Don't Mistake the Tool for the Transformation - Part 1 of 2
The big barrier to spiritual growth you need to be aware of
What a time it is to be alive if you are looking to grow spiritually, expand your consciousness, or experience transformation!
But there is a big problem to be aware of.
Tools and techniques for transformation, both ancient and modern, from across religious and cultural traditions are more available to us than at any point in history. We have abundant access to stories and practices. One minute you're reading a 2,500-year-old quote from a Chinese philosopher on Instagram, and the next you hear a superstar athlete reference a rabbi from two millennia ago, before you stop by your local yoga studio to perform some ancient postures (and not a few new ones that may or may not be helpful but have really catchy names) while wearing state-of-the-art stretchy fabrics.
Exposure to all this knowledge is filled with potential. The barriers of authority, belief, and geography no longer exist—or at least they are not as strong—and this open access to the wisdom of the ages creates a lot of opportunities for growth and transformation.
But there is a huge temptation that can highjack the journey of personal growth: approaching these tools for transformation as something to accumulate, to consume, to dominate, instead of embracing them how they are meant to be used.
The Purpose of Tools
Transformational tools—variously referred to as spiritual disciplines, contemplative exercises, wellbeing practices, and rituals—are technologies that humans across time and place have implemented to awaken us to the gift of life, to the present moment, to all that we are experiencing… to who we really are.
Things like prayer, fasting, yoga, sacred texts, meditation, breathwork, generosity, solitude, ceremony, dreamwork, wandering in nature, plant medicine―any activities that aim to help people experience transformation by accessing a higher or inner power, by encountering God or the true self. They are an exercise regimen for the soul, focused on strengthening and softening inner life for outer life in the world. They shift our center of gravity from ego to soul.
These tools are powerful.
But, if we’re not careful, we can end up approaching and engaging them in ways that separate us from their transformational potential.
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
-1 Corinthians 13:1-3
The Problem: Possession-Control-Mastery
In his book After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging, Yale Divinity School professor Willie James Jennings points to the threat when he identifies the agenda at the root of Western education. As I summarize in The Way Home:
The goal, he says, is to create a self-sufficient man who embodies what he calls, ironically, three virtues: possession, control, and mastery. It is an individualistic, antagonistic approach to the human experience, committed to conquest and domination. It rejects wholeness and belonging. It denies humility, vulnerability, and curiosity.
The temptation to bring the Possession-Control-Mastery posture to transformation impacts just about everyone, though it doesn’t affect everyone in the same way. Achievers are especially susceptible to it.
, whose wonderful work I’ve been diving into over at , explores how this particular problem shows up among intelligent and successful people on the spiritual journey in his fantastic two-part conversation with ex-Silicon Valley founder turned coach Brian Whetten. As Morgan puts it, “Greater awareness and spirituality makes you more powerful. When you marry that power to an already-exceptional ego, both amazing and terrible things can happen.”When an achiever (think: Enneagram 3) sees the huge menu of transformational tools. they have a tendency to treat them like everything else they have in their life: as activities to be accomplished, as a domain to be dominated.
I know all about that!
Look at what I’ve done!
Check out my new certification!
They proceed to acquire more knowledge, skills, and experiences—they wield the tools, but they don’t open themselves up to transformation.
Ego squeezes out Soul.
Head blocks the Heart.
Or, in the model of British psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist that Tom Morgan references, Left Hemisphere drowns out the Right Hemisphere.
While the Possession-Control-Mastery project of the Western world is actively expressed and most dangerous in this particular demographic in terms of its capacity to hinder and harm the growth process, I would argue that being steeped in this culture also impacts others.
For example, a perfectionist might encounter all of this knowledge and practice and find themselves caught on a treadmill. A friend of mine captured this dynamic when he recently confessed with frustration, “I just keep listening to one podcast after another. But I never do anything with it.” It is just one assignment to complete after another. What comes into the head is not metabolized by the heart or actualized by the hands.
A challenger or antagonist might see the increased interest in these tools for transformation and determine that it’s all just too trendy. As a result, they reactively reject incorporating anything fresh into their spiritual practice. They rigidly hold onto modality that may no longer be serving them. This is the path of lifeless religion.
Meanwhile, a peacemaker type gets overwhelmed. My wife Cherie is a therapist and encounters this often with her clients. People are hearing about all of these different modalities and experience a kind of options paralysis. They just don’t know where to start. So they do nothing.
Lastly, conformists will approach all of this with a sense of duty or obligation, cutting themselves off from healing and evolving.
(Okay, now I found myself thinking about all of the different Enneagram types and how they might intersect with the Possession-Control-Mastery approach to spiritual development. Interesting! But this wasn’t my intent. So I’ll stop here…)
From Information Accumulation to Transformation
Possession-Control-Mastery is powerful. In many ways, it is the water we are all swimming in. But that doesn’t mean we have to drink the Kool-Aid.
(Totally mixed metaphors there, but you get my drift!)
How might we avoid the pitfalls that Possession-Control-Mastery presents on the path?
From my own decades-long spiritual journey and the transformation work I’ve done with hundreds of people previously as a pastor and now in my coaching, there are five core principles to remember when engaging these tools of transformation on your own quest towards wholeness.
I’ll share them next week in part 2 of Don’t Mistake the Tool for the Transformation.