Why Spirituality Makes Some People More Annoying.

And how to avoid being one of them.

Some people give spirituality a bad name. I’m not talking about people who believe in God or reincarnation, or that karma keeps a cosmic ledger of our good and bad deeds. I’m talking about the kind of person who tells you about how spiritual they are before they’ve even bothered to ask you your name. Like vegans, or people who have done a lot of travelling.

Just like vegans and perennial travellers, they draw you into a competition without your permission. Only instead of being about who cares the most about animals or who’s visited the beach most unsullied by tourism, it’s about who has the most pretentious understanding of the nature of reality. They’ll start by talking about their yoga practice or how often they meditate, and then they’ll up the ante by talking about their chakras or their third eye or their astral perineum. They’ll keep going until they reach the point where they believe something too esoteric for you to go along with and that’s the point you’re closed-minded and they’re not.

It’s like having a conversation with one of those automated answering services. You get to say yes, or no, and occasionally a short summary of what you want to say, but that’s it. The rest of the conversation is prerecorded.