Late-Stage Religion, Truth, Spirituality, and ELD

This isn’t a call to join anything. It’s a call to remember what the sacred is actually for.

When Religion Forgets What It’s For

Late-stage religion tends to unravel when it loses touch with its original purpose (its spirituality). It happens when faith forgets its roots; those embodied, mystical beginnings that made it come alive in the first place. When religion prioritizes control over understanding, demands obedience over liberation, and becomes more about presenting a facade than being genuinely present, it begins to hollow out. But what if there’s another way to approach the sacred?

That’s where Embodied Liberation Dharma, or ELD, comes in. ELD isn’t about dogma or rigid rules. It’s a spiritual ecosystem that moves with the rhythm of truth as it lives and breathes.

So, What Is Truth Anyway?

For me, truth isn’t something fixed or set in stone. It’s alive, constantly shifting and growing as we do. Truth is what happens when our direct experience lines up with what feels ethically correct, when it resonates with the wisdom of our ancestors, and when it helps us become freer and more whole. It’s the force that restores us, pushes back against domination, honors different ways of knowing, and keeps checking itself against reality instead of clinging to certainty.

When someone says, “The Bible is the word of God and it can’t change,” I see that as a kind of knowledge that’s stuck in place, tied to authority and control. If you look at truth from a place of liberation and lived experience, it has to be able to evolve. It needs to respond to new pain, welcome fresh insights, and heal what it may have once harmed. If it can’t do that, it becomes a fossil. Preserved, but lifeless.

To claim something can never change is to say it can’t respond to new suffering or revelation. It can’t heal old wounds. That’s not divine to me. That’s just domination pretending to be sacred. When people insist the Bible can’t change, what they’re often really saying is that their interpretation can’t change, because their power depends on keeping things still. But if we’re talking about something truly sacred, it’s not about being rigid. It’s about staying in right relationship with a world that’s constantly changing.

What Truth Looks Like in Real Life

Truth shows up in conversation and connection, not in declarations or control. It’s about healing and freedom. If something doesn’t help us heal or become freer, it probably isn’t the whole truth yet. I trust what my body tells me, what resonates with my ancestors, and what stands up to honest scrutiny over time. Truth, for me, has to be able to correct itself and hold complexity without turning into domination or rigid certainty. I judge truth by what it actually does in the world. If it heals, frees, clarifies, and restores relationships, that’s true enough for me to live by, at least for now.

What Is Spirituality?

Spirituality isn’t about church or belief or doctrine. It’s about connection...staying in right relationship with yourself, with others, with the world, and with reality itself. At its heart, spirituality is what helps us feel woven into the fabric of existence, not cut off from it. It’s the part of life that whispers, “You are not alone,” and at the same time, “You are responsible for how you show up.”

When you engage with spirituality, you’re tuning in to something that can lift you out of your usual patterns. Sometimes, it’s a quiet moment of awe in nature; other times, it’s a deep sense of belonging in community, or a sudden clarity about your place in the world. These are self-transcendent experiences; moments when you feel connected to something greater than yourself, whether that’s the earth, humanity, the sacred, or just the raw, unfiltered truth of reality.

To be spiritual is to live with depth in a world that tries to keep you shallow. It’s refusing to reduce life to productivity or logic. It’s the ache to touch something real through breath, ritual, care, or connection. Who needs spirituality? Honestly, anyone who’s been broken and still wants to heal, anyone who’s tasted joy and wants to keep it sacred, anyone living under systems designed to crush the soul and needs more than survival to stay whole, and anyone who feels pulled toward something vast and rooted, both ancient and present.

In a world ruled by greed, white supremacy culture, and doublespeak, spirituality isn’t just a nice extra. It’s a resistance, a counter-spell, a way to come back to what’s real. But not just any spirituality will do. We need one that’s liberatory, embodied, and decolonial; one that can evolve, tell the truth, center the oppressed, and bring sacredness back to everyday life. It isn’t about escaping or performing. It’s about coherence, healing, power, and action. In short, anyone who still wants to live fully and be free needs it.

How Integral Theory and AQAL Help Us Make Sense of It All

Now, to really hold the complexity of spirituality and liberation, it helps to have a map. That’s where Integral Theory comes in. Developed by Ken Wilber, Integral Theory is a way of seeing the world that tries to include every aspect of reality. From our inner lives, our actions, our relationships, our cultures, and the systems we live in. It’s about not leaving anything out.

The primary tool here is the AQAL model, which stands for “All Quadrants, All Levels.” Imagine AQAL as a four-way mirror that lets you see every angle of reality. There’s your inner world (your thoughts, feelings, and intentions). There’s your outer world (your actions and behaviors that others can see). There’s the shared inner world (our collective values, cultures, and relationships). And finally, there’s the shared outer world (the systems, institutions, and structures we all live within). If you are familiar with "holistic wellbeing", that's basically the same complete picture perspective that AQAL is engaging in.

Integral Theory also recognizes that we develop through different levels of complexity and awareness, as individuals and as societies. We grow in various areas (emotionally, morally, spiritually, for example), and sometimes unevenly. Plus, we experience different states of consciousness, from everyday awareness to profound meditative or mystical experiences, and we all have different styles or types that color how we see and engage with the world.

AQAL helps us see that spirituality isn’t just a private feeling or a set of beliefs. It’s something that touches every part of our lives, from our bodies to our communities, from our inner healing to our work in the world. It reminds us that fundamental transformation happens when we connect all these layers, not just one.

What Is Embodied Liberation Dharma (ELD)?

Most spiritual systems crack when they try to hold too much. They break under the weight of complexity, contradict themselves, or freeze into dogma. Others fade away into vague vibes with no real center. ELD was never meant to be brittle or closed. It’s alive, breathing, and self-correcting. It’s designed to work with tension, not run from it. It grows and evolves instead of hardening or collapsing.

I’ve learned from many traditions and ideas, including Hoodoo, Hinduism, Thomasine Gnosticism, Ubuntu, Buddhism, ancestral herbalism, trauma science, Black Liberation Theology, decolonial philosophy, ancestral veneration, and more. On the surface, some of these might seem to contradict each other, but only if you expect them all to do the same thing or speak the same language. ELD doesn’t ask you to agree with everything. It asks better questions: What frees us? What heals? What helps us become whole across time, body, spirit, and community?

Pluriversal, Not Syncretic or Eclectic

I don’t try to flatten traditions into one-size-fits-all truths, collect rituals just for fun, or pretend that different metaphysics secretly agree. I treat spiritual systems like maps, each offering a different way to find liberation. Hoodoo (and those 'romanticize your life' girlies) teaches me how to protect and enchant the material world. Gnostic texts help me see through illusions and find the divine spark. Ubuntu reminds me that identity is communal and healing is never solo. Buddhism guides me to let go of craving and find stillness. These teachings don’t merge into one, they talk to each other. ELD is born from that conversation.

Just like our bodies have different systems that work together, these traditions offer distinct but complementary wisdom. ELD isn’t just about collecting ideas or blending everything into a blur. It’s about conscious and careful filtering. If something doesn’t help me live with more truth, love, power, and coherence, it doesn’t stay.

Belief Systems and Why Saying “This is not a belief system” Is Tricky

Even though ELD rejects dogma, it’s still a kind of belief system, just more flexible. The values of liberation, coherence, and honesty, shape how I experience and respond to reality. Saying "This is not a belief system” can be a kind of trap, as if I or you can every be above belief (we can't). Embodied practices can carry ideology, mainly if they’re sold as a cure for modern alienation. But ELD doesn’t claim to escape belief. It refuses to treat belief as ownership or dogma. It’s more like a living rhythm that asks for integrity, not agreement. Belief is static, but ELD is constantly adapting toward liberation. If that looks like a belief system, so be it. But it grows with truth, not against it.

Tensions Are Good, Contradictions Are Not

Contradictions break systems, but tensions help them grow. ELD holds the tension between Gnosticism’s suspicion of the material world and Hoodoo’s love for it. I don’t see the material world as evil, just flawed, but also beautiful and sacred. Hoodoo helps bring that magic back. We don’t need these traditions to agree on every point, we need them to help us live fully and coherently. I also hold tension between Buddhist ideas of no-self and Hinduism's Atman, between healing trauma inside and resisting oppression outside, between silence and spellwork. These aren’t bugs, they’re features. Your capacity to hold, embody, and understand a large number of these intricate tensions is a sign of deep psychological maturity.

How I Know What Fits

To keep things honest, I have my way of checking if a teaching tool fits. It has to feel real in my body and experience. It has to make sense for both individuals and communities, for inner and outer life. It needs to reduce oppression, heal trauma, and grow freedom. And it has to be able to coexist with my ancestors, my community, the land, and my body. If it fails at any of these, I let it go, no matter how beautiful or sacred it might seem. Everything is experientially tested and thought through. Everything serves liberation in every sense of the word, starting with the margins, as the highest telos or value.

ELD as a Decolonial Integral System

ELD builds on some of the strengths of Integral Theory, like multidimensional coherence, but leaves behind the colonial baggage. It rejects hierarchies, guru worship, and abstract vertical models. It centers the body, the land, the ancestors, and the oppressed. It asks, “Who got left behind?” instead of “Who’s more evolved?” Ken Wilber opened the door, but ELD walked through it barefoot, carrying medicine. ELD rejects the epistemicidal (erasing of systems of knowledge) belief that some ancestral or indigenous worldviews were "less evolved" and that they will eventually inevitably somehow become "capitalist" as if that's an inevitable universal stage and not just Eurocentric people once again projecting their Yurugu culture (a colonizing, anti-relational way of being, popularized initially by Europeans, and eventually spread globally), onto everyone else onto everyone else and framing it as "more evolved".

What Late-Stage Religion Looks Like

Late-stage religion looks like a system with a holy text that never changes, only gets twisted. It has a priestly class that can’t be questioned without punishment or gaslighting. It uses the language of love to hide control and shame. Revelation is frozen in time, and new insights aren’t welcome unless they fit the canon. Marginalized people are tolerated as symbols but kept away from real power. Rituals become empty performances, done out of fear or obligation. The system can’t grieve or correct itself; harm gets spun as a “test of faith.” Spirituality gets reduced to rules about dress, sex, and attendance, instead of depth. The system becomes obsessed with defending itself instead of transforming. Sacredness gives way to bureaucracy and legalism. The young, the queer, the questioning, and the visionary leave, and the system blames “the culture.” There’s no unmediated intimacy with the Divine. Protecting the system matters more than protecting people. Emotional repression is spiritualized. Dissent is demonized. Liberation is taboo. Authority is hoarded. The map replaces the territory. Scarcity is made sacred. Trauma is denied or glorified. Secrecy is confused with sanctity. The Divine becomes just a mascot for the institution. Healing is replaced by hierarchy.

Late stage religions are called that because they are at a stage where a decent amount of people have caught on to the obvious BS and the CREDs (Credibility Enhancing Displays....so things you do to show you actually believe what you believe ex. feeding the poor) are diminishing.

Why ELD Doesn’t Collapse

Most systems fall apart because they try to erase tension, force everyone to be the same, or cling to purity. ELD doesn’t. It doesn’t pretend to be timeless or universal. Every day it asks: Is this coherent? Is this liberating? Is this still alive? If not, it is let go. It is built like a forest, not a cathedral or a doctrine. It’s wild, self-pruning, and self-regenerating. It’s storm-tested, rooted, and sacred.

It doesn’t collapse. It evolves. And in a world desperate for certainty, ELD offers something better...a way of being that’s alive, healing, and constantly growing.

I am not telling you this so you will join ELD. I just want you to think about the beliefs and systems you trust. If you ask yourself a new question after reading this, then I have done my job.