Hyper-Spirituality

Once a term used to describe the internal experience of awe, reverence, or the felt but unexplainable aspect of consciousness, it now masquerades as Instagram captions, lifestyle branding, and is rendered indistinguishable from escapism. In a time where spirituality is needed more than ever, it has become inflated, dogmatic, and increasingly ornamental.

This section is an attempt at cleaning up that mess.

The Problem with “Spirituality”

The modern-day spiritual landscape often confuses performative identity with lived experience. Meditation retreats turn into status markers. Psychedelic trips become trophies. Trauma becomes identity. Breathwork, if not grounded in physiology, becomes performed for self-image rather than introspection.

What began as attempts to reconnect with collective wisdom, in the absence of traditional religion, has turned into new religions. We’ve traded in cathedrals and commandments for crystals, cacao ceremonies, and spiritual bypassing that signals transcendence without the change in behavior.

This is what I like to call hyper-spirituality: Reassuring and self-soothing, but rarely transformative.

I feel this needs repeating… This is not a call to discard spiritual practice. It’s a call to recognize when spirituality become too comfortable, it’s often too aligned with personal preference to offer any real friction. If your belief system never challenges you, it’s not a spiritual path. Chances are, you’re living in an echo chamber.

That said, ritual works. The breath slows. The senses ground. Group coherence builds. These don’t need to be surrounded in mysticism. It’s okay to realise they’re just physiological shifts, whether we understand why they’re happening or not. The power of ritual lies not in its mystical explanation but in its ability to regulate the system and shift state.

The problem emerges when we begin to believe that our ritual means more than it actually does. That it proves enlightenment, grants authority, and exempts us from critical thought. Or worse, that it is universally applicable to all people in all contexts.

The role of rebranding spirituality is to make room for sacred experience without sacred authority.

Language and the Trap of Interpretation

Another issue with hyper-spirituality is its dependence on vague, unchallenged language. Words like “energy,” “frequency,” or “alignment” are often used as placeholders for embodied experience, but are rarely defined in a way that allows shared understanding. The result is a pseudo-consensus: everyone nods along, but no one is really saying the same thing.

As we’ve covered over and over, language is both a tool and a trap. It helps us navigate shared experience to ensure we aren’t going mad, but can also confine it. 

Experience should come first, so that vocabulary can serve it, rather than dictate it.

Ego Death (and the Ego’s Rebrand)

A common concept in hyper-spiritual spaces is the “ego death” – a term often used to signal awakening or enlightenment. However, the ego isn’t something to be eliminated. It should be understood and then integrated to form a more empathetic and less destructive perspective. The self-model, while flawed, is a necessary scaffolding for navigating shared reality. You can’t fully dissolve the ego and still function in the world.

The true goal is to expand perspective. To see the ego for what it is: a filter, a narrative, and a temporary interface. When spirituality becomes another way to bolster the ego (“I’m more awakened than you”), the entire endeavor collapses on itself. As with all aspects of our lives, what we need is ego flexibility or resilience, rather than ego annihilation.

So What Now?

The antidote to hyper-spirituality isn’t militant atheism. We need the ability to differentiate between experience and belief, and nervous system regulation and metaphysical assumption. It’s understanding that spiritual technologies (like meditation, breathwork, psychedelics, or storytelling) are just tools. They are not ends in themselves.

Rebranding spirituality doesn’t mean stripping it of mystery. It means making space for mystery without letting it devolve into manipulation or self-delusion.

It means allowing for subjective meaning without claiming objective truth.

And even though we may feel threatened by the fact that meaning is a social construct that can’t be defined without severing source from truth, it doesn’t mean we should waste this opportunity to share our pocket of the universe with others.