When the Sacred Is for Sale

3am. I wake under an open sky to two stars shooting down. Hours later, a deer runs down the hill, just meters away from my sleeping bag. I tear up noticing how here, on this mountain top, I feel completely embedded in the ever-unfolding magic of Life.

This is not my everyday experience. It is a literal peak - and peaks stand out. They also have a particularly expansive function that can help us access different perspectives. Pathways are revealed that couldn't be seen from the ground we walk on daily. New surroundings can unlock that, but also simple shifts, like turning a new corner on the way to the bakery. I see it as a practice: weaving peaks (and quiet valleys of rest) into ordinary life. Small experiments to cleanse the palate and keep presence awake amidst the daily noise. How to remain connected to awe inside the familiar?

The opposite of peaks are flatlines. And it is a feature of the current times - flatness. I notice it more and more around me, so much content is becoming the same. The writing, the music, the images created with more speed and less care. A tangible loss of depth. Everything feels blander, duller, smoothed into the same uniform texture. And it makes sense. When we move faster, we tend to leave something behind. Sometimes even our deepest roots. The songs, the tales, the voice of the land, the texture of local sound and our mother tongues.

Where collective practices once lived, we now have same-day delivery and the convenient illusion of self-reliance. And our intrinsic hunger for meaning and connection has led, naturally, to a flourishing of offerings in the spiritual space. I find that beautiful. An openness to unseen realms is returning to places that long ignored the sacred. And at the same time, I watch the spiritual take on the same habits and dynamics that haunt so many other spaces.

When we flatten the sacred, what was meant to be deep acquires a synthetic aftertaste. It becomes an artificial sweetener instead of a nutritious meal that can actually nourish our longings. If we strip ritual from its context, its tradition, its land and its relational practice, we turn it into a purchasable experience. A spectacle devoid of substance. Devoid of potency.

I write this from a place of question, of not knowing how to resolve a tension. I watch spiritual festivals mushroom everywhere. Cacao, breathwork, ecstatic dance - everywhere. I have loved these spaces for over a decade, they gave me a blueprint for a different type of being in the world. I wouldn't be writing this piece had I not been steeping in them for a long time. And I also feel a deep sense of alienation around them. I see the spectacle and I don't feel the essence. I watch groups of people covered in kimonos and glitter repeat words in languages no one actually speaks, offered as a way of reconnecting. Almost no local nuance to any of these events - a standardized industrial feel in the realm of human connection. It feels confusing and performative. More about the aesthetic than about the type of vulnerability connection really asks for.

It also feels unrooted. A collection of practices taken without ever developing a real relationship to them. And spirituality, to me, is about relationality. About cultivating a deep sense of care towards that which is larger than us.

And at the same time, these spaces might be the first - and for many of us, only - contact point with alternative ways of being. They might be the places where we first rediscover ceremony and ritual and singing together around a fire. Ways of coming together that might carry more meaning than going to a pub for a beer. So this isn't about claiming these gatherings should cease to exist - the question is the how. If the care and reverence is lost in spaces that promise connection, clearly we are close to diluting the core.

Culture often evolves by borrowing and remixing. The logic of extraction is different; it takes without giving back, often without even noticing that it is taking at all. There are other ways of creating and being and I feel they are essential to these times. Reciprocity offers another way. It centers relationship and asks that all parties be honored, including the ones often overlooked. It invites us to invest time without expecting anything specific in return. To cultivate the patience required to know our own soil and to remember and reimagine our own ways.

How might we hold what is
and live into what could be,
at the very same time?

When even the sacred is commodified, one way of disrupting the pattern is to look at the roots. The Latin root of commodity is commoditas, convenience. And convenience is often the opposite of what a committed spiritual practice asks of us.

Because devotion always asks something of us. Like any real relationship, it needs a patient exchange of energy, attention and time to build genuine understanding. It implies friction. And friction, even though it can feel uncomfortable, is not the enemy of meaning but one of its sources: we assign more value to what we have worked for, what cost us something.

And currently, participating in those spaces often does cost us something - just that it's mostly about money rather than devotion and daily practice. I understand that offering and holding beautiful containers for reconnection requires work. I believe that deserves to be recognized and honored, also financially. I just don't believe spirituality is a luxury good that requires a five-figure investment or a premium location. When profit-maximizing logic enters the sacred, integrity is lost. And integrity is key. The promise of a glamourized, intense, exotic peak without the devotion, relational friction or sustained caring work that actually embeds meaning into our everyday experience is misleading at best.

Ultimately, the work happens within. We all know the dynamics that are likely to emerge when an institution or a charismatic figure claims to exclusively hold the key to the divine. To me, a stronger connection to Life, which is what a spiritual practice can help to cultivate, does not create dependency but sovereignty. That's why I'm so drawn to mystic traditions - direct experience is available to all of us. Community, finding resonant spaces, aligned guidance - all can support us on our journey of reconnection. But it's each of us, individually, who through a mix of work, trial and error, experimental exploration and pure grace, find our own ways to connect to that which is larger than ourselves.

And that's my wish.
Spaces that can hold our nuanced complexity.
That question what is whilst living what could be into being.
Where we weave together our own culture instead of renting someone else's.
Where practice is something we return to, not a peak we buy and leave behind.
Places for collective creation, for question tending, for daily wonder.

May we find them, become them, be them.