Types of Spiritual Problem Children

There are different flavors in different scenes, but these are the groupings of spiritual problem children that I’m always on the lookout for:

1. GURU-DADDIES, their minor acolytes, DOUCHE-WIZARDS, and their terrifying mutation, CRUSADERS. People who think spirituality is the most exploitable economic niche by which they can secure a desired material lifestyle and all the accompanying human bodies they wish to possess.

2. BASE-JUMPERS. Depth-seekers getting off on it and cranking the volume knobs up on every channel until they break off. Can be done for pleasure or pain. People filling a void. All manner of self-deniers and compensators belong in this category.

3. TRAIN-WRECKS. People with problems that actually manifest in the intersubjective world where they hurt people and cause pain and woe, but which appear to them to manifest as special powers that make them into prophets or messiahs or buddhas or paladins.

Which kind of problem child am I??

I’ve definitely always been a BASE-JUMPER. For my middle 20s, I flirted with DOUCHE-WIZARD and maybe even worked my way up to GURU-NEPHEW, but I probably neglected to get high for several straight days once and realized what was happening.

To clarify, a DOUCHE-WIZARD is always a potential GURU-DADDY, but without a following, he can operate as a freelancer by dressing up like… well, a douche-wizard, and professing various minor powers to gain attention, which may someday lead to actual influence.

The TRAIN-WRECK varies the most in terms of backstory and who is responsible for things ending up this way. One way or another, they have exploited a spiritual scene’s weak boundaries and set up shop being creepy-to-dangerous, using the scene’s own language/practices as cover.