Where Did The Interest In Spiritual Enlightenment Go?

I've noticed something over the last few years. Perhaps you have too.  Nobody really gives a crap about spiritual topics anymore.  Those of us who ARE interested in spirituality are a dying breed - quite literally.  

The deep search for spirtual truth has always been there to some extent, and I magine, if you could really track it, you'd see that as a goal it has ebbed and flowed over the decades in one form or another. 

For me, being a "Boomer", i was present for the great tide of Eastern spirituality with interest in the Transcendental Meditation craze, the Hare Krishna invasion, and a slew of spiritual teachers like Muktananda and Swami Saccidananda, Guru Maharajj, Krishnamurti, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and even Ram Dass, the preeminent student of Neem Karoli Baba.

But the 60s and 70s passed, and we moved into the 80's and 90's where new crazes were taking place. One that was very big for awhile was crystals.  The one that became the biggest was probably the non-dual (advaita) schools, primarily based on the teachings of Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaja.  Following in their footsteps, a whole barage of non-dual western teachers were born - Gangaji and Adyashanti being two of the most popular. 

Buddhism was also very big, popularized to some extent by Alan Watts, and the Tibetan Buddhist movements of Chogyum Trumpa and the Dala Lama himself.  But I apologize that my remembrance of such things is limited as I never had much of an interest in Buddhism.

Around 2010, Eckhart Tolle came out with The Power of Now (which was actually pu blished after my book - In This Moment), and being featured on Oprah, zoomed to notoriety, and I remembered seeing the most unlikely folks reading it everywhere - busses, coffee shops, everywhere. 

But then things seem to begin to fade. There were fewer new spiritual teachers, and the ones that were there seemed to be losing momentum. Sure, there were some diehards who never gave up, but overall, other things were taking the interest of the people.

I remember back in the 90s and early 2000s, we used to speculate what would be the next big craze, as we watched crystals fade and non-dualism come to the fore.  And then it just seemed to kind of stop! 

So what happened?

Cell Phones!!!  That's what I think anyway.  With the popularity of cell phones and social media, people started communicating more, but in a less meaningful way.  What became popular was no longer the meaning of life, but current events, politics, and social justice. We now had an avenue to immediately correct and argue with everyone around.  We decided that injustices were rampant in the world and we were damned well going to fix it. Life purpose and meaning fell to the side and fixing everything that was broken took precedents. Or at first. 

Then we just got addicted.  Why spend time searching for real answers to life's questions and it's meaning, when we could look it up online. Why have any thoughts of our own, when we can just see what everyone else thinks.  The online world became a replacement for the real world - just one giant distraction from anything and everything that is importlant.

At least, that's what I think.  I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts on it.

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