Give up on your spiritual side

April 7, 2005

Sean Woodland rues how New Age self-help isn't always a help.

Soon after moving to Bondi, the spiritual capital of Sydney, I began to understand the level of neglect to which I had been exposing my mind, body and soul. In short, I was spiritually deficient. The evidence was overwhelming.

I didn't own a single-self help book, a guitar or didgeridoo that I couldn't play. I'd never even heard of a life coach, had my palm read, been on a diet or participated in yoga, meditation, tai chi or pilates. The only candles I'd ever lit were for birthday cakes.

My parents had never explained to me the importance of attaching my happiness and/or physical wellbeing to a diet, book or stretching routine. How I survived this delusion for so long only Buddha, God, Jenny Craig or one of my enlightened friends could possibly know.

My ignorance of such matters was so great I was not remotely aware of its existence. Clearly, I needed to get in touch with myself or this dereliction of duty would have serious repercussions later in life.

So the search for what was missing in my life began in earnest. I gave up smoking and drinking, then began a high-protein diet (fat people definitely can't be happy). When I hadn't lost the prescribed five kilos or been to the toilet in a week, I changed to a seven-day detox (laxatives) program. This intestinal broom had the opposite effect to the high-protein diet. It became dangerous to move further than five metres away from a toilet, but I did lose weight. On the downside, I was sent home from work for being of intemperate disposition.

Self-help books were next on the agenda. There were more of these to choose from than there were in all the other sections combined. It was difficult to know which books to buy. The words "happy", "love", "living" and "dying" featured in most titles.

I'll even admit to buying a book by the Dalai Lama. Sure, I'm not a Buddhist, but you don't have to understand the properties of food before you can eat. Every night I lit candles, burned incense and read diligently. Eventually it dawned on me that these philosophical masterpieces of self-help are clearly designed to fail. Otherwise there would only ever have been one written. Next stop was yoga. Unfortunately, the flatulence problem associated with yoga precluded me from attending more than once. And I never quite got the hang of meditation as I kept falling asleep.

Life coaching sounded like a benevolent ideology, so you can only imagine my surprise when, instead of coming face to face with an octogenarian full of wisdom and experience, I met a person at least five years my junior with a pathologically friendly grin.

Having expended boundless energy in pursuance of life's holy grail, I ended up intense, tired, confused and hungry. I sought out an ageing friend and asked how she'd managed to negotiate the dilemma of life so impressively without starving herself or visits to a guru. Before sipping on a frothy pint of Guinness and casting a contented gaze out to the ocean, she said: "I just enjoy life."



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