I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that spiritual healing, in one form or another, is making its way into the mainstream. More and more of us want to find happiness and peace in this life we’ve been given. That said–when something becomes popular and even trendy, it can also open the door for those not-so-pure healers to thrive.

1. My Way or the Highway

As humans, we can all be negative at times. We pass judgement, we compare ourselves to others, and we say our path is the only right path. But like Sri Swami Satchidananda says “truth is one, paths are many.”  If a spiritual teacher speaks negatively too often about another form of practice, especially publicly, it can be troubling. While this not a black and white issue, the theme that “their practice is the only one that works” is a turn off to me because negativity isn’t the path to spiritual healing or freedom.

2. Driven By Cash

Everyone has to make a living, even spiritual leaders, but it shouldn’t be the only motivation. While making a living is important, spiritual healing, yoga, and meditation shouldn’t be confined to the rich. While there’s a fine line between being rewarded for good work and being greedy, a spiritual leader that’s also a salesman or woman can be problematic.

3. A Dark Side

To trust a spiritual leader, you need to able to trust their purity. Spiritual healing takes prana, or life force, and excessive sex, drugs, and alcohol drain your body of prana. Getting drunk at a wedding is one thing but larger, nastier scandals have caused big time spiritual leaders to fall from grace. Anusara creator John Friend was accused of and admitted to having marijuana sent to his home office, freezing the pensions of his employees, and having an affair with a married yoga teacher, among many other controversies. Other teachers like Bikram Choudhury have been embroiled in sex scandals galore.

Again, we all make mistakes, and it’s not about judgement, but there are some guidelines that should be observed in order to be a role model to other seekers.

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Image: Barry Silver

The post False Spiritual Healing: 3 Tips to Spot a Phony Spiritual Teacher appeared first on EcoSalon.

Could embracing a spiritual approach to style motivate consumers to choose more sustainable fashion?

The fashion industry is fascinating. On one hand you have businesses that create obsolescence and insecurity, and on the other, products that offer tremendous potential as a creative process to make people feel more secure by expressing who they are, or who they’d like to be. And from Oprah to Deepak, yoga classes and meditation seminars, this country clearly has a rapidly growing taste for all things spiritual.

Truth, fairness, interconnectedness and non-violence are values found in all major spiritual paths, and, if you think about it, they’re also embroidered in the sustainable fashion movement. As a writer and environmentalist fascinated with what motivates humans and keenly curious about how to inspire more environmentally-friendly consumer behaviors, I wonder if the trend for turning within could make greater inroads with how we choose clothing, jewelry and accessories than green activism ever managed.

When I came across Buddha Style: A discussion about the Buddha’s radical teachings on fashion and forgiveness, a recently released book about approaching fashion from a Buddhist perspective, I was intrigued.

With its punk-rock illustrations by award-winning sculptor and installation artist Jesse Bercowetz, the book is an engaging and easy-to-follow perspective on both Buddhism and the fashion industry. One purchase (just one more) that might bring some peace for those of us who struggle with our fashion appetites. Recording a discussion between Otto von Busch, a fashion scholar at Parsons the New School for Design in New York, and Josh Korda, a Buddhist teacher at New York Dharma Punx, the small tome speaks to how we can reconcile our relationship to consumerism and begin to live more skillfully with fashion:

We are aversive to pain. We are restless. We are craving for pleasure. And we all want more. It is easy today to look to fashion for salvation. We feel fashion can give us what we need. We can be beautiful. We can be seen. We can be popular. We can become our better self. And it is so accessible. It is everywhere.

Can there be any liberation?

Image: seyed mostafa zamani

The post Buddha Style: Do Spirituality and Style Have to be Mutually Exclusive? appeared first on EcoSalon.