We are so much more than our body, thoughts, feelings and our senses, and yet we tend to give them a great deal of importance. We look for fulfilment in areas that are comfortable to us rather than productive and supportive. When our focus is limited in this way it’s often accompanied by a preoccupation with things like carving out a career, paying bills, accumulating material goods, socialising and generally getting stuck in the mundane.

It’s not that our careers and social life are not important, but when these things dominate our lives at the expense of our spiritual wellbeing we often begin to feel a spiritual disconnect, to feel “spiritually toxic”. In these moments we forget that we are spiritual beings having a human experience rather than human beings having a spiritual experience.

“You can find some degree of gratification through the senses,” says John Barter, 46, a Buddhist psychologist and meditation teacher, “but it’s not sustainable and your senses don’t last — they are ageing. And what you’re seeking happiness from doesn’t last. It’s conditional and impermanent.

“The senses [become habituated] to that which you’re seeking happiness from. After a while you don’t even notice the nice music or pleasant view. It’s an endless, tireless process — and that’s where people get entrenched in the world. And then they get that toxic feeling of being fed up because they’ve just had too much.”

Feeling spiritually toxic is often coupled with lack of awareness. Kip Dooley, a 54-year-old flight attendant, says, “I didn’t realise I was spiritually disconnected at the time. It was only when I experienced a lot of pain in my personal life that I realised there was something really missing.”

It’s as though we’ve become caught up in a certain way of being and can often remain this way until something big happens to wake us up.

In Buddhism, disconnecting from our spirit is thought to happen when people get caught up in what Barter refers to as the first level of happiness — “happiness motivated by self, for self, ego-based happiness. It’s more a gratification as opposed to fulfilment. We get caught in this idea that if I buy that, go there, eat that, smoke that, drink that, I’ll be happy. If I push away what I don’t want, get more of what I don’t have, then I’m gonna be happy — and much of our society’s marketing is about that.

“It’s great for the market, but people end up feeling anxious, in distress, depressed.”

How does it feel?

In the eyes of children, nothing in the world is dead. Animals, trees, the sun and the moon all are alive and have emotions and feelings, but in the eyes of a stressed person even human beings are like robots or objects.

In spiritually baron times of her life, Glenda Kalyk, 53, felt “lost, empty, lonely and disconnected from the world”. Feeling spiritually toxic is commonly accompanied by feelings of emptiness, barrenness, joylessness, restlessness, purposelessness and a general lack of direction in life; a sense of “What’s the point?” The things that brought you happiness may suddenly occur as mundane and joyless. You don’t notice the beauty or miracles surrounding you and life can feel like a burden rather than a celebration.

How can you reconnect?

While a range of negative feelings come with feeling spiritually toxic, they are, however, just feelings. As long as our arm is part of our body we cannot be disconnected from it. Similarly, we can never be disconnected from our spirit; it is part of us. We are always spiritually connected because we are spirit, but the connection can and does get obscured.

Feeling spiritually connected, we feel well and whole. When we have awareness we are automatically connected. Moving away from this sense of disconnect or spiritual toxicity is not a matter of detoxifying our spirit. Our spirit is ever pure; it’s just a matter of clearing the debris which obscures our connection to our spirit and becoming aware of that connection.

Spiritual detoxification can be achieved through spiritual practices. These practices clear away the debris enough to stop us being so concerned with the day-to-day minutia and awaken us to our spiritual connection and who we really are. They have us feel more spirited, happy, compassionate and loving and include practices like meditation, breathing techniques, yoga, prayer and chanting or singing.

“It’s so easy to get caught in the stress of contemporary life, the busy-ness, feeling overwhelmed,” says Barter. “So that’s where we need to engage some healthy awareness and healthy practices — otherwise we’re going to end up burning out, both psychologically and physically.”