what you want, both for better or worse. If you just want the newest phone, car, jewelry, and more, capitalism will encourage others to provide it for you. But if you want mountain retreats for contemplative solitude, community gatherings, high-quality spiritual teachers, or even anti-consumerist essays like this one, capitalism will equally incentivize it to be produced and marketed to you.

It’s your responsibility to choose to want in ways that lead to your betterment, and if we all do it together, the appearance of American capitalism will undergo a radical culture shift.  

True spirituality isn't easy. It’s a demanding and life-long pursuit, and—at a certain point—going farther along your spiritual path will require you to give up whatever it is that your ego clings to. As a result, in our desire to appeal to the masses, we target the lowest common denominator. We sell a spirituality that you can do in your free time, in a couple of hours per week. A spirituality that promises transformation but that never actually requires anything from you. Yoga studios don't tell their clients that yoga involves an obliteration of the boundaries between you and the rest of the world; they say that it involves breathing deeply and working out for a couple of hours per week. The biggest churches don't preach that Jesus will expect Christians to let go of all of their egoic attachments and even lay down their life to follow him, because congregations generally don't want to hear that. Instead, these churches preach that Jesus wants and expects nothing from you, and is mostly just excited to hang out with you in Heaven. It's all about getting people in the door.

In his book Not A Fan, megachurch pastor Chris Idleman reveals how he fell into this trap. "Too often in my preaching," he says, "I have tried to talk people into following Jesus. I wanted to make following him as appealing, comfortable, and convenient as possible." But in the process, he says, he "cheapened the gospel."

What made Idleman see the flaw in the consumeristic mentality he was using to lead his church? He went to the New Testament and looked at what Jesus did when he had attracted a large following. The answer surprised him: "I found that when Jesus had a large crowd, he would most often preach a message that was likely to cause them to leave." Jesus called his followers to leave behind their parents and let go of their attachments to their earthly possessions. Or as Idleman puts it, "It wasn’t the size of the crowd Jesus cared about; it was their level of commitment." 

Consumerism also stunts our spiritual growth by seducing us into keeping up with the Joneses. When our neighbor buys a new BMW and that prompts us to buy a new Mercedes, this constant comparison and one-upmanship harms us. As Dr. Alok Kanojia, Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, puts it: the ego "relies on comparison." "Anytime you make a comparison between two people," Dr. Kanojia warns, "that's ego." Endlessly comparing ourselves to our neighbors and thus identifying with our ego is death to our spirituality. In The Power of Now, spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle refers to the ego as the "false, suffering self" because it’s the part of us that’s completely divorced from our true selves. The more we identify with and act from a place of ego, the harder it is to listen to the still, small voice that is our actual spirit.

An even bigger danger of our desire to keep up with the Joneses is that the competition never actually ends. There will always be someone with more than us. Buddhism teaches that our ego is like a "hungry ghost" that is never truly satiated. Or as William Cavanaugh, professor of Catholic studies at DePaul University, writes in Being Consumed:

...consumers are characterized by a constant dissatisfaction with material goods. This dissatisfaction is what produces the restless pursuit of satisfaction in the form of something new. Consumerism is not so much about having more as it is about having something else.

This is one reason for what psychologists call the "hedonic treadmill": the idea that "regardless of whether good or bad things happen to us, we always return to a set point of happiness and well-being." When something good happens—we get a raise, or buy a new car—we think it will fill our "hungry ghost" and then we'll stop feeling the persistent dissatisfaction that mars so much of modern life.

But the ghost can never be filled; the more we try, the less content we feel.

Consumerism also gets in the way of spiritual growth because it pushes us relentlessly toward the newest shiny thing. But often, it’s the simple things that bring us the most joy. Richard Foster, celebrated theologian and author of The Celebration of Discipline, exhorts us to "refuse to be propagandized by the custodians of modern gadgetry." He argues that our fixation on gadgets is "a plague in the toy industry" and that "Children do not need to be entertained by dolls that cry, eat, wet, sweat, and spit. An old rag doll can be more enjoyable and more lasting. Often children find more joy in playing with old pots and pans than with the latest space set."

Technology can be amazing. Zoom and Google Docs let multiple people collaborate on this article despite living in different parts of the country. But technology can also disconnect us. When we collect cool new technologies for their own sake, we can grow more and more spiritually unmoored. We identify more and more with things: with our new Apple Watch or our new house. And the more we identify with things, the less we identify with the true essence of who we are: our connection to what various spiritual traditions refer to as God / Spirit / Source / our highest self.

So what steps can we take to avoid falling into the trap of consumerism today? We propose three.

First, it's important to recognize that the ego can dress up as our spirit and pretend to be God. This is superficially appealing, because when this happens (and it's a temptation for all of us) then "God" will only ever tell us what we want to hear. Should we donate our recent raise to charity, or use it to buy a new car? Our ego says we should reward ourselves with the car. And strikingly, "God" (i.e. our egos dressed up as a higher power) says so too. 

This is one interpretation of the Old Testament story in which the Israelis worshiped a golden calf. Unlike the actual God, this golden calf would never tell them anything they didn't want to hear. It would never talk back to them, call them to renounce their egoic attachments, or call them into anything higher. It was an inanimate object that they could raise up in the place of a deity, which they could claim to worship while in reality continuing to do whatever they wished.

In order to counteract this tendency, it's essential that we learn to hear the tone of God/Spirit/Source/our higher self, and how that tone differs from the tone of our egos. As we learn to tell them apart, we're less in danger of being bamboozled by the latter. Here's one way to tell the difference. God (or Spirit/Source/highest self/etc) speaks in a tone of infinite love for us and for every other living being on this planet. God speaks to us in a tone of compassion, joy, forgiveness, and endless peace. Our egos speak to us in tones of fear (which often manifests as scarcity: "If I donate too much to charity, I won't have enough left to take care of myself"), guilt, and shame.

Let's put it another way: because God loves each and every one of us equally, he will only ever call us into activities that are win-win for all involved. Because our egos only care about self-protection and self-aggrandizement, they will call us into I-win-you-lose games. If you feel like God is calling you into an activity that requires you to hurt someone else in order to get ahead, there is a good chance that it is your ego dressing up as God.

Of course, differentiating the voice of God from the voice of ego is the work of a lifetime. Here are two ongoing practices that we've found helpful.

First, try meditating for a certain period (not less than 15 minutes) every single day. When we shut off our devices and simply be, we learn to see the thoughts buzzing in our heads as not us. More importantly, when we quiet the outside world, we start to hear the still small voice of our true spirit. The more we can hear and recognize both, the more easily we can tell them apart.

A second way is by joining other people who are on our same spiritual path, and who are willing to offer us reflection. This is why Mark and Geoff offer spiritual men's coaching and run spiritually-focused men's groups. The idea is that our egos may fool us, but they are unlikely to fool those who are close to us. Iron sharpens iron, and having people who know us well and are willing to tell us when they think our egos are dressing up like God and leading us in the wrong direction can help us sharpen our discernment.

The second step we can take to avoid falling into the trap of consumerism is to take an inventory of our egoic attachments. List everything in your life that you would consider to be a part of your identity. Some of these really will be essential to your identity (ex. "I am integrous") and others will not be (ex. "I have a nice house"). A good rule of thumb is that "I am" statements might be a part of your identity, while "I have" or "I do" statements are probably not. If your identity seems to include lots of things that you have or activities you do, then it's a good bet that those are egoic attachments.

Once you have a list of your attachments, brainstorm ways that you could reduce their hold on you. For some, the answer might be to get rid of them (ex. selling your second car) or to take a break from them (ex. commit to taking the season off from skiing, and using those days to commune solo with God instead). In other cases, you may have to be more creative. If you have an egoic attachment to your spouse, for instance, then you probably shouldn't react by getting a divorce or taking a break from your marriage. But perhaps you could expand your meditation practice, spend more time communing with Spirit, and develop a deeper sense of identity outside of your relationship.

Egoic attachments crowd out spiritual growth, but true spiritual growth can also crowd out egoic attachments. 

The third step we can take to avoid the trap of consumerism is to make sure that we are following (or find, if we are not already following) a spiritual teacher who has few egoic attachments. This can be harder than it sounds, because one of the dangers of consumerism is that the lure of flashy cars and new phones can convince even someone who's been on the spiritual path for a long time that what God really wants is for them to focus all of their energy and attention on becoming rich.

To be clear, this doesn't mean that we have to follow a spiritual guru who is poor. But it does mean that our spiritual guru shouldn't have an attachment to wealth. In spiritual coaching, there's a phrase: you cannot take a client along a path that you yourself have not walked. When a spiritual teacher has their own strong egoic attachments, they're at risk of passing those attachments onto us. 

The path toward spiritual growth is challenging, partly because it’s the challenge that helps us transcend and draw closer to our God. Consumerism offers us a bevy of flashy distractions and easy ways out, but blaming external forces won’t ultimately move us forward on our internal journey. When we are ruthlessly honest about rooting out our egoic attachments, we can appreciate the freedom of capitalism without falling into the trap of consumerism as we seek a higher level of spirituality.