Ego traps

[Geoff-Allen]

As always I was in doubt as to where to post this ...

These traps are something I need to be very mindful of.

The ego is very cunning and like to hijack my practice and feel all "superior" to people who don't appear to be very spiritual!

Here's the full list -

All the best!

 

[ameyAtmA]

Namaste

I very much doubt that someone engaged in "spiritual" practices, activities, habits or thought process - as mentioned above, would be judging others that don't. They are too engrossed in the "spiritual" to care

The only point at which I would express my opinion is when I am asked, and especially if it can possibly help someone open the door to spirituality (door to one's own heart) which they had closed.

 

[Geoff-Allen]

Namaste

I very much doubt that someone engaged in "spiritual" practices, activities, habits or thought process - as mentioned above, would be judging others that don't. They are too engrossed in the "spiritual" to care

The only point at which I would express my opinion is when I am asked, and especially if it can possibly help someone open the door to spirituality (door to one's own heart) which they had closed.

Thanks for the feed-back.

I can't possibly speak about everyone who regards their lifestyle as "spiritual" but I have gone through many stages of feeling that if only the rest of the world would think and behave like me there would be no problems

I used to be very evangelical about such matters.

So that is a trap I need to be very wary about personally

Nowadays I just offer my point of view if anyone asks for it and I realise that I am a LONG way from being "enlightened"! So are most of us ...

Cheers!

 

[Geoff-Allen]

11 Traps Sabotaging Your Spiritual Growth

As we progressively advance on our paths, our spiritual essence begins to blossom like a luminous flower deep in our heart. And the more we clear away the dead, gnarled and overgrown beliefs, perspectives, and emotional baggage within us, the more clearly we feel our divine essence. When we maintain our inner garden, we feel more and more love, wisdom, peace, and wholeness as our True Nature is revealed slowly to us.

Yet, like any garden, our metaphorical inner landscapes can be consumed by weeds, plagues, and forms of pollution that strangle anything beautiful we have been nurturing. Sometimes, we even sabotage the growth occurring within us ourselves, without knowing it.

Full atricle here -

11 Traps Sabotaging Your Spiritual Growth ⋆ LonerWolf

Enjoy your day!

 

[Geoff-Allen]

Here is another site you may find interesting and/or useful ...

Transcending Human Madness – Steve Taylor

Cheers!

 

[Geoff-Allen]

More spiritual traps - also called by-passing? -

Spiritual bypassing, a term coined in the early 1980s by psychologist John Welwood, refers to the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing
 with uncomfortable feelings, unresolved wounds, and fundamental emotional and psychological needs. The concept was developed in the spirit of Chögyam Trungpa’s Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, which was one of the first attempts to name this spiritual distortion.

According to teacher and author Robert Augustus Masters, spiritual bypassing causes us to withdraw from ourselves and others, hiding behind a kind of spiritual veil of metaphysical beliefs and practices. He says it “not only distances us from our pain and difficult personal issues, but also from our own authentic spirituality, stranding us in a metaphysical limbo, a zone of exaggerated gentleness, niceness, and superficiality.”

Spiritual Bypassing: How Spirituality Sabotaged My Growth

 

[Geoff-Allen]

Avoiding self sabotage - from this site -

I started to panic, because at least it paid the bills and the thought of financial uncertainty terrified me.

But here’s where my own missteps came in: As I started to assemble a resume, apply for new jobs, desperately hoping I would find employment soon, a voice in the back of my head get chiming in.

I’ll feel so much better once I get that job interview!

I know everything will be okay once I get the job offer.

I will be happy again once I am in a new job.

Once I get that first paycheck, I know I’ll smile and feel better about everything.

Do you see the dangerous pattern going on here?

Read the full article here -

How to Stop Sabotaging Your Own Happiness

All the best!

 

[Geoff-Allen]

This article delves into positive psychology and the awakening experience has not been terribly well researched ... may NOT be entirely on-topic but I a little voice told me to post it ...

A few years ago, on holiday with my family in Wales, I decided to explore the farmland around our rented bungalow. I climbed over a gate and found myself looking down at a valley, with farmers’ fields sloping as far as I could see. Hundreds of sheep dotted the hills. After I’d been walking for a few minutes, looking at the fields and the sky, there was a shift in my perception, as if a switch had been pressed. Everything around me became intensely real. The fields and the bushes and trees and the clouds seemed to be powerfully there,
as if an extra dimension had been added to them. They seemed more vivid, more intricate and beautiful. I also felt somehow connected with my surroundings. As I looked up at the sky, I felt somehow the space that fills it was the same ‘space’ filling my own being. What was inside me, as my own consciousness, was also ‘out there’. Inside me, there was a glow of intense wellbeing.

This is a fairly typical example of an ‘awakening experience’ – a temporary expansion and intensification of awareness that brings significant perceptual, affective and conceptual changes. As a psychologist, I have been studying such experiences for a decade. In this article I will discuss some of that research, explaining the characteristics and after-effects of these experiences. Most importantly, I will explain why they are so significant, and why psychology needs to pay more attention to them.

More at this site -

An awakening | The Psychologist

 

[Geoff-Allen]

Wake up world is another site you might try - here's a little taste -

The Ego wants to possess more and more, wants to become more and more powerful. More knowledge, more faith, more material wealth. The Ego wants to devour more and wants to do it more anxiously. That is how the Ego becomes a tyrant and dominates our life to an increasing extent.

24 Powerful Keys to Transcend the Ego

All the best!

 

[Geoff-Allen]

Utopia is a goal, never an end. When I walk two steps, the goal moves two steps further into the horizon. What is the goal for? It’s a reminder to keep moving, to keep going. Don’t stop, because the goal is constantly moving further and further away. Indeed, the journey truly is the thing.

Keep stretching your comfort zone until it becomes the world then keep stretching it until it becomes the universe, and then keep going. Never stop.

Full article is here -

6 Steps to Transforming Ego into Soul

Enjoy!

 

[Geoff-Allen]

Stop for a minute and think about how your spiritual journey started, and what motivated you to stay on it. What may have began as a spontaneous awakening, an interest in the secrets of the universe, or in personal development perhaps turned into something that we began using as a means of attempting to “get what we want” out of life, or even as a guidepost to judge our emotional evolution.

It’s almost certain that at some point in our process (or most likely repeatedly), the spiritual journey stopped being something that you were experiencing and/or observing and sneakily became something you began trying to control.

It is actually quite common for our ego to take any new hobby or topic of interest that we may have been inspired to learn more about and use it as its new hiding place, and as a means of furthering its own agenda.

Comes from this page -

How Ego Turns Your Spiritual Process into Manipulation

 

[Geoff-Allen]

Found yet more ...

When you fail to connect to your Soul Identity and ignore its guidance you will allow your Ego to fully dictate your destiny.

The Ego is a very important part of who you are but it’s not the totality of who you are. You are not meant to live your entire life making decisions based only on your Ego consciousness.

In ancient times when the DNA was working properly people would start to access and integrate their Soul Identity and Superconscious mind by the age of 12. And by the age of 22 the person would have fully embodied their Soul Identity.

That’s right, by the age of 22 you were supposed to know exactly what your soul purpose is, why you incarnated on Earth and what you needed to do to fulfill your mission.

Read more at this site -

Soul Matrix Guidance - How To Fulfill Your Soul Purpose

All the best!

 

[Geoff-Allen]

Why is the ego so hard to explain or describe? The ego is difficult to define because the ego isn’t one specific thing. It is actually made up of many different beliefs that a person acquires over their life. Those beliefs can be diverse and even contradictory. To further complicate it, each person’s ego is different. If someone were to clearly identify and describe all the parts of their ego and what it drives them to do, you might not get a good description of what yours looked like. The challenge of becoming aware of what your personal ego looks like becomes more difficult because our culture doesn’t reward us for directing our attention inward and noticing such things.

What is the Ego? | Happiness

All the best!

 

[Geoff-Allen]

The ego is the main obstacle to human awakening. It does not matter how much you experience and appreciate being present, until you come into right relationship with the ego, you will not truly awaken. This is an essential step towards mastery of the mind and ego. Leonard has a unique and gifted ability to engage with your ego in a way that leads to the ego's relaxation and surrender. It is truly amazing to watch Leonard work with someone's ego. Just to witness this can transform your relationship with your own ego.

More at this site -

About Leonard Jacobson

All the best!

 

[Geoff-Allen]

An ego death is the mental and emotional equivalent of having stomach flu, food poisoning, or gastrointestinal difficulties, where your body suddenly goes into massive amounts of pain, usually followed by a lot of throwing up, your tummy working, heartburn, pain and cramps. There’s a reason this happens: some sort of toxin, poison, bug, virus or other irritant has been identified in the system, and the system goes into overdrive to flush that irritant out.

When we release on the physical level, by going to the loo, sweating, throwing up, we feel weak, tired, sweaty and shaky. We can’t focus on anything else but the physical pain and symptoms that are wracking our body. Similarly, when we have thoughts and emotion that are causing us extreme pain, we have to face and question the thoughts pass through our minds, and the emotions through our hearts that are causing the suffering. We feel weak, tired, sweaty and shaky. We can’t focus on anything else but the psychic pain and symptoms that are wracking us.

More details here -

The Sublime Value Of ‘Ego Deaths’

All the best!

 

[FooYang]

An ego death is the mental and emotional equivalent of having stomach flu, food poisoning, or gastrointestinal difficulties, where your body suddenly goes into massive amounts of pain, usually followed by a lot of throwing up, your tummy working, heartburn, pain and cramps. There’s a reason this happens: some sort of toxin, poison, bug, virus or other irritant has been identified in the system, and the system goes into overdrive to flush that irritant out.

When we release on the physical level, by going to the loo, sweating, throwing up, we feel weak, tired, sweaty and shaky. We can’t focus on anything else but the physical pain and symptoms that are wracking our body. Similarly, when we have thoughts and emotion that are causing us extreme pain, we have to face and question the thoughts pass through our minds, and the emotions through our hearts that are causing the suffering. We feel weak, tired, sweaty and shaky. We can’t focus on anything else but the psychic pain and symptoms that are wracking us.

More details here -

The Sublime Value Of ‘Ego Deaths’

All the best!

Ego death is pretty much the state where all self-identification is put in a blender and you are made to swallow it. It is not at all pleasant but it is sure as hell profound.
However it's not quite 'enlightenment' or 'gnosis', it's the bridge before those things. In Christian mysticism it's known as the 'dark night of the soul' (and other terms), in Islam it's known as Fana, in Buddhism it's the experience of Sunyata, in Hinduism also has different names for it (particularly through Tantric traditions like Saivism or Shakta).

But in the 20th/21st century taking some drugs will do just fine though, right?

 

[Geoff-Allen]

Found another ego article that may interest you -

https://zenfulspirit.com/2015/10/08/10-ego-traps-to-avoid-if-you-want-to-be-happy/

 

[Howard Is]

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism - Wikipedia

Highly recommended.

 

[Geoff-Allen]

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism - Wikipedia

View attachment 32233

Highly recommended.

Thanks for the tip!

I have heard a bit about that teacher & his book ...

Cheers!

 

[Geoff-Allen]

How can we escape the ego prison through meditation?

Initially most people choose to meditate out of curiosity or to relieve psychological pain, increase pleasure, or enhance power. The goal of all these motives is to strengthen the ego. For as the ego gets more comfortable, happy, and powerful, its prison walls thicken. The ego’s motives do not allow examination of the ego itself, nor allow insight that the ego is your prison. These motives paradoxically contain the seeds of freedom, because they lead you to meditate more. Meditation makes you more calm and quiet, and in this new stillness other motives, deeper motives, arise for going further into meditation. As your meditation develops beyond the level of ego payoffs, the prison walls begin to crack.

https://www.ramdass.org/escape-ego-prison-through-meditation/