Spirituality, Self-Help Industry and Seeker

Spirituality, Religion and Self-Help Industry

From the existence of human civilisation, individuals within society have always sought help and advice in some form. Spirituality and religion are as old as human civilization. The very reason for the existence of religions was to help people navigate life. For 1000s of years, people have looked up to spiritual figures, and their philosophies for guidance. Spiritual teachers would go and preach around the continent spreading their philosophy of life. It is said that Gautam Buddha travelled on foot for 1000s of kilometres across Asia for almost 45 years. Then came the era of industrial revolutions, and scientific advancements. In the last 50 years slowly religion is being replaced with self-help books, philosophies, and the mental health industry. 

Today the self-help industry has become a huge industry. By the end of 2022, in the United States alone the industry valuation was $13.2 billion. The number of self-help books published has increased by a factor of 8 from 2010 to 2022. Apple Podcasts alone hosts over 200,000 self-help and personal growth podcasts. The mental health industry is 416 Billion US dollars right now. The forms of self-help are wide in range today. Books, Website and Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Workshops, Seminars, Therapy, Coaching, Social Media, Apps, and Online Communities.  There are currently 71,000 professional life coaches worldwide, while YouTube, Instagram, and X are getting saturated with health, mindfulness experts, relationship and dating coaches.

I put everything into a single category:

Anything that deals with the mental and emotional wellbeing of humanity and strives to help people have a better experience of life.

We are turning into a society, which has access to an unlimited amount of intellectual knowledge.  Naturally, this much knowledge is chaotic. I found a funny reel on Instagram on the food and health nutrition industry. https://www.instagram.com/p/CtUqXkEgGwF/ It is just a funny video, but it shows the reality of the self-help industry. 1000s people are there, and they will give you 1000s of different advice. And often if you go seriously into self-improvement you will realize there are even contradictory advice available. 

The real question for a genuine seeker, are 

“How do I find genuine help ?”

“Whom to listen to, trust and take seriously?”

“Which advice is going to work for me?”

Student/Seeker: Start of Journey

The self-help industry and spirituality exist because of two things:  Doubt and Love for knowledge. Those are very mature people who go to seek guidance out of love for knowledge, but most of us generally seek it when we are suffering and full of self-doubt.

Remember when you were a child? You were full of wonder without any knowledge, yet you had no doubt. Somewhere when growing up you started doubting yourself. Maybe you felt like you didn’t fit into the society, culture or people, maybe you got your heart broken, maybe you felt unloved, and rejected, or maybe you were not given a space to reach your highest capability of who you can be. Something happened that made you doubt yourself. Doubt the way you walk, talk, work,  interact with people, and have relationships. 

A great seeker is full of doubt. And doubt is often a starting point of many great discoveries in life.

Only when you are in doubt, do you ask for guidance and help. Self-doubt is the starting point of seeking. It is the single most important quality of a seeker. Self-doubt makes you open-minded, you are open to suggestions, open to new ideas, new viewpoints of life, new ways to think, and new ways to see the world.  So self-doubt creates an emptiness inside of you. This emptiness makes you ready to receive, a new way and vision of life.

In the initial stages, a seeker is aware of this self-doubt, but he is fighting with it. 

Millions are filled with self-doubt yet only a few make real progress. We feel stuck because we are trying to fight with this self-doubt. The fighting seeker feels childish, and full of curiosity. He is running around from here to there, reading 100s of books, listening to 10 different people, trying to find a way, trying to figure things out. On the inside, he is filled with confusion and indecision. He does not know what to do, or what not to do. At the very core, he does not trust himself, and he does not trust life also. 

I have been this fighting seeker for so many years. And it is my suggestion that if you are a seeker who is fighting with this self-doubt within you, fight intensely and fight properly. But fight with self-awareness. From this self-awareness progress happens, and a shift happens.

The shift that I am saying here is a simple acceptance and acknowledgement of self-doubt, confusion and indecisiveness. An acknowledgement of “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go from here.” But this acceptance should not be a forced idea in the mind, it should happen naturally over the course of years.

I write here insight from my own spiritual journey. And I hope that this insight creates more self-awareness within you so it triggers that shift.

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