Millenials vs. Spirituality

Hey do you remember when Sundays used to be for sleeping off the party? Mine are now for yoga, coffee, (my own organic) skincare, tarot & books. And some crystals thrown on top, of course…

Mine is just one of about a trillion examples of this huge shift in paradigm we are witnessing right now. You know, all of us millennials – we’ve experienced tumultuous societal and technological evolution in our relatively short lifetimes, right? I mean, I’m still relatively young but at the same time - I remember VHS being THE THING, the only medium allowing you to experience films outside cinema or TV. Now, that medium is completely dead – there’s been such a major accelerated technological evolution – internet, smartphones, streaming, gaming – it is all so overwhelming and took us on a journey of wonder and excitement,... which is false though, because it somewhat distracts you from spirituality, by taking you completely away from nature…

Even though that’s a fallacy as well, because even if we sit in front of a computer eight hours a day (guilty)- we can never escape nature. We are nature. And even the chips in our computers are made of quartz crystals brought to life by electricity to show us images & sounds of pretty much anything we want to see immediately – that’s a sort of magic in its own right.

So, we’ve got a generation that’s growing up completely dependent on technology… I mean the other day I had a friend cancelling a picnic, because her phone battery died and she wouldn’t be able to find me – I mean not only is that hilarious (and same part infuriating), but I believe two three generations from now will make sitcoms about how ridiculously young people lived in 2019. About a culture depending on these stupid little devices to the point, that these interactions – bending over the smartphone and tablet displays – literally change the way our SPINE is shaped.

But for all its wonder and excitement, technology and our way of life fails to provide us with answers to bigger concerns and questions, you know, searching for meaning in all of this.

We spend 99% of our time locked in our workplace or homes, which are built and designed to keep us away from nature – with their perfect angles, materials and all the technological distractions we’re surrounded by… and somewhere in the background, a restlessness is growing.

We’re also being constantly let down and disappointed by our infrastructures: media, healthcare, politics, and in some cases religions too. I meet more and more young people who are finding an organised religion of any type too narrow, too tight for a natural expression of wonder about our Universe, Life and its mysteries. You’ve got this prescription of rituals locked in a certain institution, and instead of searching for answers to the UNKNOWABLE questions, it gives you a book that has all the answers pre-digested for you. If you follow a certain set of rules – this is what’s going to happen with your soul after you die; this is the place you’re gonna transcend to and these are the entities you’re going to meet there. Should you not follow said rules and choose to live differently, you’re going to go to a much different place and suffer for eternity.

And if that’s your groove, that’s absolutely beautiful and IT IS the path for you. More and more people however turn to their own eclectic spirituality for answers instead.

When we start thinking beyond the realm of what we can see, touch, experience with our senses, when we start looking beyond our ego and our earthly existence, we first turn to nature. Just simply being in a presence of mountains or forests, oceans or even just holding a rock – makes you come into close contact with the mysteries of creation and your own mortality – because the forests you walk through had been here for thousands and thousands of years and will be here….well, perhaps not the forests with the way we treat our planet – but let’s say mountains, yes – with a bit of luck – mountains will be here maybe million years after you’re gone.

In direct contact with nature, we experience a sense of wonder, mystery and the sense of our mortality – and that’s where spirituality, or spiritual thinking is born.

Not in Netflix, online shopping & sharing gifs on WhatsApp instead of sharing our lives and wisdom we collect on our journey…That’s all very good for your twenties, which are about finding & embracing your role in society, right? Thirties, when lots of people start dabbling with beliefs and spirituality, are for finding your role within the bigger picture, the Universe. So that’s where this huge influx of a NEW New Age is coming from. I mean right now, if you’re a millennial and you don’t have at the very least a nice rose quartz sitting on your shelf looking pretty, I’d say you’re in the minority.

I’ve heard this said somewhere… that crystals and gemstones are nature’s way of making art. And what a beautiful metaphor, because art as well brings us outside ourselves, outside the tangible world of senses & into the plane of abstract ideas, concepts, dreams and beliefs, where magic happens.

Perhaps this spiritual growth is a part of an individual & collective archetypal hero’s(or Fool’s – if we play on the tarot archetypes) journey – from leaving home, discovering the world, collecting all the lessons he needed for his own growth, to then return back home changed & evolved.

Maybe in re-discovering our spirituality & relationship to the divine, we’re finding our way back home – to nature – that we came from.