Many people probably remember the 2010 film Eat Pray Love<\/em>, starring Julia Roberts. After a difficult emotional experience, Elizabeth sets out on a spiritual journey to India to find meaning and happiness. She meditates, fasts, and embraces a form of ascetic practice. Yet an attentive viewer notices that she maintains a certain distance throughout the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elizabeth is a rational and pragmatic woman. She knows that at some point she will have to return to the world<\/strong> she came from. In other words, the moment will come when she must take responsibility again. She will have to return to the ground where everyone has their own tasks to fulfil. To live a satisfying life, she needs to give it meaning. And if she cannot see that meaning at first, she sets herself a task: to discover it. By doing so, she gives her life direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the film appeared in cinemas, many young people<\/strong> interpreted its message too literally and wanted to experience a similar life adventure. Those who could afford it travelled to ashrams to meditate. Meanwhile, those who could not signed up for meditation courses in their own cities, immersed themselves in spiritual self-development books<\/strong>, and introduced wishful thinking into their everyday lives. What did that mean in practice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everything must work out in the end. Everything happens for a reason. Life is a lesson from which I should learn, and the glass is always half full. If I cannot see that, I still have a lot of inner work to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201chuman project\u201d<\/strong> was improving itself every day. It avoided toxic people because that was what positive-thinking books recommended. It synchronized its brain hemispheres to attract wealth. From time to time, it used herbs to explore new levels of consciousness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After several years of such practices, it often turned out that little had changed \u2014 apart from the benefits gained by those promoting alternative lifestyles. Yet the culture of \u201cspiritual searching\u201d had become a reality. It became a kind of pseudo-antidote to corporate life, a false remedy for turbo-capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cspiritual development\u201d market flourished around the world. Indian spiritual teachers increasingly travelled abroad to teach Europeans and Americans meditation and life according to spiritual principles<\/strong>. Not even a documentary about Osho \u2014 one of the best-known spiritual teachers, which exposed the fraud and sectarian practices surrounding his movement \u2014 changed this trend. Osho\u2019s community was associated with luxury, controversy, and the use of psychoactive substances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hundreds of young people paid a heavy price for joining his community, including damage to their physical and mental health. The two often go together when people push themselves beyond their limits through experiments with psychoactive substances. They also do this through altered states of consciousness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two issues seem particularly important here. The first is the feeling of not fitting into the reality we live in \u2014 a world where we are expected to always smile, feel satisfied, overflow with ideas, and build a meaningful career. The second is our difficulty accepting that we are ordinary human beings. Even though the market promotes the idea of uniqueness and pressures us to prove that we belong among the exceptional<\/strong>, this is still hard for us to accept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exceptional ones are actors, celebrities, athletes, outstanding scientists, beautiful women and men, stars of the stage, and leaders of all kinds. You are not one of them? There is nothing you can do about it? Should you therefore feel sad? This is where the problem begins. It is one that, according to many messages circulating today, must immediately be fixed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tomasz Stawiszy\u0144ski<\/strong> writes about this brilliantly in his book Ucieczka od bezradno\u015bci<\/em> (Escape from Helplessness<\/em>). He examines everything we try to reject, even though it is an inseparable part of human existence: grief, sadness, hopelessness, and the disappointment of discovering that we cannot achieve certain things. We struggle to accept our own helplessness, and this creates space for fraudsters, manipulators, and false prophets. This includes those to whom we entrust our political choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two fundamental forces operating in today\u2019s reality, fighting for influence over people\u2019s minds \u2014 religion and the market \u2014 assess sadness and discouragement in an entirely negative way. From a religious perspective, these states appear to undermine the greatness of divine creation and, indirectly, the greatness of the Creator himself. From the market perspective, expressed among other things through extreme definitions of mental disorders, sadness and discouragement are stigmatized as conditions that paralyze productivity and efficiency. They prevent action, activity, and the pursuit of goals. They cause an inability to work.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u2014 argues Stawiszy\u0144ski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because sadness and grief are pushed out of contemporary culture, while the market demands that we remain productive from an early age, countless false methods of restoring happiness appear. And because the problem of sadness affects more and more young people, they become easy targets for spiritual manipulators<\/strong>. These people, in turn, are skilled at using seductive language that promises to reveal the hidden meanings and mysteries of human existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet when we examine what experts<\/a> of \u201chigher living\u201d actually say, we often discover that their narratives resemble the classic logical fallacy known as ignotum per ignotius<\/em> \u2014 explaining something unknown by referring to something even more unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Surprisingly, it works. It works because it is wrapped in meanings and visions of a better life. Moreover, it offers a promise: \u201cYou are suffering now, but if you work hard and follow my instructions, you will become happy.\u201d It works especially well when a young person lacks basic psychological and intellectual tools for self-protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When nobody has taught them how to ask questions, encouraged their curiosity, or introduced them to art, music, or literature \u2014 forms that can reveal parallels with difficult experiences, offer comfort, and bring relief in moments of suffering \u2014 they may be left alone with their struggles. And loneliness<\/a> can become so painful that they may embrace a dangerous cult<\/strong> or believe in a conspiracy theory simply because it offers hope. It convinces them that they are not alone in an indifferent world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is why they may willingly place themselves in the hands of an experimenter. Most often, they do not meet such a person face to face, because psychological manipulation can be carried out very effectively in virtual spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All it takes is sitting in front of a computer screen and listening for thousands of hours to a favourite spiritual teacher<\/strong> who speaks with such confidence and looks into the camera as if they were looking directly into your eyes. As if every word had been intended only for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do not mock or insult them. If you do \u2014 for example, by calling someone crazy and ridiculing a young person who has fallen victim to manipulation \u2014 you only close the door to dialogue. Also, you strengthen the belief that \u201cthe world is against us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do not enter into aggressive arguments either. Rational discussion and presenting scientific evidence often produce the opposite effect. A defensive mechanism can make a young person believe in the conspiracy even more strongly.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFrom spiritual growth to wishful thinking<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The market of spiritual development<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Why do we search for other worlds?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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When young people search for an escape<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Young people\u2019s spirituality and the promise of happiness<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What not to do? A guide for loved ones<\/h2>\n\n\n\n