The Architecture of Silence in Spiritual Culture: Gabor Maté, Bayo Akomolafe, Pat McCabe, Tara Brach, V & Matthew Remski
About this episode
A discussion on the architecture of silence in spiritual culture and its implications for abuse and power dynamics.
Recorded live at a SAND Community Gathering (March 2026). Something is cracking open in the spiritual and wellness world; and it has been for a while. Have wisdom traditions containing genuine gifts been composted into a product that only serves the very forces those traditions were born to resist? It is no news that some powerful spiritual leaders with devoted followers have, for a long time, abused that power for dominance and, in many cases, for sexual exploitation. The Epstein files are not an interruption to the pattern; they are the pattern, made suddenly impossible to scroll past. We want to reflect on the conditions—not just the men, not just the crimes, but the architecture of silence that held it all in place. What kind of spiritual culture produces that silence? What kind of spiritual culture makes it possible to look at harm and call it a lesson in perception? What has gone awry with our approach to spirituality when the latter can be used as a cover for abuse? How come much of the therapeutic and spiritual communities remain silent in the face of crimes witnessed by the entire world? To explore these and related issues, this discussion brought together mytho-poetic…
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