The More Spiritual You Try to Become, the Less Spiritual You’re Likely to Be

I ran a spiritual healing centre for five years.

In that time I met 100s of people who described themselves as spiritual. Healers. Teachers. Shamans. Light workers. Tantra practitioners. Channellers. Reiki masters. Cacao ceremony holders. Plant medicine guides. Twin flames. Awakened ones.

And I can tell you this, without flinching: some of the most manipulative and lost people I have ever encountered in my life were the ones wearing the most spiritual labels.

Not all of them. But enough that I stopped being surprised.

How Spirituality Became a Money Machine

Spirituality has become an industry. And like every industry, it attracts people who know how to sell.

The workshops. The festivals. The retreats. The certifications. The healings at €80 a session, the weekend immersions at €400, the ten-day experiences at €2,000. The online courses. The sacred activations. The quantum upgrades.

There is always something more you need. Another layer to clear. Another blockage to release. Another level to unlock. And conveniently, the person telling you this is also the person selling you the next ticket in.

I watched people who could barely pay their rent hand over money they didn’t have, because someone with soft eyes and a necklace told them their ancestors needed healing.

Spiritual Language as an Excuse for Bad Behaviour

Spiritual language is extraordinarily useful if you want to behave badly without consequence.

Cancelled our plans at the last minute? “My energy took me in another direction.”

Ghosted you after a month of intense connection? “I had to follow my truth.”

Borrowed money and never paid it back? “Abundance flows where it’s meant to flow.”

Slept with your partner? “Our souls recognised each other.”

Didn’t turn up to the thing they promised? “I had to honour my boundaries.”

Every ordinary failure of character — unreliability, selfishness, dishonesty, cowardice — gets rebranded as a sacred act. The language is designed to make accountability impossible. You can’t argue with someone’s soul journey.

Sexual Manipulation in Spiritual Communities

This one deserves its own section, because it is everywhere and it hurts people.

“I can perform tantra on you and heal you.”

“Our connection is karmic. We’re meant to merge.”

“I can feel your sacral chakra is blocked. I can help you open it.”

“You need to surrender to receive the download.”

I have lost count of the number of women I have spoken with who were manipulated into sex by men using spiritual frameworks. Men who positioned themselves as healers, teachers, awakened beings — and then used that position to get what they wanted. Same tactic as any other predator, just with better vocabulary.

And when the woman later felt used or confused or violated? It was her resistance. Her wounding. Her inability to receive. Never his behaviour.

Spiritual Gaslighting: The Weaponised Diagnosis

Disagree with a spiritual person and watch what happens.

You are not just wrong. You are infested. You have entities attached to you. You are carrying vampiric energy. You are running dark frequencies. You are a narcissist, a low-vibration being trying to pull them down. Your aura is compromised. You need clearing. You need removing from the community until you sort yourself out.

I have seen this tactic used over and over, and it is one of the most quietly dangerous things I have ever encountered.

Because it doesn’t stop at the accusation. It gets whispered into the ears of everyone else in the circle. Suddenly people who liked you, trusted you, worked with you, start pulling away. They have been told you are energetically dangerous. They don’t want to catch whatever you have. The person who made the accusation gets to sit in the middle of the group looking concerned and discerning, while you get slowly frozen out without ever being told what you did.

It is ordinary social bullying dressed up in cosmic language. It is exactly the same mechanism as any cult, any clique, any village witch hunt — just with better branding. And because the accusations are spiritual, they are unfalsifiable. You cannot prove you don’t have an entity attached to you any more than a woman in 1650 could prove she wasn’t a witch.

These are some of the most dangerous people I have ever encountered. Not because they are physically violent, but because they are skilled at destroying someone’s reputation, relationships, and sense of reality while appearing to do it out of love and concern.

If someone’s first response to disagreement is to diagnose your energy, run.

Spiritual Ego: The Biggest Ego Hides Behind the Smallest Self

The biggest ego I have ever encountered came from someone who told me he had dissolved his ego years ago.

Spiritual ego is a particular beast. It wears humility like a costume. It speaks softly. It refers to itself in the third person as “this vessel.” And underneath all of it is a conviction of superiority so complete that the person genuinely believes they deserve more than others — more love, more money, more land, more recognition — because they are more awake.

I have seen people try to manoeuvre their way onto other people’s property because they felt called to be there. I have seen them argue that possessions should be shared with them specifically, because their work is more important. I have seen them justify taking what isn’t theirs because the universe clearly wanted them to have it.

People would constantly try to convince me that my place should become a community of oneness. A place where everyone is spiritually aligned, living together in harmony. It sounds beautiful. It doesn’t work. Too many clashes. Too many egos dressed as no-egos. Too many people who cannot live peacefully with a single other human being telling you they are ready for community.

One of those people took five years of falling out with just one friend before they could call themselves aligned. Five years. One person. And she wanted to build a community.

The biggest ego of them all would shout at me constantly when I tried to help him on his land. He told me he wanted to kill his retreat guests. He said his friends disgusted him. He was full of rage and contempt for almost everyone around him. And in the next breath he would tell me he was an entity of pure light. That the character he used to play — whoever he was before his awakening — was beneath him now.

This is what unchecked spiritual ego looks like. A man screaming at the people trying to help him while insisting he has transcended the human condition. You could not write it.

Meanwhile his partner — who never once called himself spiritual — was out in the garden every day, connected to the land, connected to the people around him, one of the most kind and caring people I have ever met. He didn’t need the label. He just was.

Regular greed is at least honest about what it is.

The Lost, the Deluded, and the Spiritual Industry

I want to be fair. Not everyone I am describing is a manipulator.

Many of the people I met were lost. Genuinely lost. They had experienced something real — a loss, a breakdown, a glimpse of something bigger — and they went looking for answers in a marketplace that was happy to sell them an identity. The certifications, the titles, the rituals, the outfits — all of it gave them a sense of belonging and purpose they couldn’t find anywhere else.

I don’t blame them. The modern world is lonely and meaningless enough to send anyone searching.

But being lost doesn’t make you a healer. And a six-weekend course doesn’t qualify you to work on other people’s trauma.

My honest estimate, after five years and over a thousand encounters, is that about 95% of the people I met in the spiritual scene were some combination of lost, deluded, or manipulative. Many were all three. The remaining 5% were quiet, unassuming, helpful

.

The Ones Who Were Different

There were helpful ones. I want to say that clearly.

But here is the thing — they are hard to describe. And that is exactly the point.

They didn’t have a title. They didn’t have a technique they needed you to know about. They didn’t walk into a room and shift the energy or announce what they were picking up. They didn’t have a big awakening story they told at every gathering. They didn’t need you to see them.

They just showed up. Were kind. Helped when they could. Didn’t make it about themselves. And went home.

No drama. No costume. No agenda. Nothing to see through — because there was nothing being performed.

They are the hardest people to write about because the thing that made them good is the same thing that made them invisible in a scene obsessed with being seen. They didn’t stand out. They didn’t try to. And in a world full of people desperate to be recognised as special, that was the most special thing about them.

You probably know someone like this. You might not think of them as spiritual. They probably don’t think of themselves that way either.

They are the ones who actually changed me.

The biggest problem on this planet — in the spiritual world and everywhere else — is that people want to be special.

That is the root of almost everything I have described in this piece. The manipulation, the ego, the performances, the labels, the gatekeeping, the tantra lines, the entity diagnoses, the community power plays — all of it traces back to someone needing to feel more important than the person next to them.

Spirituality just gives it a better disguise than most.

The ones who were actually good? They didn’t need to be special. They were just useful.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

What Genuine Spirituality Actually Looks Like

Here is the thing that took me years to see clearly.

The most genuinely spiritual people I have ever met are the ones who would never use that word to describe themselves.

They are like the old Portuguese men and women in my village. They grow food. They feed their neighbours. They turn up when someone is sick. They work the land their grandparents worked. They are not performing anything. They are not on a journey. They are not awakening. They are just living — decently, patiently, with their feet on the ground and their hands in the soil.

They pray without announcing it. They help without invoicing for it.

They are connected to the land, to the seasons, to each other, and to something larger than themselves — and they do not need to tell you about it. They would think you were strange if you asked them to describe their practice.

This is what spirituality looks like when it is real. Unselfconscious. Useful. Quiet.

Why the Spiritual Scene Is Dangerous

I want to be clear about something. The spiritual scene is not just annoying or misguided. It is dangerous.

It is dangerous because it is built on control. The whole thing runs on it. Control through language. Control through social dynamics. Control through fear.

People in these circles spread things about you that are not true. They whisper that your energy is off, that you are toxic, that entities are working through you, that people should keep their distance. They tarnish your reputation with accusations that cannot be disproved because they were never grounded in reality in the first place. And because the community runs on trust in the unseen, the whispers stick.

It puts real fear into the person on the receiving end. You start questioning yourself. You start wondering if maybe something is wrong with you. You lose friends, connections, opportunities — not because of anything you did, but because someone decided you were inconvenient.

And that is the point. It was never about your energy. It was never about the light or the dark or the entities. It was about control. It was about removing someone who challenged them, or who had something they wanted, or who simply saw through the performance.

Every bit of it — the gossip, the diagnoses, the exclusion, the fear — exists to benefit the person doing it. Strip away the spiritual language and what you are left with is just ordinary human power games. The same ones that play out in offices, in school yards, in families. Except in the spiritual world, the person doing it gets to feel enlightened while they do it.

That is what makes it worse.

The Practices Aren’t the Problem. The People Are.

I want to be clear about something. This piece is not about the practices. Many of them are genuinely powerful. The problem is what certain people do with them.

Is cacao good?

Yes. Cacao is a beautiful, gentle heart-opener. It contains theobromine, magnesium, and compounds that genuinely affect mood and circulation. Sitting quietly with a cup of ceremonial cacao and letting it soften you is a real experience. The problem starts when someone charges you €60 to sit in a circle while they channel messages from a cacao spirit and tell you your heart chakra needs six more sessions to fully open. The cacao was doing the work. They just attached a price tag and a story to it.

Do spiritual journeys help?

Yes. Time in nature, silence, fasting, pilgrimage, plant medicine in the right setting with the right guidance — these things can crack you open in ways that years of talking never will. I have experienced it myself. The problem is when the journey becomes a product. When someone sells you a weekend in a field and calls it a vision quest. When the guide has done a three-month online certification and is now charging €1,500 to hold space for your ego death. When the experience becomes more about the person facilitating it than the person going through it.

Is sound healing good?

Yes. Sound baths, singing bowls, gongs, tuning forks — the vibrations are real and the effect on the nervous system is measurable. Lying still and letting sound wash through you can drop you into a state of deep rest that nothing else quite reaches. The problem is when someone tells you the specific frequency they are using will reprogram your DNA or cure your autoimmune condition. When it becomes a vehicle for pseudoscientific claims and a funnel into more expensive treatments. The sound was enough. It didn’t need the sales pitch.

Is breathwork good?

Yes. Controlled breathing techniques can shift your nervous system from fight-or-flight into rest-and-repair in minutes. Holotropic breathwork, Wim Hof, pranayama — these are powerful, well-documented tools. The problem is when a facilitator pushes people into extreme states without proper screening, without understanding trauma responses, and without any real training beyond a weekend course. When someone has a panic attack on the mat and is told it is just energy releasing. That is not facilitation. That is negligence dressed as spirituality.

Is meditation good?

Yes. Meditation is one of the most researched and effective practices for mental health, emotional regulation, and clarity. Sitting still. Watching your thoughts. Coming back to the breath. It is simple, free, and transformative. The problem is when someone turns it into a hierarchy. When they tell you their technique is the only real one. When they sell you levels and initiations and memberships. When they use your meditation practice as a tool to keep you dependent on their teaching rather than trusting your own silence.

Is energy work good?

It can be. Reiki, acupuncture, bodywork — many people experience genuine shifts. Whether you explain it through meridians or placebo or nervous system regulation doesn’t matter much if the person feels better and no harm is done. The problem is when someone tells you they can see your dead grandmother standing behind you and she has a message. When they diagnose you with entity attachments and tell you that you need weekly clearings at €100 a session. When the energy work becomes a dependency rather than a doorway.

The pattern is always the same.

The practice is real. The experience is real.

And then someone figures out how to monetise it, gatekeep it, or use it to position themselves above you.

The answer is not to reject the practices. The answer is to do them yourself, simply, without a middleman who needs your money or your admiration to feel whole. Drink the cacao at home. Sit in silence in your garden. Breathe deeply on your own floor. Walk in the woods without paying someone to tell you what the trees are saying.

The land, the body, and the silence were always free. They still are.

The Paradox of Trying to Be Spiritual

The more you try to be spiritual, the less spiritual you are likely to be. Because spirituality is not an identity you can put on. It isn’t a certificate. It isn’t a wardrobe. It isn’t a vocabulary. It isn’t a list of workshops attended or a collection of initiations.

It is how you treat your neighbour. How you behave when no one is watching. Whether you keep your word. Whether the people around you feel safer or smaller after they have spent time with you.

The moment you start performing it, you have already lost it.

So here is the warning I want to leave you with.

The more time you spend around these people, the more their behaviour gets trained into you.

It is not something you consciously choose. You start borrowing the language. You start explaining your own unreliability in cosmic terms. You start diagnosing other people’s energy. You start believing you are further along than you are. You start performing.

It happens slowly. It happens to good people. I have watched it happen to friends, and I have caught it starting in myself.

Every hour you spend in those circles is an hour of subtle conditioning — to speak a certain way, to excuse a certain kind of behaviour, to see yourself as separate from and slightly above the ordinary people around you. And the further you drift into that world, the further you drift from the actual thing you were looking for when you started.

True spirituality is in the opposite direction. It is back toward the ground. Back toward ordinary people doing ordinary decent things. Back toward keeping your word, growing your food, helping your neighbour, and shutting up about it.

If you find yourself deep in the scene, the most spiritual thing you can do might be to walk out of it.

What I Do Instead

I built WyldeRoots from a trauma I wouldn’t wish on anyone, a 27-year drug addiction, watching my mum die of cancer, and losing the ability to walk. I turned all of it into something real. Coaching. Hosting . Courses. Writing. A life beside a river in Portugal that I built with my own hands.

I am not about tricks. I am not about superiority or fluff or voodoo or sacred performances that make people feel special while changing nothing.

Yes, I have a label too. The difference is I earned it through lived experience not a weekend course, and I hold it lightly. It’s a description of what I do, not a costume I wear.

I am about reality. Honesty. The kind that comes from living off-grid, being part of nature, doing the actual work — not talking about doing the work. Getting your hands dirty. Facing the things you have been running from. No costumes. No quantum upgrades. No entity of pure light nonsense.

I use my suffering in my work because it is the most useful thing I have. Not to position myself above anyone. To sit beside them and say — I have been where you are. Not near it. In it. And here is what actually helped.

The difference between what I do and what the spiritual scene does is simple. I don’t need you to believe in anything. I just need you to be honest.

That is where the change starts.

What WyldeRoots Actually Is

Wylde Roots is a website full of real, guided truth. Blogs. Courses. Workbooks. Written by someone who has lived every word of it. No fluff. No upsells disguised as healing. Just honest tools from honest experience.

The River House

https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/1220308602650176903 is an Airbnb on the banks of the Rio Águeda in central Portugal. Private river access. Waterfalls. Spring water. Stone walls. Birds you have never heard before. It is a nature sanctuary — not a retreat centre trying to overhaul your life in a weekend.

You come for a holiday. You pay for the holiday. That is it.

But if you want to talk — if you are going through something and you need someone who has been through the fire and come out the other side — I am here. That part is free. No session fee. No sacred exchange. No energy clearing at €80 an hour. Just a conversation with someone who gives a shit, sitting by a river, for as long as you need it.

That is what I wish the spiritual world looked like. Someone offering help because they want to help. A place that heals you because of what it is, not because of what it charges.

Just the river. The land. And the truth.

Alexander Sully | [WyldeRoots]

https://wylderoots.org

Life guide , sanctuary host, writer and internationally published photographer. Featured twice on Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild. Living off-grid beside the Rio Águeda in central Portugal.