Something uncomfortable has happened since social media came online.
Spiritual practice is now seen as content. A walk in the woods must be photographed. The meditation cushion is arranged just right. Even a whimsical foraging basket becomes a prop.
I feel deeply uncomfortable about this. It turns moments of genuine attention and connection into a way to signal identity: “Look at me, I belong to the Earth.”
Then lockdown happened. Near where I live, there are beautiful ancient temperate rainforests. These places are now fenced off.
Social media influencers ransacked them, trampling ancient stones covered in moss and lichen.
They crushed plants for the perfect selfie, claiming it was their human right to do so. I kid you not!
To vandalise nature so they could look ‘connected’.
Only the other day I spoke to someone who had visited one of these rainforests. They said that during their time there they must have seen a hundred people. When I used to go (I no longer do), there was no one.
I could wild camp and never see another soul. Now it’s a motorway for the selfie shot, the image, the performance, the epitome of disgrace.
And yet, in the next breath, I also understand the impulse.
We want to share what inspires us with our community. But something often gets lost when we move from private experiences to public performances.
And it’s usually the very thing that matters most.
The wellness industry has done something devastating to contemplative practice. It’s no longer something individuals do in their own personal space.
Instead, it has been repackaged, given an aesthetic, a market, a language of transformation. And you can buy the appearance of presence. All cosmic piss and wind.
The certificate. The tribal clothing. The ritual setup. The spiritual one-upmanship dressed up as humility.
None of this is Domei.
Domei has no special clothes. There are no certificates and, ideally, no shots that would be worthy of Instagram.
There’s no insider language to learn. There’s no spiritual hierarchy of experience you have to climb. No secret inner mystery only the initiated can access.
Instead, just the ever-present mystery that surrounds each and every one of us, each day, in every moment, regardless of our status, wealth, or power.
Ponder this.
The natural world, the living world, is indifferent to your brand and your following. The plant doesn’t lean into you because you’ve announced your intention, or thanked it, or asked it for permission.
A tree doesn’t respond differently to someone with a following, for all your supplications. The rain falls on the documented and the undocumented alike. Just as the sun does, and just as the wind does.
What the living world responds to, assuming it responds to anything, is simply your presence: private, unremarkable, uncomplicated, and uncommented-upon presence.
Domei is messy. It’s quiet. Often, not a lot happens, and I can tell you it’s rarely photogenic. And that is deliberate.