The Cult of ‘The Get’

We are a culture obsessed with the ‘get.’ We want the transformation, but we want it scheduled, tax-deductible, and preferably captured in 45 megapixels. We treat spirituality like a hazmat disposal coordinator treats a spill-something to be managed, contained, and processed into a neat, safe container.

When we go to ‘thin places’ like the Kumano Kodo, we arrive with a list of demands. We want peace. We want clarity. We want an experience that justifies the $345 we spent on those waterproof boots that ended up giving us blisters anyway. This consumerist approach to the divine is the very thing that prevents the experience from happening. You cannot consume the sacred. You can only be consumed by the reality of the present moment, which is often far less poetic than the marketing suggests. The truth is that for 95 percent of a pilgrimage, you are just a mammal moving through a landscape. You are hungry, you are thirsty, and your left big toe has a dull ache that pulses in time with your heartbeat.

The Trap of Forced Stillness

I felt like a failure. If I wasn’t having a spiritual experience on an ancient, holy trail, then what was I even doing? I was just a guy in the woods with a hygiene problem. But that’s the trap. We think the ‘spirituality’ is a destination, a point on the map we reach after enough suffering. We think the suffering is the currency we use to buy the insight.

In reality, the profundity is in the rhythm. It is in the 15,005 steps you take between breakfast and lunch. It is in the way the mist clings to the cedars in a way that makes the whole world feel like it’s being held in a damp lung. If you are looking for the lightning bolt, you miss the moss. And the moss is where the gods actually live.

The people who operate the logistics of these treks, especially Kumano Kodo Japan, often see this play out in real time. The unraveling is the point. You don’t find yourself on the trail; you lose the person who thought they needed to find something in the first place.

Curating the Outcome

He was so busy curate-ing the outcome that he wasn’t actually present for the walk. He was a coordinator of expectations, trying to dispose of the ‘waste’ of boredom and physical pain to get to the ‘pure’ experience. It doesn’t work that way. The boredom is the soil. The physical pain is the heat that cracks the seed.

[The sacred is found in the dirt, not the daydream.]

The Holy Admission of Tiredness

The Kumano Kodo is a graveyard of expectations. Every few miles, you see a small stone statue, a Jizo, often wearing a red bib. People leave coins there-5 yen pieces, 25 yen pieces. They aren’t buying favors; they are acknowledging the passage. They are saying, ‘I was here, and I was tired.’

There is something deeply holy about admitting you are tired. It is an admission of limitation. And it is only when we reach our limits that the ‘spiritual’ has any room to enter. As long as we are full of our own plans and our own desire for ‘results’-we are too crowded for the divine to fit.

The Wet Forest Realization

I was cursing the monks who built these stairs 1005 years ago. I wanted to be back in a hotel with a vending machine and a dry bed. And in that moment of absolute, petty frustration, I stopped. I looked at the way the water was turning the tree trunks black and how the ferns were bowing under the weight of the droplets.

The commodification of the soul is a quiet tragedy. We arrive at the trailhead with a heavy burden of expectation. We want the trail to ‘do’ something to us. But the trail is indifferent. The mountains don’t care if you find your soul or if you just find a blister. This indifference is the greatest gift the landscape can offer. It forces you to stop performing. When you realize the mountain isn’t watching you, you can finally stop watching yourself.

Carrying Humanity Like Toxic Waste

I think back to Aiden K.-H. and his hazmat suits. He spent his life dealing with the things people wanted to get rid of. On the trail, he realized he was trying to treat his own humanity like toxic waste. He wanted to dispose of his frustration, his physical weakness, and his vanity.

You don’t dispose of frustration; you just walk with it until it stops being so heavy. By day four, Aiden had stopped checking his GPS. He’d stopped drafting his posts. He just sat by a stream and watched the water for 15 minutes, his fly probably open too, for all I know.

The Ordinary as Devotion

If you want to have a spiritual experience, the first thing you should do is stop trying. Stop looking for ‘thin places’ and start looking at your own feet. Stop waiting for the lightning bolt and start feeling the weight of your pack.

We are so afraid of the ordinary that we try to dress it up in incense and ancient chants. But the ordinary is the only thing we actually have. The 5 days I spent walking were 5 days of being human, nothing more. You don’t need a revelation. You just need to keep walking until the ‘you’ that wants the revelation finally gets tired enough to shut up. Then, and only then, the trail might actually begin to speak.