Rina Raphael

I'm not defending necessarily organized religion.

I'm not saying everyone should join an organized religion.

But there are some drawbacks to a bit of these what I call sometimes self-serving spiritualities.

in the sense that they're more inward facing than outward facing.

And so they don't necessarily have more communal properties.

They don't teach as much about responsibility or community outreach or taking care of each other.

They're really much more inward focused and really about the self.

And that's also because Americans are choosing more and more spiritual practices based on their feelings.

Yes, because a lot of these sort of spiritual alternatives are more about how you feel, about self-soothing, about comforting.

Take manifestation.

That's a perfect example.

This idea that you put good vibes out into the universe and work really hard and you can gather all the abundance that is sort of promised to you, that's really, really comforting to people.

Yeah.

What I think is so strange is that instead of banding together and demanding systemic solutions for maybe why we don't feel so good or why we feel unhealthy or even seeking communal support, we often retreat to the self, you know, the self-soothing, self-optimization or self-pampering of wellness.

You know, we...

clutch our healing crystals, we ride our Pelotons, we take our bubble baths.

You know, me, myself, and my credit card are the answer.

And then we wonder why America is so lonely.

I mean, businesses aren't set up to let people come when they fall in hard times.

Organized religion has sort of figured out a way to really help people who have sort of lost their jobs or fallen on hard times.