*Author’s note: I wrote this a week before I was diagnosed with cancer, and I want to say I feel the same today as I did the day I wrote this. I am slowing down even more to notice the subtle energy of love and enjoy the happiness my life has brought me.

There seems to be this notion of a prize, medal, or grade you get if you know certain spiritual teachers, have taken certain classes, or read particular books.

As a working psychic and someone who is considered part of the spiritual category, I just have to call horsesh*t on this notion of elitism in spirituality.

The truth is, it’s not about the books, the gurus, the classes, or the years we spent meditating and down-dogging that makes someone spiritual—it’s a feeling.

Simple and infuriating, as we are a society that glorifies people for effort and hard work. We live for certifications and accolades defining our intellect and allowing us to measure ourselves against others.

Spiritualism today is an elitist society filled with people who are outsourcing the feeling of connection.

So what is true spiritualism, and why won’t books and gurus get us there?

The goal for most as they enter into their spiritual conquest is self-discovery, self-actualization, and the holy grail: enlightenment or transcendence.

I have personally yet to witness anyone reaching the holy grail of enlightenment or transcendence, no matter how many classes and meditations they attended. Surrender is the ego’s Mt.Kilamanjaro; letting go and letting God in can be the ultimate goal in self-actualization.

Yet when I do psychic readings for the oh-so-spiritual peeps, they ask me the same thing everyone else would ask:

“When will I fall in love?”

“Will I get the career benefits my hard work says it should?”

“Will we be financially okay?”

Most of us have been so deeply indoctrinated into believing success is money and believe if you’re truly spiritual, you can easily manifest your “dreams” that we sometimes forget success is actually about being happy, or put even more simply, content.

Happiness and love are the cornerstones of spiritualism. Yet our attachments to the outcome and ideal comforts often block us from actually enjoying life and finding—or noticing—happiness and love.

We assume love is somehow outside ourselves and claim loneliness if we do not have a partner, disregarding friends and family—and even ourselves.

We believe happiness is like retirement, a reward that only comes with the right combination of hard work and sacrifice.

These days, the spiritual peeps have been calling my number furiously and let down that their hard work and “efforting” in the self-development arena hasn’t brought them enlightenment, love, or happiness.

The guarantee in spirituality—from my particular insider trading post—is that we do not deserve a thing. Hard work is meaningless unless it is meaningful to you. The idea that the universe is playing tricks makes me laugh and think of the book, He’s just not that into you.

Life is actually so easy that we can’t help but make it so hard. We put words and acrobatics into trying to get it to work for us, instead of admitting the real reason it isn’t working for us is that we keep going after the money and the outside rewards, instead of our soul’s actual desire, which might simply be to stare out a friggin’ window and watch the snow fall.

The ego does not accept easy. It wants to suffer and work hard—it wants us to earn it.

And so our spirit goes right along with it. In truth, if we just turn our internal radio to the puppies and rainbows channel, we will begin to see a new outcome.

Spirituality is a feeling, a connection with your truest most, honest self. The child-like self who wants to turn her head up to the sky as the rain falls and taste the feet drops on her tongue, to feel the new grass under her feet, lay under a big tree and just snuggle into the earth’s floor, feel the water pour over you in a shower, or listen to kids laugh in the street.

It’s subtle. And it passes us by when we are efforting for more—more exists in the present. And the present moments are where our spirit wants to take us.

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