Years ago, I laughed when I saw a shirt with Spiritual Gangster on it. I wondered if I was one of them. But, I couldn’t find an alignment with the idea.
I thought, “What am I? Am I a gangster? No! But I am a troublemaker. I’m more like a hooligan. I break the spiritual rules. I challenge the cultural status quo. I don’t believe in the dogma or follow the conventions. I believe in oneness and that disrupts most traditional types.”
I called Kristen up that day (She lived in Seattle at the time) and I said, “I am a Spiritual Hooligan.” She laughed and said, “Yes you are!”
It stuck.
For the last 7 years, I’ve hosted a mastermind of people who identify themselves as Spiritual Hooligans. So I asked them, how do you know if you are a Spiritual Hooligan? They had a lot to say about it.
I’ve compiled a list below to help you see if you are one of us.
- You seek Enlightened Prosperity. Enlightenment is the context that all is well. If you are a newbie to spirituality, then you think prosperity refers to money. But a Spiritual Hooligan knows that it means you are doing well. So essentially you seek to know that all is well and you are doing well.
- You recognize that you are a fringe dweller or an outlier. You don’t feel bad about it. You know that other people are doing the best they can to try to survive by fitting in. That doesn’t interest you.
- You question everything and don’t follow the spiritual traditions or cultural dogma just because you’re “supposed to.” You are open. You don’t judge. You don’t need to be right about anything.
- You are extremely curious. Rather than pretending to “know” things. You seek to understand.
- You seek inner knowing. The survival mind wants to organize the outer world. The enlightened mind wants to organize the inner world.
- You meditate, contemplate and keep a quiet mind.
- Your intuition is strong.
- You intend to be in the flow. Most people feel like they have to “deal” with life. You seek to understand and be harmonious with it.
- You are intentionally non-resistant.
- You are “unoffendable.” When you know who you are, you don’t need external validation. People can say whatever they want and it doesn’t affect you.
- You know that the rules don’t apply to you. You don’t harm people or be intentionally disruptive but, you don’t follow the made-up rules about how to be a good person either.
- You play outside the lines. You know that you are an infinite being and don’t let arbitrary standards stop you from expressing yourself.
- You are devoted to integrity and workability even when it disrupts the status quo. Most people don’t care about integrity. When you work to restore it, it’s disruptive to the other people in your life.
- You aren’t afraid of destruction and happily blow up anything that doesn’t work in your life. You thrive in chaos. You know that breakdown is the beginning of a breakthrough.
- You find stability when everyone else is unstable. When your mind is quiet and you know that all is well, nothing takes you off your center.
- You gracefully create results even when it seems improbable to the people around you.
- You are satisfied and yet, you are eager for more.
- You decline activities that are done out of guilt or obligation.
- You are unconcerned with impressing anyone.
- You are unconcerned with offending anyone.
- You are committed and completely unattached to the results.
- You trust that all is well.
- Magic happens around you.
- You are in awe and wonder.
- Your presence is experienced as a gift because you don’t play by the rules and you give people the freedom to be themselves.
- You laugh, you giggle, you chuckle and you play all day.
- While others struggle with the drama, you have fun with it.
- You are extremely flexible and can activate new habits, ways of beings, and outlooks…almost at will.
- You have fun releasing lifelong beliefs at the drop of a hat.
- You don’t believe in mass reality because you know how to create your own.
If this speaks to you, then you are a Spiritual Hooligan!
Update:
I received this comment on Facebook and thought it would help you to see my interaction. She said, “Hooligan googled= a violent young troublemaker typically of a gang —— I’m Not violent not young don’t make trouble don’t belong to any group/gang I guess the answer is no.”
My Response – “Thanks for making me clarify this. We think of ourselves and spiritual trouble makers for sure. But certainly not violent. It’s a metaphor for being a spiritual type who can cross all the spiritual platforms and accept everyone as whole complete and perfect.
For most spiritual types, that is very disruptive!! The status quo is to be closed, judgemental, arrogant and convinced that your way is the right way.
Being a Spiritual Hooligan disrupts the status quo with being kind, considerate, non-judgemental and flexible and open to all beliefs.
The ‘hooligan part’ is just a play on words, a metaphor. We aren’t super-spiritual whoo whoo types. And we aren’t conventional religious types. We are not for or against anything. We are committed to the recognition that all is well.”
31 Comments
So, there’s a name for us? NICE! Used say I was here to F+$k w/ peeps. Someone has too! They can’t handle the truth! 👍🏻☯️💪🏻
Ha! Yes many of us create quite a ruckus with our point of view.
Hooligan. Yes I say. Are you Christian yes are you Jewish yes
Are you Buddhist yes are you Hindu yes Well you get the idea.
Sounds more like narcissism to me
Thanks for your comment Sam. You are right. For the traditional spiritual initiate who is still burdened by the mind, this does sound like narcissism. As my mind went quiet over the last decade, I was confronted by the dogma of my spiritual teachers who followed the rules of their teachers without ever taking the time to put their ideas to the test.
One of those rules is being humble. This was a very valuable tool for the egocentric initiates of the past. But as we enter this new era, making yourself lower or less than (the actual meaning of humble) is actually an impediment to achieving a connection with the infinite. The next phase is owning your experience and making no qualms about it. And yet… not doing it in a way that is disruptive to others. Cause when you do that, it puts you back in a survival state which is the source of negative mind chatter.
Thanks for your perspective brother!!
In my culture, I am a trickster. I have one son who does not speak to me because I do not obey the rules. I am very funny (I think).
You are one of us for sure!
Maybe you’re just scalawags!
I tend to be more of a land lover so hooligan seemed to be more in my lane 🙂
Ok, ok I am one. My thought process does not follow the rules and logic of the world. My thoughts and dreams are vivid, maybe symbolic of who I am as a individual. I’m not a prisoner of my past, that was a terrible lesson learned, not s life’s sentence. I don’t judge people, and I say living in a world where you can be anything you want, simply be yourself. I wasn’t always like this, I was once one of those people out there, the more you get the more you want, as speaking of material things, money, power over others, looking at the outside of a person instead of the inside. I didn’t learn over night and no one taught me. But years ago Deepak Chopra taught me to meditate. Now I am way beyond what I would ever, see, smell, or hear in my life. Its like there is never enough learning and teaching, if one ask. This journey is the best life and happiness doesn’t cost nothing. I will get your book. I only read, so many I cannot even count them. Namaste 🙏
It all seems disruptive to me when you must live & get along with traditional peeps, unless you are always saying “Let’s agree to disagree”!
Being harmonious is disruptive to the traditional peeps. It’s just nice to have a group you can hang with who gets that.
i get your point, but oh! hooligan is a terrible term to align with. it comes from houli kahn who was a particularly cruel persian emperor. ine of his favorite antics was to roll his servants in a carpet and let his horses trample them.
Yep. It’s a paradox. Similar to “Kill them with kindness”
This made me smile. I had a dear friend who decided on a different lifestyle. I met him at Bible Study. He admitted to missing his “Hooligan” friends. While his “old friends” may have been in trouble with the law, they had a “Hooligan” code that one could trust. Maybe more open and honest than the “new religious “ friends. We decided the best of both worlds was the way to go! Never called ourselves Spiritual Hooligans but that’s what we meant!
Stoked we found each other Chris.
Thanks. I hate it. Waste of your ad dollar.
Perfect. Enjoy.
I have to admit it’s interesting to me that a group of alledged nonconformist would make the effort to form a group. So that…. what? You can say look at me? I wish you all the best, but it’s not for me.
Ha! The group is not a group of non-conformists as much as a group that doesn’t seem to fit into any particular religion or spiritual group. It’s more like a spiritual hooligan can fit in anywhere with anyone. But because humans so often define themselves by their differences, the spiritual hooligan can feel threatening to the group because they generally accept everyone. It’s a paradox.
Wasted five minutes reading this……
I doubt that I am one though I do fit some of the profile, I am just not molevalent enough to be a full blown hooligan. I got where I am in this life by not caring enough about what those around me are about. I like where I am and don’t feel the need to adjust it, or change it to fit in to someone elses jar if you will. However; I find this most interesting enough to laugh out loud. Thanks.
Cool Anthony! I’m glad you got a giggle! 🙂
Aka High Plains Drifters
Whether l am or not is between God and Myself!..l ‘m a little selfish at times..That’s the artist in me..lol
I resemble this post. 🙋🏼♀️😂😂
My personality aligns with most of them. I had a psychologist supervisor once who said, “It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.” I live most of my life like that.
This has definitely got my interest. Although I say I’m Pagan I’ve never felt like I belong within the confines of any one spiritual practice.
Spiritual subversive, that works also.
It’s easy to be simply “a witness” when things don’t effect you personally. But I think I’d have trouble with that ideology if someone were to break into my home and kill everyone there but me. I believe I would judge that person, especially if they seemed to enjoy it. I guess I’ll never be that enlightened, if everything all the time would be just ok with me.
Of course Kathleen. That would be a very difficult survival situation to be in. Think of it more like shades of gray. The more you connect with the idea that we are all one thing expressing itself with infinite variety, the more you realize that everything you are experiencing is you. That doesn’t mean you won’t have times of great suffering. But it does me that you will have the capability of coming back stronger knowing that in the end, all is well.