Navigating social media spirituality

Where intention meets attention

I really wish this had never even happened but it has. The world of spiritual practice has merged with social media and the results are confusing at best but if we’re being honest it’s mostly a hellish cringe fest.

I spoke about this a year ago, asking that ceremony be kept sacred and not filmed or photographed to be used for social media.

My point being that ceremony is carried by our intention, and if you are filming it, the intention changes to attention automatically. I’ve personally found it super uncomfortable to share my ideas and work with the online world. Not because I feel creatively blocked or afraid of judgement, but largely because of the landscape that it has become. The algorithm demands from you. This is a game of attention and no matter how much you want to work with intention, an unholy pact must be made. 

If you want the reach you have to play the game. And in this playing of the game the sacred becomes profane, originality and creativity is lost to the regurgitation of trends, as knee jerk emotional reactions are prized above and beyond the sharing of real wisdom. As I found myself ironically wanting to make a number of reels about this I realised a reel wasn’t going to cut it.

And it’s far more nuanced and complex than a 180 second reel can deliver, it’s a reflection of who we’re becoming and the direction our culture is taking, for better or worse. And for that, I won’t bend to the algorithm. This has to be written, even if no-one has the attention span to read it anymore.

The sacred clown - the role of parody accounts

The huge number of spiritual parody accounts is a reflection of how weird things have become. A much needed genre that asked a lot of people to stop what they were doing and look at the state of themselves. Calling out many things, the spiritual parody account largely focuses on the immense spiritual bypassing and materialism that has flooded our culture.  

No ego has been left unbruised by these accounts as the sacred clown does its work to mock just how profane and ridiculous the world of new age spirituality has become. Within the laughs and jokes there’s also a deep sadness. A sadness that asks, how have we managed to miss the mark so badly? How have we taken practices from around the world and diluted and twsited them to the point where they have lost their meaning and purpose to become performative spectacles fit only for mockery.

There are two sides to this coin, one being that some people and things deserve to be shamed and mocked. The other being that shame and mockery is a toxic element to our culture, a culture that has lost its connection with awe and mystery completely. It’s a fine balance that is reflected in the very nature of the parody accounts themselves. 

Some of them are hilarious, creative and original. The humour is balanced on the knife edge of ridiculing people whilst being genuinely funny. It’s a true expression of art and something sacred to us as humans. Other’s are distinctly not funny, they recycle the same jokes and ideas over and over again, their target of ridicule stays the same, they don’t offer balance and the humour becomes profane and without intention. In short they become the very people they are trying to mock. Regurgitating and peddling the same tired nonsense in deference to the algorithm, imitating the sacred clown for their own purposes of likes, attention and revenue.

Often it comes down to the difference between imitation and originality, and how much someone actually has something of value to offer versus making content to keep up with the algorithms demands.

Because once you bow to the algorithm, it owns you. You are no longer directing your intention, the algorithm is directing your intention.

Many of these practice shouldn’t be flaunted online, they have a feel and energy to them that doesn’t translate through technology and onto screen. It strips them of their essence and portrays them in absurdity until mockery is the only sensible response.

How is influencer culture impacting spiritual connection?

It could be said that is where the problem started. Instead of meeting these practices in the real world with the real elders, people have come to it in its diluted form. In a disembodied and misrepresented form, where performance is valued over purpose.  

There is no feeling, there is no sense of the unseen that these practices carry. It is out of context. In much the same way a ballerina who is adored by the crowds at the ballet would probably be catcalled and degraded in a football stadium.

The ballerina is not meant for the football stadium and its audience in the same way that your spiritual practice is not a badge to be worn for likes, attention and validation. Whatever your practice might be it is something for you, something for you to embody and walk within everyday life so it can teach you its lessons. It’s something that requires time and care as you sit with it to learn its wisdom.

In influencer culture everything is a performance for the algorithm and so what is true is lost and what remains is often only a mockery of the truth. 

The speed of information - the culture of now

As a species we still seem to be grappling with the pros and cons of technology and in particular social media. Ideas can spread like wildfire and so it has become a battleground for control of the hive mind, often leading to more division than unity. The more controversial the better, the greater the emotional response the better. This anti human direction feeds into the growth of any account and therefore the share of voice it has in the space.

It is perhaps the speed at which trends move virally that is most concerning of all and unintended consequences this can have. Travel influencers who promote a tourist destination can create a mass influx of tourists in an extremely short space of time, making it overcrowded and leading to a detrimental impact on a place. An over saturation that the destination was in no way ready for. It destroys the destination and the experience for everyone. Too much, can destroy just easily as too little.

In much the same way tourist destinations are collapsing as tourists flock to the latest trend, so too are our nervous systems collapsing at the speed at which ideas are shoved down our throats. As easy as it is to say, ‘just turn your phone off’, this network of social media has become an essential component of life over the past decade. Our social fabric has migrated online and those that unplug risk missing out altogether on important information. In a sense the threat of isolation and exclusion is partly what keeps us hooked and that’s a powerful driver for humans. Although it is clear some are all too happy to unplug and who can blame them.

Responsible use is indeed a sensible route but when your emotional responses and brain circuitry are being danced around by an algorithm, where is that line drawn?

Pipeline of disillusionment 

And so too how is our emotional state being manipulated if we are being fed trends that initiate emotional responses.

The pipeline from new age to Christianity is one such trend where by those who have dipped their toes in the alternative or occult are now running to the church. In essence there’s nothing wrong with this, everyone should be free to their own spiritual practice as long as it harms no other.

The problem being that in the binary and infantile theology of christianity there is good and evil, and Jesus is good and everything else is evil. Hence, anything that is not understood or misunderstood is evil and demonic. There is no room for nuance, there is no question of one’s own shadow, there is simply the religious dogma of I’m right and you’re wrong. 

And within that spreads the misinformation that is simply based on a person’s fears and limited experience.

Which is fine if it stays in words and people are left alone. History, however tells us that religious fanatics have a hard time staying in their own lane and doing their own thing, which often results in dire and sometimes genocidal timelines. The need to grow and convert being a driving intention fuelled by a sense of righteousness that often bypasses any moral compass.

Returning to intention

And so we conclude with intention. How do we use social media, why do we use it? Who and what do we give our energy too. In any ceremony or ritual there are elements and components that serve a purpose to create that completion and wholeness of the intention.

It’s the reason why the scammers and bullshitters stand out so easily. Their ritual and their ceremony is for show, not for purpose, because it has no real intention behind it. It is mimicry, it is fake. And so too it is in the online world.

What is the intention of those you connect with in the online world? How do they make you feel? What responses do they elicit? From here you can carve and curate an experience in alignment with your own intentions. 

What is your own code of conduct online? How do you contribute to the space? 

More importantly do you need to share every element of your spiritual practice online?

Are you sharing with intention or are you performing for likes and comments? 

If you’re selling something are you honest about that or do you hide that intention whilst you manipulate?

If social media is indeed a benign and unbiased tool, then how it impacts us and our world can be shaped by our intention. It’s in our hands.

Artwork credit: Alex Grey