False Prophets and the Age of Wokeness
Trigger warning for the expat spiritual arts community. I wrote this in hopes of starting a conversation about the ethics of the spiritual practices and coaching in governing body - unregulated communities like Bali, Indonesia. It’s an opinion piece which was born of my own observations over the years of spending time on the island and having been privy to the stories and experiences of my friends and colleagues who teach and practice here.
“Papa, there’s a worm inside this plum, but there are no visible holes on the outside. I picked the nicest looking one. How is that even possible?
Papa: As with plums, so with people.”
Those of us who have spent time in Bali would agree that it is an interesting place to live. The island is renowned for its spiritual traditions, tangible magic and the healing arts. After the release of Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Eat Pray Love’, the little jungle town of Ubud became a tourist mecca for those seeking to journey back to their core and heal from their childhood wounds, broken relationships, insecurities, shadows, you name it - Ubud, and more recently Canggu, have the cure. Once a thing of magic and wonder, healing just like yoga and more recently, breathwork - has become a trendy, profit driven business. Now, in North America and Europe there are governing bodies and legal framework for life coaches, healers and other practitioners who directly deal with people’s mental health and the human body. In Bali - anything goes, especially for the expat community. There are more Western healers, life coaches, embodiment gurus, light workers and other magic folk here on the island than anywhere I have ever ventured. There are more ‘healers’ here than real shamans in the Amazon jungle where I drank ayahuasca two years ago. The average age range of said healers, shamans and coaches is usually between 20 and 35 years old. The average price for their services, more than a local 70 year old shaman who comes from a multigenerational dynasty of healers and decades of practice and experience will make in their entire lifetime.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to teach or practice the spiritual arts, and I do believe that it’s more about experience than what age you are, but the most important part that people seem to blissfully bypass is practice. How can you profit from performing modalities you haven’t practiced for a lengthy amount of time? How can you teach something which has serious physical and/or emotional consequences, which you haven’t spent years practicing? Practicing and/or teaching the magic of spirit also seems to bend the concepts of responsibility, accountability and expertise. It’s true that spirit has no age and can choose to channel itself through a child or a teenager, or a 25 year old instagram influencer … ok, trying to keep an open mind. But Bali seems to have the highest concentration of enlightened social media savvy beings in the universe. Either God/Allah/Buddha/Universe has come up with a genius marketing plan to channel him/herself through flawlessly airbrushed instagram gurus … or spirituality in its various forms has become a product. And why is it so lucrative? Allow me to speculate that perhaps because it allows lost souls and garden variety sociopaths who find themselves here - to create an ‘expert’ identity, a new life in a place where they will not be challenged by actual experts nor held accountable for misrepresentation or malpractice. It allows freedom of schedule, and depending on how media savvy you are, a quickly growing audience of believers, a paycheque (often without legal permission to work in the country) and practical experience which can be parlayed into more opportunities back home. Say you come from England and you practice in Bali. You can now call yourself an international coach / healer / speaker /etc. Because technically it’s true. You can even throw in the word ‘renowned’ if you have over a few thousand instagram followers. When you come back to England you will sound way more impressive than a local accredited coach with decades of experience, because hey, you lived and practiced in Bali, the healer capital of the world. You networked into speaking gigs at a couple of local festivals and got your friends to feature you in their podcasts. You may have made some well known expert friends in the community. You have the photos to prove it. Check-mate. I worked in various tiers of media relations and marketing for a number of years. It’s a genius move, really, top grade hustle … it is, from a business standpoint… but is it ethical? As we all know, business and ethics are not always congruent.
I am not interested in tearing anyone down, otherwise I would start naming names. I wish to start a conversation and inject some sense and transparency into the blind consumerism of false prophet agendas. No one seems to talk about the elephant in the room, because everyone is friends with a ‘healer’ or a yogi or breath work teacher or ‘guru’. And like trying to spot a fake Louis Vuitton, If you don’t know what you're looking for, it’s sometimes hard to tell the real from the fake. It’s even harder to tell your really good friend that “Hey, I love you, but maybe you shouldn’t practice on people yet … or at all.” … Mic drop. Oh no you didn’t. Pass the kombucha. And look, I believe in magic. I believe in the healing arts and have practiced self healing on multiple occasions, with success. I do not consider myself religious, however I have a Godmother in her 70s who by all means IS a real healer. I have seen that woman stop blood from spilling out of open wounds just by hovering her hands over a person’s body. I have seen her heal my dog who was brought in from the yard after having his throat mauled by a pit bull. She was the one who made me believe in the spiritual arts. She is a known healer in her community and the most incredible thing is she has never charged for her services as long as I’ve known her. People she would heal would bring her food, clothing, host her, and help cover her living expenses voluntarily without her ever asking. I grew up with this idea that a healer channels a higher power and to mix that with money is … not necessarily wrong, but feels unethical somehow. Real shamans were always a coveted part of a tribe. They were taken care of by the community so they could devote their lives to learning about the healing arts and helping the people of the community when they would succumb to illness. Before I get a hundred emails in my inbox as a rebuttal to what I just said let me say this - yes, we live in a material world and energy must be exchanged, bills must be paid, etc. I don’t disagree. In fact I do believe that healers (REAL healers, should be paid for their services). However, this opens up a pandora’s box. What about the healers who like many drivers around here, got their licenses, or rather certificates out of cereal boxes, aka schools - which were also created by expats looking to profit by becoming a self appointed ‘governing body’ which train 20 year old real-life dropouts how to physically and emotionally engage with vulnerable clients on a spiritual, mental and/or physical level? Forgive me for being blunt, but it makes me uncomfortable.
Like many, four years ago I came to Bali in absolute emotional shambles. I was thrilled at the idea that I was surrounded by ‘healers’ and ‘gurus’ because I had so much to heal from and so much to learn. Everywhere I turned I saw angels in garbs, with brilliant white smiles and eyes full of stars…. and cacao, lots and LOTS of sacred cacao. It seemed too good to be true. I don’t know what I love more, magic or chocolate. It was only two years later when I took off my rose coloured glasses and was able to see the community for what it was - infested with false prophets struggling to maintain in their own lives - the very things they charged hundreds or thousands of dollars unknowing clients for. The relationship coach’s personal life was on a roll of permanent drama and disarray, the business coach was flat out broke, the polygamy proponent and coach sat and quietly cried in the corner whenever she saw her partner openly engage with other women at parties, the super feminist and female empowerment coach and her feminist sister coaches and yoginis were publicly best friends with a very wealthy sexual predator (while openly acknowledging his predatory behavior behind his back), the yoga teacher was engaging in sexual relationships with half of his students, the uber authentic, abstinent meditation guru was preaching morals and engaging in covert manipulation while doing the same, and the self appointed feminine evolution and women’s circle goddess mean-girled any female who would dare outshine her fellow-sister-empowering-self. I’m not embellishing, I wish I was. It’s wild out here! And just like in the rest of our confused backwards world, money and power trump everything. What morals? What accountability? And it’s wildly entertaining albeit shocking if you are able to see what’s really going on. But it’s not so entertaining for the innocent, unsuspecting butterflies that get trapped in the spiderwebs of false prophets. If anything, all of this just proves that we are all so very human, we are not perfect, we all suffer from hypocrisy, every single one of us on different levels, myself included. But when it comes to positioning thyself as an expert in a field, where are the lines of ethics drawn? Sure, these days anyone with $4000 can become a yoga teacher, but even if a North American governing body tells you that you can and you’ve paid for your 20 day course and aced it (can you actually fail a yoga teacher training? I’m actually curious)… would you ever stop to ask yourself if you are really qualified to teach other humans?
I guess it all comes down to conditioning. In the West we have been taught that anything can be bought. In the culture where I was born (Central Asia), I was conditioned to believe that you have to earn the honor of being called an expert, that to become a teacher or a master you have to devote your entire life to you craft, or discipline. But who has the time for that nowadays? You won’t become a social media influencer sensation if you spend the next 40 years in the jungle learning actual plant medicine or in the himalayas apprenticing with real healers. I peruse local instagram accounts as I sit at a cafe having late night dessert. I see profiles of young gorgeous, chiselled bodies, many clad in crystals and flowing fabrics, photos of hands bent into mudras and you know … all the stuff you’re supposed to see, hear, and expect of a modern day ‘healer’. Profile taglines read: Healer, SACRED energy Healer, Coach, Goddess, Guru and derivatives. I sigh. I try not to judge, but wow it’s shameless. Then I click on a new account, the young guy who runs it is a ‘Healer and Professional massage therapist”. Every post features a point of view shot (often employed by amateur porn producers) - of his one free hand groping (ahem* massaging) a female client’s g-string wearing backside. He has thousands of followers. I’m sure they’re there because he’s a fantastic therapist and not to ogle at unsuspecting client ass. “Are you serious”, the words burst out of my mouth before I can stop myself.
The false prophets are divided into classes: the most audacious charging thousands of dollars for courses they don’t have formal training in or are really qualified to teach, and the more harmless - ex ‘celebrity’ photographers, instagram models and teenage rebels trying to find an audience by spewing out ‘woke’ quotes, shilling word salad life advice based on little to no life experience and encouraging toxic positivity while spending their afternoons gossiping at local cafes about tinder dates, weekend conquests and anyone who dares to call them out … ‘cause “Aint no one got time for negative people, I’m trying to build an empire here”.
A good friend of mine, an expert in the field of soul-matrix numerology was on the verge of tears just a few days ago when she found out that a recent graduate from her course, which took her three years to build .. carbon copied all of her modules, recreated them on his own website and ordained himself an expert in her field after studying with her for a month. He is planning to charge people triple what she currently does. I felt her pain. She has devoted years of her life to her discipline and to helping people. The individual who shamelessly licked off her course not only showed a complete sign of disrespect towards her and the profession, but also put her business in jeopardy. If his efforts with clients prove incompetent, he will contribute in tarnishing the already highly questionable ‘spiritual arts’. The trickle effect of that will affect my friend’s legitimate practice and the rest of the community.
What makes all of this ok is obviously that the consumers, you and I, don’t know better. We are sold a fantasy, a quick fix. False prophets prey on the vulnerable, the broken, the ignorant and the uneducated. It’s a business that rides on psychological manipulation. It’s a business which attracts a lot of narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths - people with very real personality disorders (if you are not aware of the true meaning of these terms, please look them up and educate yourself, it will put everything in perspective). I once sat in a garden cafe with the owner of one of the best known Yoga studios on the island. I asked him “how does it feel, knowing that you created this amazing space that people can come into and heal”? With a half smile he said “It’s good, but it’s also strange and funny sometimes. There will be someone, a ‘Bob’, or a ‘Helen’ who comes fresh off a plane with a slew of issues they are trying to fix and try and heal. They will come to classes for a few weeks and I’ll see them back three months later, all clad in white, hair flowing and they will introduce themselves as ‘Ashanti’ or ‘Shiva’ or ‘Zeus’, before you know it they are teaching others how to live. It happens so often.” I get it now. I have spent a few years coming and going and I have seen this many times. Too many people who position themselves as experts are in Bali because they are unable to function out there, in the real world, where enormous bills need to be paid and you have to be legally accountable if you position yourself as a figure of authority in their chosen field. And to each his and her own, except the trouble is - for a perspective client sitting in a New York city apartment dreaming for a way out of their 9 to 5 job or looking to solve their personal issues, all they see is a gorgeous being on the other side of the world living in the lap of luxury, in a beverly hills mansion looking home, donning a brilliant white smile and encouraging others that they can do it too, while sipping organic green juice from a beautiful tropical cafe! Click to buy my $5000 course on how to. The truth is, YES you can have this lifestyle too! You don’t need a guru! Because it’s Bali and that Beverly Hills looking villa costs less than half of what you pay to rent your tiny grey bachelor apartment in Queens. For the minimum wage you make working at Starbucks, you will be able to afford to eat out at nice cafes three times a day, every day and you will spend about $10 on gas a week - and that’s if you drive the fancy scooter and fill it up with Pertamax Premium. Many of the healers and coaches here in Bali aren’t here because they’ve ‘made it’ out there in the real world, they are here because they can only sustain the fantasy from here, on the unregulated fantasy island - influencer heaven, where anything goes and anybody can be somebody.
The silver lining? There ARE legitimate yoga teachers here, you can tell the difference when you walk into their classes. The attention to detail, the way they hold space, the in depth knowledge and sharing of the history and philosophy behind mudras and asanas. They respect their craft. There are real healers here too, in the jungles and remote villages beyond the tourist centres. They don’t speak english. You have to know a local who knows someone from the community who will bring you to the Balian (shaman). There are a few real western spirituality teachers and healers here too, and you find out about them the same way, through friends and clients, not through instagram ads. There ARE real good eggs here, and some of them are between the ages of 20 and 35. They are taking their time apprenticing and learning about their disciplines so that they may serve the community in the future. They are not trying to set up their life in Bali by turning a quick buck through ‘healing’ someone. I feel sorry for and frankly, embarrassed for the real deal. For the shamans, for the healers, for the coaches who respect their profession, who respect their clients. How do you find a needle in a haystack? The wild wild entitled West always find a way to commercialize and disgrace the authenticity of something to turn a profit. The real deal exists but many stop looking, usually after their first encounter with a false prophet.
I respect Western medicine but I am also a huge advocate for alternative practices. They have saved my health and my life numerous times. I was lucky. When I was young my parents took me to elderly alternative health practitioners who spent their entire lives learning the art of acupuncture, massage, hypnotherapy, herbalism. Less than a decade ago a Chinese herbalist with 20+ years of education and practice with plants saved one of my ovaries from being surgically removed by adjusting my diet and prescribing me a tea made of mushrooms, seeds, cicada skins and lord knows what else. His name is Dr. Song, that made me smile. Western specialists considered it a ‘one off’ miracle. Alternative medicine works! Hypnotherapy works! Energy healing / Reiki practices work! Breathwork works! But they work when their practitioners have the respect and knowledge of what they are doing. Having just exited a course doesn’t mean that you are qualified. Having an instagram account with a purchased verification and fake engagement doesn’t make you an expert, it should really serve as a red flag. I have a 200hr Yoga Teacher Training Certification and five years of practice behind me and let me tell you I don’t consider that enough to teach in the way I would want to be taught. I took a Reiki course in Peru from a 74 year old master which technically also means I can advertise as a Reiki healer, I have the paper. I wouldn’t feel right doing it though, not unless I devoted serious time to the practices. I practice reiki on myself and on family and friends who request it. Obviously, receiving money for it is completely out of the question. I am not a reiki master.
As unfortunate as it is, as long as there is money to be made and insta-fame to be had, the false prophets are never going to go away. So it’s up to the consumer - the audience to cultivate the knowledge which will help separate the real deal from the impostors. Be woke when it comes to your awareness. Use common sense and your intuition. Don’t allow people to prey on your vulnerabilities and do your research. We have been conditioned to believe that people are who they say they are. You don’t want to think that you surgeon doesn’t know what he’s doing, so you tend to treat an alternative healer and the massage therapist down the street the same way. The other day I walked into a laser beauty clinic I had been going to for a few months. The treatment I had didn’t work so I came back and was treated by a brand new ‘therapist’. Halfway through the session I felt something was off. If I flinched she would apologise. She just didn’t seem sure of what she was doing. My intuition forced me to ask her how long she had been doing laser therapy for. She fidgeted .. “two months”. Two months and she’s handling a heavy duty cosmetic laser machine without supervision, geeeeez. I was shocked, but it’s Bali! No governing body for cosmetic practices either, anything goes! No, she did not get accredited or officially certified. Needless to say I won’t be coming back. Chances are the ‘therapist’ I had before was also not properly trained or accredited, hence the lack of results. I felt stupid for being so trusting. There will be no one to sue here if you sustain laser burns so it’s up to your own judgement. We have been conditioned to trust. We are used to the standards we are used to and we fail to question individuals and establishments on their competency. Some false prophets may pose as healers to turn a profit. Others may be good people with the best intentions of helping people, blissfully unaware of their incompetency in their practice because some ‘healing school’ likely run by a profiteer, charged them for a course and they now have a piece of paper that says ‘certificate’ on it. I’m a believer that no matter what age you are, your teacher should be a master, someone who has spent decades in the healing arts. Let them* decide if you are ready. If new recruits are taught by new recruits, what does that say for the integrity of the practice? No piece of paper nor a course should dictate someone’s moral principles. Just as it is up to us as consumers to protect our interests and deal with authentic practitioners, it is up to the teachers and coaches to self regulate their moral compass and respect their profession and clients’ interests to always choose ethics over profit….. In an ideal world.
The easy way to discern ego from authenticity? Real healers and gurus don’t usually call themselves by name. They earn that honour from the members of the community the selflessly serve. Being called a healer is an honor not a job description. Not everyone may share this opinion, so everyone has to decide for themselves.
"If you meet the Buddha, kill him." this famous quote is attributed to Linji Yixuan (also spelled Lin-chi I-hsuan, d. 866), one of the most prominent masters of Zen history.
It means, resist charlatans who think they are enlightened.
- The Fearless Nomad
Photo Credit - Unsplash.com