The Enlightened Idiot

 Spirituality: The Art of Losing Your Bullshit

I’m here in Ubud, where Burning Man meets Bali in ceremony and celebration — a jungle playground of ecstatic dance, cacao rituals, and tribal designer wear that looks like it was inspired from the cocktail hour set of a Mad Max movie. Everywhere you turn, someone’s rebirthing, realigning, or remembering who they were in Atlantis ,  surrounded by an army of tantric linen gods who look like they’ve descended from Mount Instagram to bless the dance floor with perfectly moisturised enlightenment.

It’s a festival paradise with a side of performance art ... sacred selfies and sandalwood smoke swirling under the banner of awakening.

And yet, beneath the drums, the crystals, the shirodhara, and the endless sound baths, the same question hums like a mosquito in meditation: what happens when you stop performing spirituality, and actually start dumping your bullshit?

Forget the incense, the earthy toned loose linens, and that smug “I’m more enlightened than you” smile.

You don’t become fucking spiritual. You’re still just human, only now with better incense and worse delusions.

That’s the ego’s final, most devious trick: convincing you that your shiny, newly awakened self is somehow above all the other lost souls still fumbling through the chaos of being human.

You’re not. 

Spirituality isn’t a lifestyle choice.

You don’t “get spiritual” like you pick up pottery or CrossFit.

There’s no enlightenment starter pack, no celestial VIP lounge where the chosen few sip matcha and compare past lives.

But we love the costume. We love being the calm one in the chaos … the one who “gets it.” We light the sage, post the quote, and call it presence.

It’s not.

It’s just your ego in designer yoga pants ,  still performing, still selling, still addicted to identity. 

The real thing doesn’t add , it takes away. It doesn’t elevate you,  it fucking dismantles you. It peels you like an onion until you’re sitting there, raw and blinking, staring at the ashes of everything you thought made you “you.” ... All your beliefs. Your opinions. Your moral superiority. All fucked off and gone.

What’s left?  ... Confusion. Silence. A fragile, flickering awareness that you’ve been full of shit this whole time , and somehow, that’s okay. Just when you think you’ve cracked enlightenment, your ego sneaks back in with a shiny badge: “Look at me, I’m spiritual now.” And off you go again ,  bowing before your own humility, secretly thinking, “I bow better than they do.”

People love to claim they’ve transcended suffering… until some twat cuts them off in traffic.

Then it’s not Namaste, it’s 'fuck you, cunt!'

That’s the game.

You win by realising there’s nothing to win. No guru. No influencer. No loose linen wrapped Bali life coach charging ten grand for a tribal “awakening” retreat has the key to your soul.

Truth isn’t a course you buy ,  it’s a demolition job you survive.

You don’t learn it. You live it. Usually while muttering, “Holy shit, I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.” 

That’s enlightenment — the freedom to not know.

If you’re lucky, the whole façade falls apart. You lose the labels, the logic, the armour. You stop trying to be “good.” You stop trying to be anything. 

And in the rubble, there’s this quiet space … empty, terrifying, magnificent. Nothing to hold onto, and somehow, everything held. 

That’s the punchline:

The nothing you’ve been avoiding was the everything you were chasing.

There’s no final version of you waiting at the end of the path.

No halo. No certificate. No chocolate watch.

Just you ...  a little softer, a little freer, a little less full of shit than yesterday.

So burn the script. Drop the robes. Let the ego collapse under the weight of its own performance. Then get up, stretch, and live the fuck out of life. Not to become enlightened ... but because you finally realise you already are.

That, my friend, is the art of losing your bullshit.

The Enlightened Idiot

I thought awakening 

would make me special.

Instead, it made me laugh 

at every version of myself

that ever tried to be.

ZP