Answering the question: What is spirituality and what is wrong with it?

Spirituality is religion not only without a church but privatized, as well as mystified. It reduces to some kind of feeling that is good and especially happy in some kind of way. As a form of religion without a church, it repeats and redoubles the Protestant Reformation. Ideally, it would be an ethics, but usually it's some practice that involves a discipline of mind, but need have no connection with the good of others let alone any moral obligations, and in the Protestant countries, especially America, where it flourishes, it also is essential anti-intellectual. In France, Italy, and Germany the term has a different meaning, as 'spirit' is mind, so philosophers are spiritual, and so are both poets and mathematicians. In America, it is assumed, just as the soul after death retains impressions of moral character but loses the capacity for thought and action that would have any consequences, spirituality may be a way of doing all kinds of essentially physical things, involving the body or nature, but does not generally include reading books or contemplating works of art. Though of course literally since spirit originally meant breath and now just means mind (in most Western languages), you would think it would mean exactly that. Of course, either way you look at it, spirituality can be left or right wing, and is usually the latter, and there is no contradiction in speaking of a Nazi spirituality or one of any other kind, ethically and politically speaking, as the concept is neutral to such distinctions. And in any case, you may take it as given that there are spiritual ways of riding a bicycle much more than there are of reading books.

We must conclude that the term conveys no positive moral force whatsoever and is neutral to all value. Therefore, if someone you are acquainted with starts telling you about getting 'spiritual', be on your guard, not enchanted; they are probably just full of shit. The concept in itself is so seemingly universal because it has no real meaning, but is a catch-all term that is supposed to point to something very good. Hate is as spiritual as love, murder as spiritual as saving lives. Forget about it.

If you pay attention to your breath while riding a bicycle, that is a spiritual practice. If you do so while reading a book, it would be, except that you cannot read while paying attention to your breathing, because you can only read by paying attention to the language of the text. Same with listening to a symphony. Spirituality therefore is anti-intellectual, and precisely because it is a way of occupying the mind with things other than its own contents or experiences. It is a way of distancing oneself from all experiences and thoughts. Partisans of spirituality will say that this is a greater awareness, but it is achieved by affectively disengaging the mind from its objects and contents. It is therefore quite explicitly a way of negating and avoiding the life of the mind along with not only its passions but its ability to think.

People are vulnerable, and the sign of this is affects themselves, which are articulate signs that show how a person feels, and is, affected. This is what it makes possible to care about our worlds and the things in them, the things that happen to people, including ourselves. Spiritualities are ways of trying to manage this. Preferable is courage. Preferable is action and thought undertaken in response to things that affect us because of our vulnerability. The spiritual person is looking for safety instead of taking the risks of the courageous. Taking those risks is what distinguishes the life of the mind and the worlds of the arts.

The 'Western' mind's response is to prefer art, and thinking that uses language and/or perceptible form, and that welcomes passionate engagement and thought. This is the European mind's alternative to (ancient) 'Eastern' practices of managing one's mind. The West is materialist.

The post-colonial world, which is not anti-Western at all but hybrid, is not less so. The line is drawn between the (pseudo-)religious and the political.

Smash completely the New Age!