Beware the spiritual invertebrate.

Biologically, the image is clear: spineless, formless, drifting through an ocean.

The human version? Folks with lofty talk, professed revelations of oneness, but no skin in the game.

Celebrating ideals isn’t useless. It matters to articulate the unity of mankind, the equality of all people, the dream of a harmonious, peaceful world.

But spirituality becomes hollow when it’s masqueraded. When it’s reduced to cocktail-party talk about saving the planet, or to networking at psychedelic gatherings for the wealthy. Call it what it is. If it’s networking, fine — it’s the new golf. Just don’t pretend it’s saving the world.

That’s the problem with the invertebrate: they may have glimpsed something — through meditation, a psychedelic journey, or a religious experience — but seeing and feeling aren’t the same as living it.

We confuse the two. Just as feeling love isn’t love. Saying “I love you” doesn’t make it true unless it travels through action — support, service, sacrifice.

Spirituality is the same. It must manifest through a vessel: into service, into reducing suffering, into something beyond feelings and words.

Otherwise, it’s fragile. When belief becomes inconvenient, or even dangerous — when it costs you status, freedom, or safety — a spineless spirituality collapses.

The challenge, then, is evolution. To grow a spine. To alchemize feelings into form, ideals into sacrifice, vision into action.

We may all start out as spiritual invertebrates. But the task is to become something more — to stand for values when it costs us, to meet the material world with spiritual ideals.

Only then does spirituality take shape. Only then does it endure.