Eastern spirituality has been hip and cool in the U.S. since the counter-cultural era of the 1960s.

(It had earlier phases of appeal too, particularly to educated and elite populations — from Transcendentalists getting their hands on the first English translations of Eastern scriptures, their writing and perspectives infused with these influences, to Swami Vivekananda being the first to wow people in person, at the 1893 Parliament of World Religions in Chicago.)

These days, blooming lotus paintings and statues of meditating Buddhas are as likely to be found in the décor of a massage studio or therapy office as are feeling wheels and herbal tea stations.

On a visit to a chiropractor or physical therapist, posters of chakras and energy meridians may hang nonchalantly alongside those of the skeletal or fascia systems.
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​And depending on the neighborhood, Buddha statues may be more or less numerous in people’s gardens than ceramic gnomes or Virgin Mary and St. Francis figures.

What’s going on here?

Six Explanations for the Ascendance of Eastern Spirituality

The cultural position of Buddhist, Hindu, and other Eastern symbolism is NOT primarily due to the presence of ordinary people who have immigrated here from Asia, carrying Eastern religious heritages with them.

No, exposure is a necessary but not sufficient condition for Eastern perspectives to gain popularity in the West.

Rather, the following six factors help account for the prominent place of Eastern spirituality in American pop culture today.

Intrinsic Appeal

To state the obvious, people can respond to ideas that make sense to them, rituals or practices that are effective for them, religious stories or art that move them, etc., from any source, because of the thing itself.

​When I studied “world religions” for the first time in college, I felt a natural affinity with the Tao te Ching. I carried a pocket edition around campus with me, pausing between classes to read a passage or two.

The book’s imagery, drawn from nature and daily life, its elegant wisdom, and the natural yet ineffable concept of the Tao itself — all these connected with me in an intuitive way.
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Whether it’s an idea like a cyclical sort of cosmology (and at the individual level, reincarnation), an orientation like seeking illumination, a practice like meditation, or an aesthetic sensibility, aspects of Eastern spiritual traditions can genuinely appeal to people on their own merits.

Clean Slate

When I see a stranger, I tend to assume the best of them — or at least, to be open to who they may reveal themselves to be.

But with someone I know, the better I know them, the more I know not only their finest qualities, but also their most frustrating ones.

That’s true of religious traditions too. One can more readily recognize the flaws in the thing we know more intimately.

Whether it’s through direct experience, or through exposure to the Christian-dominant culture of our country, many Americans know well one or another expression of Christianity (or Judaism). Thus we are familiar with the pitfalls in the particular ways these traditions have taken shape and been practiced around us.

​I grew up attending a United Methodist church with my family. There is plenty to admire in the Jesus tradition (which I still claim, in my own way). I benefited from my participation in that Methodist church, and still appreciate what I learned about religious community, the biblical literacy I acquired, and the introduction to the prophetic figure of Jesus.

Yet, the more I learned about that religion — particularly through two years of confirmation classes in junior high — the more I began to chafe and question.

The patriarchy in the Bible was stifling. In the church sometimes, too.

Some of the practices and the debates around them seemed arcane to me. Should Holy Communion be done by intinction? What does this rite mean? Who is allowed to take communion? (To their credit, Methodists welcomed anyone to do so. That wasn’t true at my neighbors’ Catholic church.)

For baptism, should babies be sprinkled or should people old enough to choose for themselves be dunked? Is a non-baptized person at a cosmic disadvantage — or even bound for hell — regardless of whether they had exposure and access to this tradition?

I had difficulty with various ideas of The Way Things Are. What’s up with atonement theology — why so much focus on sin and death? What kind of God would sacrifice his child?

​And the dogmatism in general rubbed me the wrong way. Why was Right Belief the main thing? Isn’t it more important how a person actually treats other people? It didn’t make sense to me.

I did not get confirmed, as I did not feel I could stand before the congregation with integrity and publicly confirm all the things that one must confirm at Confirmation.

I had more questions than answers. I found other questions more relevant to spiritual living than the ones the church emphasized in its membership process.

​The adage “better the devil you know” suggests that people often prefer to deal with a problematic, but familiar and predictable, person or thing, rather than encounter something new and unknown. That may be true for a sizable portion of any population, when it comes to religion.

But I’d guess there is at least a significant minority who are more like I was, with the opposite tendency — knowing all too well what I find problematic in my native religion… wondering if some other spiritual tradition or group has managed to hold onto the kernels of goodness, and steer clear of the accidents of history that plague my own religious heritage.
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Emerging into adulthood with such an attitude, it’s no surprise that Eastern traditions would pique my interest, when I had occasion to encounter them.

Personality Differences

Humans are born with a variety of temperaments, and we are socialized in particular ways. Regardless of the religious experience or exposure one has as a result of family and culture, some of our personality traits are, at least to a degree, inborn.

One of the Big Five or Five Factor personality traits, Openness, could help explain why some people are more adventurous about religion than others. The Big Five model names — you guessed it — five traits that vary across humans. This model has shown high scientific validity.

The trait of Openness to Experiences refers to a curious attitude toward life. People who score high on Openness are more likely to be creative, to try new things, and to enjoy playing with abstract ideas. Such a person’s brain will show more interconnections across certain, disparate brain regions.

In contrast, those who score low on Openness are more focused on the concrete. They tend to be traditional, practical people. Their brains exhibit fewer connections across different brain regions.

The trait of Openness is inherited to a certain degree. At an estimated 61%, Openness actually showed the highest genetic component of all five traits in one study. [i]

Along with nature, nurture must play a role too. If we have a genetic predisposition toward Openness AND are raised by curious, creative, intellectual people, it’s a double whammy — one might have a particularly robust trait of Openness in that case.

Neither of these ways of being in the world — with high or low Openness — is right or wrong, better or worse. Human communities probably benefit by having people of both types in them.

Which type of person would you expect to be more likely to be spiritually inquisitive?

Savvy Marketing

When describing something perceived as foreign or exotic, the marketer enters the marketplace with a distinct advantage over the consumer. It’s harder to be a shrewd consumer when you lack a frame of reference upon which to make reasoned judgments. Such is the situation with cross-cultural contact.

In Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East, Gita Mehta chronicles an era of spiritual tourism that began in the counter-culture of the 1960s, when “the West adopted India as its newest spiritual resort.” [ii]

Mehta describes the peculiar collision of cultures:

“We were Indians but we had caught the contagions of the American Age. Speed was the essence of action, and America proved it daily… [Western spiritual tourists to India] thought they were simple. We thought they were neon. They thought we were profound. We knew we were provincial. Everybody thought everybody else was ridiculously exotic and everybody got it wrong. Then the real action began.”

What was this “real action”? As American mass marketing penetrated the Indian countryside, “the unthinkable happened. The kings of rock and roll abdicated. To Ravi Shankar and the Maharishi.” [iii]

When the Beatles embraced meditation and mysticism via an Indian guru, Mehta indicates, “the East” was able to turn the tables. Suddenly the spiritual heritage of the East was a hot commodity for Westerners.

“Eventually we succumbed to the fantasy that Indian goods routed through America were no longer boringly ethnic, but new and exciting accessories for the Aquarian Age. From accepting the fantasies it was a very short haul to buying them and, later and more successfully, to manufacturing them. As our home industry expands on every front, at last it is our turn to mass market.” ~Gita Mehta [iv]

​Of course, plenty of Eastern teachers — and not just from India — have migrated westward, publishing books, teaching meditation in classes and retreats, building audiences and ashrams.

I have described elsewhere how the religious roots of meditation practices were often softened when presented to Western audiences (see How Was Meditation Mainstreamed?). That may be true, to some degree, for these religious traditions generally — and whether introduced by cultural ambassadors of the East or the West.

Esoteric elements may be downplayed, and universalizing vocabulary adopted. The language of science, in particular, may be used to communicate that this Eastern wisdom is not at odds with modern metaphysics.

The Orientalism that is a legacy of European colonialism may be leaned into, as intangible qualities associated with the East are sold to Western audiences weary of materialism.

Om-washing may cue people to relax the reasoning, monkey mind. To lean into imagery, into intuition, into mystery — into be-ing rather than do-ing.

Ah, that’s better…

​(Or is it?)

The Questioning Stage of Faith Development

If you’ve heard about the six stages of faith development, you might guess where I’m going with this. When people reach the fourth stage (if they do), they’ve moved from a conventional faith to a reflexive or individual one. [v]

In the synthetic-conventional stage (stage 3), people move beyond the literalism that previously guided their relationship to myth and symbols — engaging more abstract thinking — and synthesize the different areas of their life into a single whole. People in this stage are strongly rooted in relationships and community. They may find it hard to think outside the parameters of their inherited tradition, looking strongly to authority figures to guide them in their beliefs.

​In the individual-reflective stage (stage 4), people bring critical reasoning to their faith. They think carefully about what they believe, often questioning previously taken-for-granted ideas, and take responsibility for their faith on an individual level. Self-identity becomes more integrated with one’s values and worldview.
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There is no universal pace for moving through the stages. A person can remain indefinitely at any stage. But stage 3 is typically associated with adolescence. Stage 4 may begin in late adolescence, young adulthood, later, or not at all.

Those in stage 4 sometimes become critical of the faith they inherited. They may even reject it. I expect it is at this stage that many people may become open to wisdom from other traditions — particularly ones that do not exhibit the same flaws now perceived in one’s own first faith.

Other religious traditions may be of interest to people in later stages too.

Stage 5 is called the conjunctive stage. This is when people find balance in the contradictions in their religion, and in reality. They develop a new appreciation for paradox, recognize their own finiteness (including of mind and perception), and are open to multiple meanings that may be found in faith symbols. This stage is typically not reached until mid-life, if at all.

Stage 6 is called universalizing faith. People at this stage exhibit deep openness and understanding, having been transformed and possessing a holistic kind of faith. They recognize wisdom from many sources. Often spiritual leaders and mentors to others of all stages, they typically lead lives of service. This stage is considered rare, most likely occurring later in life.

I hypothesize that in a society that is predominantly Judeo-Christian, interest in Eastern traditions is especially likely to develop, when it does, around stage 4 — particularly if it is readily accessible to the person at that time.

​People in stages 5 and 6 may also take an interest in traditions other than the one they grew up with. This may be enriching to them, and be part of the process of developing a greater awareness of one’s own and others’ perspectives, and integrating that knowledge.
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If not brought into contact with other traditions, though, I suspect people at these more developed stages would not feel a need to search outside their own native tradition. They could resolve the contradictions of their own tradition from within it, and access deeper levels of wisdom that are available in every major religious tradition — including their own.

In today’s interconnected, multicultural world, many people will gain exposure to diverse religious traditions, and need to decide how to relate to them.

Still, I see stage 4 as the stage when the greatest numbers of people are likely to both analyze and come to personal terms with their own faith tradition — warts and all — as well as go into seeking mode, becoming curious about diverse sources of wisdom.

Intercultural & Racial Identity Development

How can we understand Westerners’ relationships to Eastern spirituality? Another type of developmental approach that may offer some insight into this question comes from models of racial or cultural development.

Let’s start with the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) created by Milton J. Bennett. [vi]

“Each orientation of the DMIS is indicative of a particular worldview structure, with certain kinds of cognition, affect, and behavior vis-à-vis cultural difference typically associated with each configuration… it is a model of how the assumed underlying worldview moves from an ethnocentric to a more ethnorelative condition, thus generating greater intercultural sensitivity and the potential for more intercultural competence.” ~ Milton Bennett [vii]

Once people have enough exposure to get beyond Denial that different cultures exist, they move into the stage of Defense.

Defense describes well the emotional tone of this stage, which is defensive. The cognitive structure here includes mental categories that can recognize cultural difference; however, the original world view is protected by poor integration of the new categories. This may lead to a hardening of categories.

Initially, a person might respond by focusing on what is good — in fact, better — about one’s own culture, and evaluating the differences in another culture in a negative fashion. A person in this situation may be most comfortable staying in bubbles where their own culture is dominant. At the extreme, they might embrace supremacist attitudes and even behaviors.

An alternate response in this stage is to regard the other’s culture as superior, and see one’s own as inferior. The dynamic is the same — only one can be “right” or “good” — this position just flips which culture is regarded as right/best and which as wrong/lesser. This version of the stage is called Reversal.
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​The DMIS was developed in relation to whole cultures. My sense is that it was intended to speak to situations of cross-cultural contact such as occurs in the context of international business, or prolonged immersion in a new culture, such as for a Peace Corps volunteer or a person who immigrates to a new country.
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To me the DMIS seems useful for understanding religious differences. Religion is, at least in part, a cultural phenomenon. Religious perspectives are part and parcel of what makes “the West” or “the East” or specific countries (the U.S. or Canada, India or Japan) what they are, culturally.

The stage of Defense, alternately called Polarization, can be seen in how people orient themselves when they encounter a religion that is foreign to their culture.
A non-Asian Westerner who engages with Asian religion and worldviews, and chooses to continue to do so, if still in the Defense stage would most logically come to it from the point of view of Reversal — seeing the other’s religious culture as superior to one’s own religious heritage.

I say that because a person at the other pole of polarization, Supremacy, would have little motive to remain deeply engaged in Asian religion, while regarding it as inferior, and in a stand of cognitively and emotionally defending one’s own, Western religious upbringing.

It’s hard for me to remember now, but I might have been at this stage in college. As I’ve indicated, I was very much interrogating my own, Protestant Christian heritage. At the same time, I was curious about other traditions, and especially drawn to Taoism.

My engagement with Eastern religions was not very deep then — it was largely intellectual, through college coursework and independent reading. It did not bring me significantly into contact with the baggage that one encounters in an embodied expression of any tradition, as practiced by real people and woven into institutions.

So it would have been easy for me to remain discriminating and critical with the devil I knew (Protestant Christianity), and have a sunnier disposition toward very different traditions (such as Taoism).

Even once a person begins to develop a deeper exposure to a new-to-you tradition, I suspect it often takes a while to see its shadow side. Especially if its emissaries have taken pains to make it appealing to Westerners (as indeed, plenty have).

It strikes me that an Asian Westerner is in a more complex situation. I think of the person who introduced me to the meditation teacher whose community I would one day move to. (I describe the beginnings of our connection, while we were both in India, here.)

She was (is) Chinese American, from San Francisco. I don’t know if her family were practicing Buddhists (or Confucian or Taoist), or Christian converts, or identified as non-religious. But there was surely some influence of the religious worldview of her Chinese ancestors, carried over into her family and their ethnic enclave in San Francisco.

Yet, Linda (I’ll call her) would also have grown up very much an American, socialized by American schools, friends, business, culture in general. She may be several generations away from the immigration experience — when it is common for people to reclaim their cultural heritage, as I remember from sociology classes.

I don’t know what brought Linda to take up the method of meditation taught by an Indian guru, and become close to his ashram community, and grow so enthusiastic that she evangelized me. Any or all of the other motives I describe in this piece may have been alive for her.

But I suspect it is more than coincidence that of all the people with whom I have shared the shocking new things I have learned about that guru recently, she is the only one who has cut off contact with me. She doesn’t want to be exposed to this information — she has said as much to me. It seems to be threatening to her in a way that it isn’t, or to a degree that it isn’t, to all of the other people that I knew personally through this group and with whom I have shared information over the past 15 months.

It’s possible that Linda is, or at some point was, in a developmental stage where it is important to honor one’s heritage. And that part of the draw to Sri Acharya (I’ll call him) was the way he affirmed the wisdom of the East. He was complimentary to Western religions too, and drew on all traditions in his teachings. But at heart, he viewed everything through the lens of his own heritage. And he encouraged all people to see the East as the purest source of spiritual wisdom.

I could be wrong about Linda. I acknowledge this is mere speculation. Either way, it illustrates how the dynamics may be different for a person in the West, who has Eastern heritage themselves, when relating to Eastern spirituality. Their own identity is caught up in it in a different way than for a person who is white or black, Latina or indigenous American.

Another developmental model, this one focused on racial identity, speaks to this. Beverly Daniel Tatum indicates that for a person of color in a white-dominant society, the stage of Immersion / Emersion — which comes after a person has recognized the impact of racism on their life — is a time of removing oneself from symbols of whiteness and immersing oneself in symbols of one’s own racial identity.
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​“Individuals in this stage [Immersion] actively seek out opportunities to explore aspects of their own history and culture with the support of peers from their own racial background.” [viii]
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Besides Linda, I also wonder how these dynamics affected other Asian or Asian-American people who developed ties with the ashram community of Sri Acharya. There were several Indian or Indian American young adults in my cohort of meditators.

There are many reasons they may have been drawn to this teacher and his particular way of teaching, and likely more than one at play for any person (as is true for his students of any other background). But for people with Indian heritage, the respect and gravitas Sri Acharya ascribed to India and its spiritual treasures may have been very healthy, even needed, at certain points of personal development.

Other stages from the DMIS no doubt also pertained to people involved with this group. Our meditation teacher’s approach was in essence congruent with the next stage after Defense, which is called Minimization.

In this stage, the polarization of the Defense stage is overcome by focusing on the common humanity of all people, and other kinds of commonalities that bridge cultures. In religion, this could show up as acknowledging that there is wisdom in every tradition; no one faith has a monopoly on virtue or insight.

But as the name Minimization signals, the down side of this stage is that it downplays and underestimates the real differences between cultures. While focusing on physiological similarities (“we all bleed red,” “we all want our children to be safe”), or subsuming difference into generalities (“the basic need to communicate is the same everywhere,” “we are all children of God, whether we know it or not”), minimization remains ethnocentric to one’s own culture.

People in Minimization actively support principles they regard as universal, whether they are religious, moral, or political. Niceness prevails — definitely an improvement over the antagonism of defense! But the institutionalized privilege of dominant groups may go unrecognized.

​Milton’s model indicates that the developmental task for those in Minimization is to develop cultural self-awareness. To learn to see all the things about one’s own culture which are so taken for granted they are not visible to a person as being culturally specific, but are instead taken as universal.

For someone like me with ties to Acharya’s ashram community (a white American), that would require engaging more deeply with my own (Western) religious heritage, instead of ignoring it in favor of Eastern sources.

To his credit, whatever else may be said of Acharya (and I’ve said much!), he did encourage his North American audience not to discard their own heritage, but to find the treasure that is there, too.

(That said, he still looked at that treasure through his own Hindu lens, himself. So perhaps he himself was in Minimization, with a tail in Superiority of his own Indian heritage. When I first took the DMIS, many years ago now, I was in Minimization with a tail in Reversal — still more acutely aware of the drawbacks of my American culture than of its strengths. I see the fingerprints there of the ashram’s conditioning!)

This review of some of the pertinent stages of development in cross-cultural sensitivity and racial identity provides helpful context for understanding some of the observations of Gita Mehta, who wrote insightfully and cleverly about the marketing of the mystic East to the West. Consider this one:

“The trick to being a successful guru is to be an Indian, but to surround yourself with increasing numbers of non-Indians. If this is impossible, then separate your Indian followers from your Western followers in mutually exclusive camps. That way, one group accepts the orgies of self-indulgence as revealed mysticism and the other group feels superior for not have been invited to attend.” ~ Gita Mehta

Wondering what comes after Minimization? That’s the stage most people are in, by the way, at least in the U.S. The next stage is Acceptance.

In Acceptance, a person fully recognizes their own, rich cultural identity. They also accept that other cultures have differences that are more than superficial. And they are curious about those differences.

​A person in the Acceptance stage holds onto their own core values, while acknowledging that their ways are not necessarily better or worse than those of other cultures — they are just different. And those differences make a difference in how people of different cultures work, and could work together.
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In Acceptance, curiosity is the predominant feeling. Cognitively, a person is gaining knowledge and developing a more complex understanding of cultural differences. The developmental challenge is to refine one’s analysis of cultural contrasts, between one’s own and others’ cultures.

This can lead to Adaptation, in which a person has gained the skills to behave sensitively in other cultural contexts. A person at this stage can communicate more effectively cross-culturally, and see the world from the point-of-view of other cultures. This person may be gaining skills at code-switching.

For ex-pats, global nomads, and world citizens — people with deep and prolonged cross-cultural immersion — continued development of knowledge and skills may lead to the final stage, Integration.

The racial identity model is fascinating too. I won’t sketch out the other stages for people of color here, other than to mention that after Immersion comes Internalization. At that stage, a person is secure in their own racial identity, and their affirming attitudes to their own ethnic or cultural identity “become more expansive, open and less defensive.” [ix]

While those in Immersion may prefer to remain among people of shared identity, those in Internalization are ready to be in meaningful relationships with white folks who respect their identity, as well as to build coalitions with people who have other kinds of marginalized identities.

My Chinese American acquaintance, Linda, might well have been (or by now be in) this stage. That’s true also of the Indian and Indian American folks affiliated with Sri Acharya and his community.
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There’s a separate, somewhat different set of stages for racial development in white people. All of these models — the DMIS, and the racial identity development schema for both people of color and white people — are well worth learning more about. But for purposes of this article, I’ll stop here.

It’s Complicated

There are many reasons Westerners turn to Eastern spirituality. I have introduced six of them here:

1. The intrinsic appeal of Eastern traditions and their content — concepts, practices, stories, scriptures, etc.

2. The ability to encounter a tradition afresh, with a clean slate — in contrast to the baggage one may carry from one’s own tradition, and the particular, intimate history one has with it

3. Personality traits like high Openness to new experiences and cultures, which may predispose a person to be a seeker spiritually

4. The savvy marketing of Eastern traditions to Westerners, which may use Orientalism to the benefit of particular Eastern teachers or communities

5. Being in the questioning stage of faith development, often with some degree of rejection of or distancing from one’s faith of origin

6. Being in a stage of development that leads one to be open to — or even needful of — Eastern perspectives, in terms of cross-cultural contact and personal racial identity

There may well be other reasons that I have not touched on here. If you see one I missed, feel free to name it in the comments!

For any particular person, one, several, or all of these could be in play.

If you are a Westerner who has had some level of involvement with Eastern religions or spiritual practices, which of the above factors resonate with your own experience?

What I Am NOT Saying

To be clear, I am not saying that Westerners should or should not turn to the East. I’m simply saying that why and how that happens is complex.

I believe there is value in understanding why we do the things we do. Both for the individual in their personal journey, as well as for recognizing patterns across groups.

Wherever your journey takes you, I wish you insight, growth, and well-being.

​Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to get every new post sent directly to your inbox. I also post on Bluesky when a new piece is up.

Meanwhile, here are some other articles that may interest you.👇
How A Cult Is Like An Onion … The End of Silence — On Spiritual Bypassing and the Costs of Denial … Is This Normal? Meditation Surprises

Please read this disclaimer carefully before relying on any of the content in my articles online for your own life.

Endnotes

[i] “Heritability of the Big Five Personality Dimensions and Their Facets: A Twin Study” by K.L. Jang, W.J. Livesely, and P.A. Vernon, September 1996 in The Journal of Personality. Accessed at PubMed March 2025.

[ii] Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East by Gita Mehta, 1979.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] This section draws on Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning by James W. Fowler, 1981.

[vi] I was introduced to this model in training sessions offered in October 2013 by Adam Robersmith and Jill McAllister, as part of the fall retreat of the Heartland Chapter of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association. In this section, I draw on understanding developed there, as well as on Bennett directly.

[vii] “Intercultural Competence for Global Leadership” by Milton J. Bennett, as provided by the Intercultural Development Research Institute, with this note:This reading is an edited compilation of two articles by Milton J.

• Bennett: “Developing Intercultural Competence for Global Managers” in Reineke, Rolf-Dieter (Editor) (June, 2001)
• Interkulturelles Managment. Wiesbaden: Gabler Verlag, ISBN: 3–409–11794–6 and “An Intercultural Mindset and Skillset for Global Leadership” from Conference Proceedings of Leadership Without Borders: Developing Global Leaders. Adelphi, MD: National leadership Institute and the Center for Creative Leadership, University of Maryland University College, 2001.

[viii] From a handout on Racial Identity Development drawn from “Talking About Race, Learning About Racism: The Application of Racial identity Development Theory in the Classroom” by Beverly Daniel Tatum, in the Harvard Educational Review, 1992.

[ix] Ibid

The more I learn about high-demand groups, the more contacts and close calls I recognize in my past and that of my loved ones.

There was that copy of Dianetics on the kitchen table in my best friend’s house in junior high.

​My husband’s tale of the Pentecostal church he attended for a while as a teen. (They kicked him out for asking too many questions. Just as well.)

And as a young professional, my brush with a bootcamp-y Large Group Awareness Training program. (How’s it working for you? Really, though?)

None of those connections ultimately hooked me or my beloveds on beyond-benign groups.

But the one that primed me for my eventual slide into a quietly culty community? I encountered it as a college student.

Higher Education?

Two of the psychology professors at the liberal arts college I attended in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, were practitioners of Transcendental Meditation (TM). Transplants from California, they were part of the TM community just down the road in Fairfield.

Faculty member Dr. C was one of my favorite teachers. A kind-hearted guy, he was part absent-minded professor, part land-locked surfer dude. I remember with gratitude the warm encouragement Dr. C gave me to pursue graduate school, and the glowing letter of recommendation he wrote for me. I don’t remember him talking about TM. But somehow I knew he was part of that community.

It was another psych prof from Fairfield who brought ayurveda into the classroom of my Methodist-affiliated school. Am I a vata-kapha? I don’t know. But there’s a tea for that.

Science and Mystery

Anyhow, I ended up reading about the scientific benefits of meditation — a health practice, mind you, not a religion. There was oodles of data to back that up. Charts! References!

Not that I objected to religion necessarily. I mean, I was deconstructing my own Protestant upbringing in Biblical courses with Dr. God. (For my minor in religion and philosophy, I took all six courses the college offered in those subjects.)

I was interested in “world religions,” as Westerners refer to Eastern traditions. I started carrying around a pocket Tao te Ching. My pleasure reading also included the likes of Fritjof Capra, Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith.

​So Transcendental Meditation might have piqued my curiosity even without the science-washing. The fact that it had some link to the seemingly non-dogmatic, metaphysically sophisticated wisdom traditions of Asia might, if anything, have counted in its favor to college-aged me.

Barriers

I might well have taken the plunge then, if not for the walloping fee I learned was a standard charge to get your customized mantra. As a student this was simply outside my means.

Had I seriously considered it, the private 1:1 sessions that were part of learning TM-style meditation might also have been off-putting.

As for those snickering comments I heard about the flying yogis of Fairfield? I had no idea what such commenters were talking about. And I didn’t suppose they really did either. People often make fun of things they don’t understand. Any derision from small-minded small-towners was more likely to increase my curiosity than suppress it.

MomentumI remained vaguely curious about meditation and what it might offer. But this was the 90s; meditation wasn’t widespread like it is now.

Meanwhile, I prepared for graduate school. The one time I visited Maharishi International University in Fairfield, it was to take the Graduate Record Exam. (The GRE is a standardized test required then for grad school applications.) After graduation, my new degree program took me to another Midwestern state.

There, I also found a spiritual home, in a tradition of seekers and freethinkers that welcomes wisdom from many sources. It focuses on the here and now, including social justice. Ah, that’s better.
​

Between the more cosmopolitan college town — with its flagship campus of the state university — and the congregation full of spiritual explorers, I was exposed to a rich array of new ideas and experiences: tai chi, Dances of Universal Peace (Sufi), study of the historical Jesus, earth-centered ceremonies, vegetarianism, yoga, local Buddhist communities, and on.

​In my doctoral courses in sociology, with minor in religious studies, I took particular interest in social psychology, social movements, ethnography, theories of religion, utopian communities and alternative religious movements. (Hmm. Foreshadowing?)

Turning Point

​I enjoyed learning. But the more familiar I became with the trajectory of a researcher — zeroing in on a narrow question in a niche sub-field, and studying it for decades… not to mention the contentious, competitive social environment… and the lack of work-life balance the research-1 university profs around me seemed to have — the less I saw myself being fulfilled in academia.
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Perhaps if I hadn’t received a prestigious Research Assistantship, experience would have led me in another direction. The R.A. work meant I only got to teach once — which was enough to know I liked it, but not enough to know if it was my calling. My research mentor was great, and I appreciated the practical value of her research on society… yet I did not enjoy crunching data, or the other tedium of ivory tower life. I did not feel sufficiently useful to the world doing this kind of work.

Course Correction

My conclusion: it didn’t make sense to invest more time, money and life energy in the PhD track — unless and until I identified a research agenda that I could be passionate about for the rest of my life. So, I left that program one or two courses shy of the dissertation stage. (The consolation prize for these three years of my life? A master’s degree.)

I’m more of an applied person, I told myself. Let me go and do applied sociology in the community. Which is more or less how, in my mid-20s, I wound up in community development and philanthropy.

I liked the work I was doing in the community. It had a greater immediacy to it than the university setting. But I was still restless about my purpose. And curious about what else was out there in the world.

Still Searching

In 2000 I went on a “reality tour” to Kerala state, south India, building people-to-people ties as part of a delegation of North Americans. The trip was organized through Global Exchange, an international human rights organization. The particular tour I chose focused on how Kerala had implemented Gandhian-style community development, with impressive outcomes on many indicators of health, education, and quality of life.
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This nicely combined my social science background, my professional work in community development, and a long-standing interest in Gandhi and nonviolence that I had picked up from my mother.

I thought perhaps I would discover a research focus that would compel me back to finish the PhD in sociology. Instead, this cross-cultural adventure led to my first time in the pulpit. Later that year, at my home congregation, I shared how the Kerala experiment in people-powered development aligned with the very values we affirmed.

Hooked

What felt most significant at the time, though, was an exchange that happened on the first day in Kerala. While we tour participants hung out in the hotel, waiting for jet lag to wear off, another participant struck up a conversation with me. Linda (I’ll call her) wondered if I had a spiritual community or practice. She was an avid meditator herself.

I shared that I had long been interested in meditation. I probably told her about the pluralistic faith tradition I had joined a few years before. As it happened, the method of meditation she practiced drew upon all of the world’s wisdom traditions; I was intrigued.

Linda gave me an accessible little book written by her meditation teacher. Like our tour, it drew on Gandhi for inspiration. After listening about my spiritual journey, she suggested a selection from the Tao te Ching (instead of a Christian saint’s prayer, a common first choice for Americans); I could use it to give this method of meditation a try. Perfect!

I meditated for the first time, that night in my hotel room in Thiruvananthapuram. A new habit was well underway by the end of our two-week tour.
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Primed and Ready

Remember those seeds planted by my encounter with Transcendental Meditation as a college student? They found fertile ground in this new meditation practice.

Like TM, my new discipline was a form of concentration meditation, promulgated by an Indian teacher. It was presented as nonsectarian — compatible with any or no religious tradition. The many benefits of meditation for mind and body were described in a common-sense, science-validated way.

My new meditation practice had something else in common with Transcendental Meditation: it appealed to educated, idealistic people. The founder of the meditation center was a humanities professor, accomplished enough to have come to the U.S. via a prestigious grant program for scholars. His meditation students included many PhDs, medical doctors, and other professionals. One was even an expert on Gandhi and nonviolence.

In his books, the meditation teacher was clear, practical, and warm. Inspirational. Humble. He made ancient wisdom accessible and relevant to life today. The meditation method he taught felt like a natural fit for me. And the people associated with it — like Linda, a socially aware activist and Silicon Valley success story — were smart, caring people. What could go wrong?

The benefits showed up in my life immediately — they were real, and increased gradually. It took years, in contrast, for me to recognize the risks and drawbacks. They were cumulative, too. And almost two decades after I left that community, I am still learning new things about how this involvement affected me.

Enigmatic Ending

One thing haunts me about my brush with Transcendental Meditation. That gentle psychology professor, Dr. C, who was the first person I knew who meditated? He died in a car accident five or six years ago. It was on the highway between Fairfield, where he lived, and my college in Mt. Pleasant, where he worked. When my mother told me about the tragedy, it was hard to grasp that his life had been cut short so randomly.

More recently, I have seen TM referenced in resources about high-control groups. I recall, as well, that Dr. C had been divorced from his first wife. I had the impression she was part of the TM community too. I can’t help wondering what happened on Highway 34. What’s the full story?

Sometimes an accident is just an accident. But there are other, troubling possibilities that now seem quite plausible to me. Was Dr. C happy and in good mental health when this happened? Had his relationship to TM and the community around him changed? (He had gotten re-married — to someone who worked at my college, who was not a Fairfielder, I think.)

Might he have been disillusioned with the community and practices that had grounded his life for so long? (He would not have been alone. There are plenty of ex-TM writings online.) Might he have been depressed, as I became after I moved to California to work for my meditation community? Did he suffer involuntary slips into alternate states, as can happen to people who meditate long or often? What if, during his regular commute through the cornfields, that happened behind the wheel?

I will probably never know. I am sad for Dr. C, for his family, and for the college community that lost a kind soul too early.
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More to Come

More posts are coming, on things like who ends up in high-control groups and why (you may be surprised); accountability, or lack thereof, for leaders; what nobody told me about meditation — good, bad, and wacky; similarities or differences among mainstream religion, fundamentalism, and the kind of groups people typically think of when they hear the word cult; and resources for vetting any group or helper that you might welcome into your life.

Don’t want to miss a post? You can subscribe to get every new post sent directly to your inbox. Thanks for reading!

Please read this disclaimer carefully before relying on any of the content in my articles online for your own life.

This is a spiral season in my inner life.

Whether in a curling seashell, the unfolding frond of a fern, or the vast arms of the Milky Way, the spiral form compels the movement of sound, green life, and light. It’s easy to see why the spiral has long been a symbol for growth, with its motion of extending and returning, in ever-broadening rounds.

Our lives are like this, too. We drift away from people, places, questions, only to circle back, often, at a later time. We encounter the familiar yet again, but from the vantage point of now. At such times we may discover how much we have changed in the interval.

This is not the first spiral time in my life. In my early 30s I worked for a meditation center. After five years of increasingly deep spiritual practice and community connection, I relocated from the Midwest to the San Francisco Bay Area to support their work full-time. I left the idyllic-looking ashram setting and returned to my prior stomping grounds within a year. Processing that experience was most intense in the following couple of years.


Turning Then
A visceral memory takes me back to that previous turning, as if it was yesterday: I remember pausing on the spiral staircase that led to my meditation loft, gazing down at the home I had created for myself. It was 2007 or 2008. Here I had stabilized myself after sinking into confusion and depression during that year (2005–2006) working for the meditation center.

Being in my own space allowed me to sort through what I still claimed — what worked for me — and what I let go of. In my loft, I posted quotes and images that spoke to me, from any source. I did whatever spiritual practices felt right to ME. No method was required, none off-limits.

I could practice meditation like I used to do, but with no rigid time schedule. I could listen to a guided meditation on Radical Acceptance. I could let my body stretch and unwind as it wanted on a yoga mat. I could play the flute or chant. Every day I listened within for what felt right for me.

Vividly I remember how, one day, while coming down the spiral stairs from my contemplative loft, something new happened. I paused on the steps, as I realized I was not thinking in words. The stream of narration in my mind that was so normal to me I did not even recognize it — it had fallen away. I experienced only immediate awareness of my surroundings, my sense impressions, my feelings. No labels, no interpretation. Just raw being.

When I was at the ashram, feeling crowded (yet alone) in the midst of a tight community, I had longed for a silent retreat; at last I had it, right in the comfort of my own home. Silence is deeply healing. It can reground me in the truth of my experience, my needs. It can put me back in touch with my inner voice.

From all the things you read and all the people you meet, take what is good — what your own ‘Inner Teacher’ tells you is for you — and leave the rest.”                                                                         ~ Peace Pilgrim

As I continued going up and down that spiral staircase, day by day and month by month, I was rebuilding self-trust and inner authority. I didn’t understand then, as fully as I do now, why I needed to do that.


Turning Now
​Fast forward to sixteen years later and another destabilizing experience. Almost by chance, last month I learned of several gut-wrenching allegations about the prolific writer and meditation teacher, now deceased, who had seemed so gentle, wise, and caring.

I say “allegations” not because I disbelieve the story I’ve now heard, but because I am not a judge or jury. And my purpose here is not to delve into those details. Rather, it is to share what I’m learning more broadly at this particular turn of the spiral.

For these new voices set me off looking with fresh eyes at my own journey. Among other steps, I am devouring resources about high control groups. These are sometimes called cults. That word is controversial among some scholars, as the commonly understood meaning emphasizes the extreme. Though I have yet to read anyone actually name a fully benign cult, everyone seems to agree that these groups fall on a spectrum. The public generally hears about only the most far-out examples; many are subtle, and under the radar.

​I do not expect there will ever be a public reckoning over the allegations that have come to my attention about the group I was once involved in and its founder. Regardless, this turn of the spiral has brought me to ask a question I scarcely considered before: was I involved with a cult?

​Even preliminary learning and reflection on the topic has brought me to the sobering conclusion that I was. And though some may be, this one was not entirely benign. Whatever else is true, I know this from my own experience. Because the closer I got to that community, the less whole I was.

Supporting the Savvy Seeker
In this latest spiral movement, I turn back toward my past experience, and to the natural human yearnings that lie beneath the spiritual search — the longings for meaning, belonging, well-being, identity, purpose. These are normal human needs, to be honored and supported.

But one thing is clearly different for me at this time: now the search is not just for myself. I hope that my lived experience, my deep compassion for seekers, and the journeying I have already done and continue to do as a companion to others, might help readers along their own paths.

If my reflections enable others to recognize and avoid the pitfalls that snared me — and to which any idealistic or vulnerable person may be susceptible — my own stumbles in confusion would gain greater purpose.

More than that, I hope to shine a light on effective ways for seekers today to meet those important higher needs.

This is not an easy time to be a seeker. Trust in most institutions has eroded. That includes traditional religious institutions, often for good reason. Freelance (and frequently unaccountable) figures — spiritual teachers, life coaches, personal development gurus and others — attempt to fill the gap. We have access to wisdom traditions from around the world, increasing both opportunities and hazards.
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Ideological polarization and information overload are daily realities. Undue influence is commonplace and conspiracy theories abound. Amid unnerving ecological changes, we can’t even count on weather patterns, growing zones or the bounty of nature that was once taken for granted. For many of us, something feels wrong in our bones.

Is it any wonder there is generalized uncertainty and anxiety? This only heightens the natural needs for meaning and belonging that drive the spiritual search.

My hope is to support those who wish to navigate these times as savvy seekers, finding or creating fulfilling spiritual lives, without getting burned.

Already been burned? I get it. I see you, I respect you, I have some understanding of the need for healing, and I hope you will find useful nuggets here too.

If this piques your interest, I invite you to subscribe and to share this resource with others who might have something to gain.

And if you would like to know more about who I am and what I bring to savvy seeking, continue on.


Why Me? Why Now?
It strikes me as good timing that concerns about my past meditation teacher have come to my attention now. I have enough distance from that time in my life, that community, and that set of spiritual practices that I am able to metabolize new perspectives on them.

As I begin this blog, I am also entering my fifth decade — a stage of both greater trust in my own inner knowing, and greater ease with not knowing.

People have always fascinated me. So have the Big Questions about life. I studied sociology and psychology in college and graduate school, including religious studies and the sociology of religion. I was drawn to building communities that work for everyone, leading to a first career in non-profits and philanthropy.

​Over a decade ago, I began supporting others in their spiritual journeys as a central part of my vocation. I started with curious college students and young adults, worked with other small groups, and since 2016, have served Unitarian Universalist congregations as an ordained minister.

I serve in a post-Christian, spiritually pluralistic, radically love-centered tradition. Unitarian Universalist communities are places of spiritual triage for many who have left other traditions — or who are simply looking for moorings in our uncertain world. Ministering in this context has enabled me to witness a wide range of experiences, questions, needs, perspectives and vulnerabilities that people bring to the spiritual journey today.

Don’t worry, it is not my goal to convert anyone. Not to Unitarian Universalism, not to organized religion in general, not to any particular spiritual practice or path. While Unitarian Universalism is the right spiritual home for me, there is no one right path for all people.

What I do wish for you are plenty of rich, healthy connections to other people, to your authentic self, to our mysterious cosmos, and to a sense of purpose for your life. If that sounds good to you, I invite you to subscribe to be sure and catch future posts.

Please read this disclaimer carefully before relying on any of the content in my online articles for your own life.