The New Age fallacy claims (hopes) that spirituality does not need sacrifice at its core: that I can have the best of all worlds. In fact, it assumes that this is my birthright as a white middle-class Westerner. But an important, indeed vital, component of humility is the appreciation that my privileged state of well-educated affluence depends upon other people, somewhere on the planet, being kept in poverty and misery. With this realisation comes a determination to make the most of my advantages, and use every spare moment on my spiritual work.