Spiritual Contraband

By Victor Sanchez

In the motley midst of spiritual growth of our times, there is a new phenomenon that has become a trend: smuggling spiritual techniques.

I have been watching this trend since the beginning of the early years (in the early 80) when I first formed the personal and spiritual development groups,  in a new field,  where anthropology integrates, psychology, spirituality and poetry, with that undefined area that we sometimes call “magic”. I initially decided to call this new form of personal growth “The Other Witchcraft” and subsequently (in the mid 80) I decided to change the name to “The Art of Living on Purpose”.

After all it's these years of lecturing, write books and give workshops in many countries of the world, I can understand as something natural, the spontaneous impulse to want to share with others the experiences that have touched our soul and that have been valuable and powerful for our transformation and growth . Makes sense; The one who receives, must share with others, not so much what he has learned, but what he has become through the growth work he has done. This is necessary to truly integrate that new knowledge into the landscape of one's life..

That is why wanting to share what we have experienced in our own learning is a natural reaction and even a need of the heart.. This is consistent with the essential condition of energy, whose nature is to flow. The energy needs to keep flowing. Always.

However, this is often used as a pretext to justify another need - driven by an ego dominated by self-importance- of wanting to take advantage in the shortest possible time, through attempting to copy without permission, what others have created through long years of work, service and even sacrifice.

This is the case of those who one or two brief visits to indigenous communities, go back to your city world, supposedly transformed into shamans, seeing, teachers or even priests practices that they did not even understand and that actually belongs to another culture.

It is also the case of those who, after participating in one or two workshops, proceed to -without notifying or requesting permission from the creator of the methodology- present cheap imitations of what they experienced once or twice, as participants, as if the program were his own creation. Frequently, these smugglers of techniques, spiritual teachers are invented who supposedly taught them what they actually stole after participating in this type of training.

Bueno… unfortunately this happens very frequently and of course it occurs in many forms and levels, from relatively "innocent" cases to cases of cynicism and impudence typical of criminals disguised as spiritual leaders. In this context, we might ask ourselves, what is the line that separates a noble desire to share something good that has been lived and the crude appropriation of the research and creative work of others with the crude intention of obtaining fame and fortune?? The truth is that this line is sometimes blurred and even moves, so it is sometimes very difficult to determine who is so completely clean and honest as to feel entitled to cast the first stone.

as a point of reference, one of the most characteristic signs of counterfeiting is the lack of recognition of the original creator. Those who learn something valuable and in good faith want to share that experience with others., in addition to asking for permission and reaching agreements with the original creator and they have no problem with publicly recognizing him, as they maintain a strong sense of gratitude towards those from whom they learned. those who are authentic, have the gratitude and recognition – so to speak- To flower of skin, because in their hearts, bring love to the sacred connection that set them on a path, or that contributed to the path they had been building for a long time.

The fakers on the other hand, they go to great lengths to hide the sources and names of those from whom they stole what they are trying to preach. If someone asks them directly about the origin of their "teachings" they will typically say that they have learned from numerous teachers “of all the world” or that they have received their knowledge from a spiritual master -conveniently dead by then- who chose them as the sole inheritors of his sacred knowledge. Fakers often have a compulsion for titles they give themselves and that in their intellectual poverty, they think they give the impression of great importance. They call themselves shamans, priests, initiates and even marakames, to benefit not only in money but in the admiration of their undemanding audiences that their arrogant ego craves as the substance that helps them believe, for a moment, that what they are trying to represent is real.

Personally, I think they can never succeed in totally fooling themselves, because deep down … in some corner of your soul, which they always try not to reach, they know what they did and condemn themselves to never be able to tell the whole truth about what they do. In this way they also condemn themselves to isolation from their true selves..

Yes, they will be able to make money because there are too many people who want to blindly believe in people who represent themselves as magical characters out of the pages of a fantasy book, instead of making the effort to undertake a more demanding spiritual quest. However, what is false does not resist exposure to light and therefore, some darkness will always haunt them.