Spirituality is A Hiding - Not Healing

A slow, honest, brutal look at a beautiful lie.

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Prologue

In every corner of the modern world—from luxury yoga retreats in Goa to dimly lit meditation apps in lonely apartments—spirituality has become a soft, scented plaster for people’s wounds. It looks peaceful, sounds ancient, and feels like progress. But scratch the surface, and you’ll see: it often delays healing, disguises pain, and turns real wounds into poetic wallpaper.

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1. Pain Doesn’t Go Away Because You’ve Renamed It

A woman goes through emotional abuse for years.

She’s told it’s her karma.

She’s told to meditate.

She’s told to chant, accept, forgive, detach.

So she does. She becomes “spiritual.” But the shaking in her hands hasn’t stopped. The inner screams have only gone silent, not vanished. No boundaries were built. No strength returned. Her spine is straighter, but her life is still broken.

Spirituality helped her bypass her truth—not face it.

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2. Spiritual Language Is the New Opium

“Detach.”

“Surrender.”

“You are not your thoughts.”

“The body is just a vehicle.”

“This world is maya.”

These statements—borrowed from deep traditions—are thrown around like memes. They allow the mind to escape the mess, rather than enter it with presence and courage.

It feels peaceful, yes. But it is the peace of numbness. The peace of disconnection. The peace of a person too tired to cry anymore.

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3. Distraction Is Not Always a Screen — Sometimes It’s a Temple

The alcoholic turns to AA meetings and prayer instead of therapy.

The grieving mother lights lamps but doesn’t talk about her pain.

The depressed teenager starts chanting every morning but avoids food, sleep, and friends.

The trauma survivor reads Eckhart Tolle and attends satsangs but avoids touch, voice, anger, and memory.

They’re not healing.

They’re floating.

They’re spiritualizing their wounds so they don’t have to feel them.

And society claps for them.

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4. The Indian Trap: A Cultural Distraction

In India, especially, the trap runs deep.

Suffering is glamorized.

Victims are told to “accept their karma.”

Women are told to tolerate.

Children are told to obey.

Men are told to meditate away their rage.

No one is told to feel fully.

No one is taught how to safely be angry, ashamed, hungry, or hurt.

Everyone is told to seek God, as if that will fix what humans broke.

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5. The Business of Peace

Let’s be honest. Spirituality today is also a massive industry.

Meditation apps.

Healing crystals.

Spiritual influencers.

Online reiki.

YouTube monks.

Soul retreats for ₹50,000.

Gurus with merch.

The message is this: Don’t change the system. Change your vibration.

Don't fight injustice—find inner peace.

Don’t scream—breathe.

Don’t act—accept.

It’s a clever redirection.

And it sells well.

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6. What Real Healing Demands

Real healing is not fragrant.

It is earthy. Messy. Often ugly.

It involves honest conversations.

Body work.

Food changes.

Lifestyle reversal.

Facing abusers.

Setting boundaries.

Crying without shame.

Taking rest. Doing less. Saying no.

Real healing makes you grounded. It makes you face your shame, fear, regret, anger—not float above it.

Healing isn’t transcendence.

It’s return. To your body. To your life. To your mess.

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7. A Final Warning: The Smile of a Spiritual Zombie

Spirituality, when misused, turns people into quiet zombies.

They smile. They say “all is well.”

They post sunrises with quotes.

But you look into their eyes — and there’s no fire. No laughter. No rebellion. No grief. No real aliveness.

They’ve replaced pain with posture.

They’ve replaced honesty with harmony.

They’ve replaced healing with silence.

And silence is not always sacred.

Sometimes it’s survival.

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Epilogue

Let’s not turn away from pain. Let’s not rename our scars as karma. Let’s not float into heavens while our body still bleeds.

Let’s return. Let’s feel. Let’s fall apart where necessary.

Let’s understand that true healing needs roots, not wings.

Spirituality can be a companion. But when it becomes the escape, the costume, the soothing drug — it is not healing. It is distraction.

And no amount of chanting will change that.

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The Silence Was Too Quiet to Hear the Pain

A healing conversation between Madhukar and a seeker who mistook spirituality for healing.

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Characters:

Madhukar – a grounded rural healer, simple but razor-sharp in observation. He prepares traditional castor oil and helps people heal by listening deeply and guiding slowly.

Ishaan – 34-year-old, urban spiritual seeker. Reads Ramana Maharshi, listens to Mooji, meditates for hours, chants mantras, eats satvik food, but is secretly exhausted, confused, and stuck.

Anju (10) – Madhukar’s youngest daughter, homeschooled, observant, sometimes blurts out uncomfortable truths in innocence.

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Scene:

Early morning, courtyard of Madhukar’s home. A neem tree shades one side. The scent of warm castor oil, cow dung floor, and wet leaves hangs in the air. Ishaan arrives silently, dressed in a loose cotton kurta. Madhukar pours him a brass cup of warm buttermilk.

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Ishaan (sipping buttermilk, softly):

I heard of you from a man at a Vipassana camp. He said you help people heal… not just physically.

Madhukar (nodding):

Sometimes. If they’re willing to slow down and speak the truth.

Ishaan:

I don’t know what truth is anymore. I meditate daily. Chant thrice. Follow ahimsa. I quit my job. Left my city. But I still feel… hollow.

Madhukar (stirring oil in a pot):

Hmm. So you’ve cleaned the house. But haven’t entered the kitchen.

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1. The Bypass

Ishaan:

I don’t get it. Isn’t the path about silence? About detachment?

Madhukar:

Silence is medicine after bleeding.

Detachment is freedom after digestion.

You haven’t felt your pain. You’ve renamed it as illusion.

Ishaan:

I’ve left everything behind. My ambition. My family. My old self.

Madhukar:

No. You just painted it all white and called it spiritual. You didn’t face it. You escaped it.

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2. The Body That Remembers

Madhukar asks Ishaan to lie down. He places a warm castor oil cloth on his belly and covers it with plastic. Ishaan shivers.

Madhukar:

Do you feel that coldness inside?

Ishaan (nods):

Yes. Deep. In the stomach. Always been there.

Madhukar:

That’s where your truth sits.

Your father’s anger.

Your mother’s silence.

Your guilt. Your shame. Your fear.

Meditation floats above it. But oil goes inside.

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3. The Honest Question

Anju walks in, barefoot, carrying a bowl of fermented ragi ambali.

Anju (looking at Ishaan curiously):

Appa… why do people sit quiet if they still cry inside?

Madhukar (smiling):

Because crying in front of God is allowed. But not in front of people.

Ishaan (whispers):

I haven’t cried in 9 years.

Madhukar:

You’ve cried. But only in your dreams.

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4. The Collapse

Hours pass. The oil pack continues. Ishaan finally breaks down.

Ishaan (tears flowing):

I hated my job. I hated my father. I couldn’t speak. So I just went spiritual.

I thought if I stayed calm, people would love me.

But I’m exhausted. I feel like a fake monk.

Madhukar (softly):

Now you’re alive.

Not spiritual. Just human.

Good.

Now we begin.

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5. The Real Work Begins

Madhukar:

Every evening, write one memory you’ve hidden.

Every morning, take 20 ml of castor oil belly pack.

Eat fermented foods. Walk barefoot.

Speak one truth daily to one person. No silence games.

Ishaan:

And meditation?

Madhukar:

Only after you’ve laughed, screamed, and rested.

God doesn’t need silence. He needs your honesty.

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6. The Mirror

Before Ishaan leaves, Anju hands him a mirror from the wall.

Anju:

Take this. Amma says the mirror never judges—even if you’re ugly inside.

Madhukar:

Look into it every night. Not to become spiritual. But to see if you’ve stayed real.

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7. The Aftertaste

As Ishaan walks away, the oil smell still on his body, he feels lighter—not because he’s floating, but because he’s grounded for the first time in years.

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Epilogue – Madhukar’s Notebook (Patient Log, Day 1)

> Name: Ishaan

Occupation: Escaped from modern life, entered a spiritual cage

Diagnosis: Spiritual Bypass, Emotional Constipation

Treatment: Belly oil, fermented food, emotional honesty, barefoot walking

Prognosis: Good, if he stops hiding behind mantras

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Six Months Later

“I Now Live Inside My Body”

A final visit from Ishaan to Madhukar, after half a year of unlearning, honesty, and healing

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Setting:

Another early morning. Same neem tree. Same courtyard. Cows lowing in the distance. A brass kettle simmers quietly. The winter sun is mild. Ishaan walks in—not floating, not glowing—but walking with a realness in his step. His kurta is crumpled. There are cracks on his feet. His eyes are alive.

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1. Arrival

Madhukar (without looking up):

You smell different.

Ishaan (smiling faintly):

No incense. No sandalwood. Just sweat and castor oil.

Madhukar gestures to a wooden stool.

Madhukar:

Sit. Tell me. What stayed?

Ishaan (quietly):

The oil. The mirror. The ambali. The truths.

Everything else—enlightenment, detachment, silence—it all collapsed.

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2. The Body Returned

Ishaan:

In the second month, I vomited. Not from food. From memory.

My mother’s breakdown. My childhood bedwetting.

I stopped chanting. I started cooking. Cutting vegetables. Washing my own underwear.

I started touching the earth.

Madhukar:

And the pain?

Ishaan:

Still there. But now it breathes with me. Doesn’t scare me.

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3. The Mirror's Truth

Ishaan:

Every night I looked into that mirror.

Some days I cried.

Some days I grinned like a madman.

One day, I forgave my father.

Not spiritually. Just humanly.

I saw him—a tired man trying to control his world. Like I was.

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4. The Inner Voice

Madhukar:

And your silence?

Ishaan:

It changed shape.

Now I sit quietly not because I want to escape.

But because I’ve said what I had to say.

Even when I sit in silence, my back hurts, my belly grumbles, a memory pokes. But I sit with it now. Not above it.

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5. Life Resumed

Ishaan:

I moved back to a small flat. Started working with soil. Composting. Teaching kids how to sit with feelings.

I eat real food. I sleep like a dog. I don’t talk of awakening anymore.

I just live inside my body.

Madhukar:

So… no halo?

Ishaan (laughs):

Only dandruff.

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6. Anju’s Final Test

Anju walks in, bigger, with a new tooth missing.

Anju (staring):

You look more like a man now. Less like a ghost.

Madhukar (to Ishaan):

She’s our lie detector.

Anju:

Are you happy?

Ishaan (after a pause):

I’m here. Some days sad, some days angry, some days soft. But fully here.

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7. Madhukar’s Closing Words

Madhukar:

Good.

You’ve stopped trying to be God.

Now start being a neighbour, a lover, a son, a soil-turner.

That’s healing.

That’s holy.

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Epilogue – Madhukar’s Notebook (Patient Log, Final Entry)

> Name: Ishaan

Time Elapsed: 6 months

Observations:

– Belly breath restored

– Language grounded

– No spiritual ego

– Regular fermented food intake

– Emotional fluidity returned

– Feet cracked, heart open

Status:

✅ Discharged from distraction

✅ Re-entered human life

✅ Knows healing is never finished

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Don’t Call It Healing Just Because You’re Quiet

A long, slow-burn poem about the lie of spiritual healing and the brutal, beautiful truth of facing yourself

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you shaved your head.

you wore white.

you stopped eating onions

and started quoting dead men

from the Himalayas.

you called it a journey.

you called it stillness.

you called it the path.

you called it god.

but it was just

a clean-smelling

disguise.

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you sat for hours

watching your breath

like it owed you something,

but you never watched your rage.

your mother’s voice still rang

in your stomach at 2 a.m.

your ex’s betrayal

still sat in your chest

like a swallowed knife.

but you said:

“all is illusion.”

so you made your pain

a philosophy.

you made your trauma

a sermon.

you called your numbness

peace.

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you were a monk

with a panic disorder.

you were “one with the universe”

but couldn’t sleep without herbal pills.

you wrote about detachment

but checked your phone

every 7 minutes

for likes from your sangha.

you weren’t healing.

you were hiding.

deep in the closet of incense

and borrowed words.

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your friends said you’d evolved.

but the child inside you

still flinched when someone

raised their voice.

still craved touch.

still wanted to be held

not by god

but by someone real.

someone who’d let you cry

without calling it ego.

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you drank herbal teas

but never drank water

after screaming.

you walked barefoot

but never walked

through your father’s silence.

you fasted

but never purged

the grief you smuggled

in your spine.

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this isn’t about hating prayer.

this isn’t about mocking mantras.

this is about the people

who whisper "shanti"

but cannot speak

their own name out loud

without twitching.

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healing isn’t a pose.

it’s not a silence retreat.

it’s not a cotton kurta

or a Rumi quote

tattooed near your ribs.

healing is

vomiting the story.

scrubbing your shame

out of the floor tiles.

it’s weeping

in your kitchen

while the rice burns

because today,

you remembered

something you buried

when you were ten.

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healing is

touching your own thighs

without judgment.

healing is

admitting your breath smells,

your mind lies,

your god doesn't pay rent,

and your pain wants a voice

more than a mantra.

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you don't heal

by escaping the world.

you heal

by re-entering it

with open wounds

and no halo.

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you'll know it's healing

when you feel stupid

before you feel wise.

when you start saying,

"I don’t know”

more than

“I accept.”

when you miss a puja

but remember

to make dosa batter for your neighbour.

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you’ll know it

when your feet crack.

when your ego stinks.

when you stop selling peace

and start buying tamarind

for your mother’s sambhar.

when your mirror says,

“You’re real, not radiant.”

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don’t call it healing

just because you’re quiet.

don’t call it growth

just because you don’t scream.

don’t call it spiritual

just because you’ve stopped sinning.

the wound is still there.

under the mala beads.

behind the chanting.

inside the breath.

beneath the OM.

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real healing stinks.

it makes you messy,

emotional,

unbearable.

real healing is

fermented.

warm.

sticky.

ugly.

true.

like castor oil on belly.

like ragi ambali in summer.

like your own voice

when you stop rehearsing it.

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if god is anywhere,

he’s not in your enlightenment.

he’s in the moment

you finally

admit

you’re still broken—

and still beautiful.

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.end.