Salon.com is running a review of The Secret, a book that I haven’t read and now never intend to. This review strikes a chord with me when it addresses what I think is a fault in a lot of modern New Age spirituality:

“Secret”-style belief is a perfect product. Like Coca-Cola, it goes down easy and makes the consumer thirsty for more. It’s unthreateningly simple, and a lot more facile, sentimental and, perhaps paradoxically, intractable than the old-fashioned kind of belief. Like Amway, it enlists its consumers as unofficial salespeople, and the people who constitute its market feel like they’re part of a fold. It’s indistinguishable from, and inextricably bound up in, the Oprah idea of self-esteem, the kind of confidence you get not from testing yourself, but from “believing” in yourself. This modern idea of faith isn’t arrived at the old-fashioned way, by asking questions, but by getting answers. Instead of inquiry we have born-again epiphanies and cheesy self-help books — we have excuses for not engaging in inquiry at all. Let other people schlep down the road to Damascus; we’ll have Amazon send Damascus to us.

I think there’s more value in following spiritual guidance from those who have experienced spiritual abundance in their lives (the stuff that really matters) without becoming materially wealthy in the process.

Can’t we have teachers who give away their knowledge for free, or for the cost of subsistence of a relatively simple life?

Aren’t the best teachers the ones that can maintain a connection with their students through common lifestyles and shared hardships, rather than those that preach from the ivory tower of the New York Times best seller list?