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Ramsses II
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(12/11/05 8:51 pm)
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New Altars of Indulgence

By Colleen O'Connor Denver Post Staff Writer

This holiday season you can be trendy and spiritual just by flashing the cash. For example, you can buy the Chocolate Deities - such as Buddha, the Sacred Heart, Ganesh, Akua'ba and Kokopelli - sweet icons crafted and hand-painted by family chocolatiers from fair-trade chocolate. Place them on your home altar, or eat them as an offering to the deity.

Chocolate Deities are a facet of metrospirituality, the cutting-edge evolution of American spirituality. Provocative and controversial, this is hipster-style worship, a sacred fusion of status, money, luxury and spirituality. Hippie values for yuppie pocketbooks.

The holy trinity of metrospiritual is simple: honoring the planet, healing yourself through optimal well-being and exploring other cultures, from Africa to Asia.

Lifestyle choices reflect metrospiritual values: organic and artisan foods, ecotourism, hybrid cars, fair-trade artisan crafts and alternative medicine. "Metrospiritual" businesses adhere to holistic and socially responsible values - places like Whole Foods, Anthropologie and Origins.

"It's voting with your dollars," says Waylon Lewis, 31, publisher of Boulder-based Elephant magazine. "In 2000 and 2004, many people felt disenfranchised by voting politically. This way you can use more power for positive change."

Critics say the metrospiritual focus on status and luxury is anything but spiritual. Not only is it shallow and self-indulgent, they say, but metrospirituality exploits the sacred treasures of other cultures, particularly religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism.

The raging controversy reminds Lewis of his recent talk with Buddhist teacher Sakyong Mipham, author of the new book "Ruling Your World." He said, 'What good is all this spirituality if it doesn't help with people's lives?' When you think of how to apply it to everyday life, then the best part of the metrospiritual equation is people using those inner values to connect with outward actions to try and create a better world. On the other hand, if people don't understand those inner values but are just shopping at Whole Foods because it's cooler and makes them feel more upper-class, then it's a little sad."

Ancient Debate

The argument over religion and money is at least as old as the Middle Ages, when wealthy nobles bought indulgences to acquire favor in heaven. And here in the New World, Protestants split between those who preferred the puritanical style of spare religiosity, and those who believed wealth was the sign of God's blessing - a mind-set similar to today's prosperity gospel.

Many discard metrospirituality as just the confused syncretism of bewildered baby boomers. Yet metrospirituality is the latest frontier of a global spirituality dating back centuries in American cultural and religious history.

"Cosmopolitan spirituality" was quite popular in the 19th century, writes Leigh Eric Schmidt, professor of religion at Princeton University, in his new book "Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality from Emerson to Oprah."

He evokes a distant time when "transcendentalists, eclectic to the core, were the first Americans to dabble with Asian religions as a source of personal inspiration and spiritual aspiration," a time when fascination with meditation created unity between the Transcendentalists, liberal Protestants, Reform Jews, Vedantists, Buddhists, and mind-cure metaphysicians.

"The global spiritual culture that began to emerge in the 19th century is clearly accelerating now," he says in a phone interview. "That means not only for (spiritual) teaching and writing, but also for the (spiritual) commodities. They all go together."

Trendsetters at the spiritual website Beliefnet.com, who first identified metrospirituality, proclaimed Indian yogis qualify but personal trainers do not. Yet they managed to miss the latest evolution, which makes even yogis look passé. RallySport in Boulder is the only health club in Colorado, and one of the first in the world, to launch Kinesis. What the heck is that?
It's so new few have heard of it. Just think weight-training, metrospiritual style. No more two-dimensional constraints of the cable-and-pulley machine. It's three-dimensional movement tricked out with aesthetics of luxurious design.

"When people walk in here they see beauty," says general manager Erin Carson. "It feels like a yoga studio. It feels meditative. When people finish the Kinesis experience - we never say 'workout' - they talk about how open they feel. When people are open, they tend to be more accepting and peaceful, which carries throughout their day."

The lucrative metrospirituality market, which prizes hipness over earthiness, even launched its own media outlet. Lime is a multiplatform media play that includes Internet, wireless, DVD, cable, and radio, according to the Hollywood Reporter, a brand that aspires to "a hipper sensibility ... in hopes of deflating stereotypes associated with such new-age totems as granola or healing crystals." Birkenstocks, in case you're wondering, are definitely not metrospiritual.

Colorado's "Asian Fetish"

In Denver, Cherry Creek Shopping Center is a particularly thriving crossroads of metrospiritual chic. Origins, Anthropologie and Aveda are huddled together across the street from Whole Foods.

On the day before Thanksgiving, just before the holiday shopping madness descends, Vivien Yeh, 28, browses Anthropologie. She passes stacks of books with titles like "Detox for Life" and "Safari Style," walking past racks of pants that sport the metaphysical brandname Sanctuary by Anthropologie.

"I love this store, but it's a bit pricey for me," she says. "Why is it that living this kind of lifestyle, you have to spend more?" Yeh, a native of China, makes frequent trips to Manhattan where she sees the same metrospiritual trends she finds in Colorado. "People have an Asian fetish," she says. "They think it's cool."

Recently, she took her American-born boyfriend shopping at the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, seeking the perfect American gift for her parents back home in China. "It was all about Asian things, all these little Buddhas, and even a shop called Zen," she says, referring to Chopa Imports: Zen Home Decor. "It was very funny. But in Asia, Buddhism is all about your heart."

Yeh, who is not Buddhist, is amused by the trend. But some practitioners of Asian religions are indignant when their sacred objects are used for trendy design. "Some feel very offended when the (Hindu) image of Ganesh is used in a home merely as decoration or a vague symbol, rather than recognizing that Ganesh is worshipped the way Jesus is worshipped," says Ginni Ishimatsu, a religion professor in the Asian Studies Department at the University of Denver.

"People don't recognize the proper way to approach a Hindu image, reverently, and with established rituals, like bathing your hands first, and using the right hand, which is the pure hand."

Finding Metrospirituality in Denver

Metrospirituality also pops up in the pages of the latest issue of 5280 magazine, where you will find sculptures of Asian deities adorning the home of Denverite Laurel Quint.

It's also at the Brown Palace. Glancing past the chauffeur in the white stretch limo parked out front, you will see giant advertisements for its new spa in the hotel window. "Nirvana is now being served in-room," read the words under a photo of a man receiving a hot-stone massage, a metrospiritual fusion of urban luxury and optimal well-being.

At Source on South Broadway, metrospirituality is obvious: custom-designed furniture, from beds to kitchens, featuring scavenged architectural objects, many of sacred origin. Walking into this colorful shop bursting with global cultures is like stumbling into an ancient bazaar on the legendary Silk Road.

Near books with titles like "A Spiritual Style - The Home as Sanctuary," you will find a $1,400 wooden reliquary from Thailand that once held a monk's cremated ashes. Or a $699 naga from Thailand, the dragon-tail symbol of protection from evil spirits in temples. Or a $900 Swati woman, elegantly carved, who once greeted devotees in Buddhist temples. Particularly popular are the $115 shelves from Pakistan, which people buy to make into home altars, draped with exotic fabrics, and aglow with scented candles.

Source customers "are definitely seekers, but not of a religion," says owner Gretchen Geary Sumbler. "I called my business Source because I help people become their own source of their universe - source as in creation. Wherever they are in their consciousness, I work with them." She even offers free workshops in consciousness studies each week at Source - the ultimate in metrospiritual customer service.

Eco-Friendly Yoga Gear

Not far away, in a warehouse on Bannock Street, Jon and Amy Dobrin are busy packing their wares for shipment to metrospiritual hotspots like CorePower Yoga. As owners of the yoga-clothing company Be Present, they are excited about their new line of eco-yoga gear made from bamboo fiber. Bamboo products, by coincidence, just showed up in the December issue of Yoga Journal as one of the hottest trends. "There's an awareness in the clothing industry that this is an environmentally conscious alternative to traditional cotton," says Jon. "Bamboo doesn't need pesticides, uses very little water, and when you break down the fibers, it's softer than cotton."

Here is a man who practices yoga, eats organic, loves green buildings, and is on the waiting list for a Toyota Prius hybrid car. He acknowledges he fits the metrospiritual profile - albeit without the luxury. "You can't buy your spirituality, and you can't buy your core values," he says. "But maybe enough people from the core have finally rubbed off on people at the periphery, and that's created a market. Doing well by doing good is what it's all about."

Edited by: Ramsses II at: 12/11/05 8:55 pm

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