The Spiritual Ego

A common pitfall for many of us in the beginning of spiritual practice, and even well along the way, is to fall into the trap of spiritual identity. We give birth to a new kind of ego, a spiritual ego.

Sometimes, you can see this physically represented through the various adornments we wear to show the world our new identity — whether it’s beads, tattoos, the cross, certain clothes, or maybe we shave our head or change our name.

And to be clear, I think all these things can be useful. They can be reminders to practice, or they may even serve as simple tokens of gratitude to have found a new path in life, a path that brings more love, peace, and understanding to our being. Changing our name may help us to drop old, harmful patterns, giving us space to move into new, healthy patterns. I myself got a tattoo in Thailand after sitting a month-long meditation retreat. The artist was a local Buddhist who did traditional bamboo stick-and-poke tattoos. I hadn’t taken any pictures on that trip, and this person was filled with an extraordinary love — a fierce, strong, and protective love, like a mother — I thought it would be an excellent reminder of my time in Thailand.

But again, there’s a trap here. Spiritual life is not about gaining anything. It’s about letting go and letting be. It’s about directly witnessing the wisdom of emptiness — that is, the selfless, ever-changing, interconnected nature of existence or mind. It is recognizing that you are neither a small self nor a no-self but that you are the formless awake space of awareness or existence itself — the no-thing that knows and arises as all things, including the small self or all the pieces of your self, your body, and the world. It’s recognizing that you are not apart from me, that you are not apart from the rest of the world. It is recognizing that you are already whole, effortlessly aware, and always entirely at peace.

Much of the practice, then, is to decondition our attachment to the ego by directly examining the nature of mind, which we see is always changing, seamlessly interconnected, held together and composed of this wide-open, empty, spacious, and pervasive awareness. So, the project of becoming spiritual, of becoming a good meditator, or of identifying with a new set of beliefs (calling ourselves a Buddhist, say) is just more ego.

And in many ways, this spiritual ego is more harmful, dishonest, and insidious than our everyday ego. Where the everyday ego simply wants all the regular things — sensual pleasures, a high social status, money, beauty, a fancy job, car, and home — the spiritual ego often pretends to be impervious to such worldly pursuits but does so from its high horse.

This spiritual ego may start to judge people who don’t take an interest in spiritual life or put itself above those who have not done “the work.” It may peacock its humility, demonstrating to the world how aware it is of its flaws, though it is really saying “look at me, I am much more aware of my flaws than you are aware of your own.”

So, the spiritual ego plays the same old game of self-aggrandizement while pretending it is above this game entirely. This dishonesty or delusion makes it much more difficult to move past the relative world of concepts, past the world of I, me, and mine, and into non-dual awareness, which includes our ego but is not confined or reduced to it.

The ego is incredibly clever and will use anything to fuel itself, including the meditative insights you gather through meditation. Once our concentration has increased with practice, for example, we can have intense experiences of peace and bliss. The chattering mind might even stop completely. The experience may be so “spiritual” that we begin to tell ourselves and others some story about our spiritual progress, about how we are a spiritual being now or how we have discovered answers to life’s big questions, we now know the Truth.

We see this a lot with psychedelics too. We have an experience and then put an entire story to it — we know why god put us here or what our calling is or how we’re ready to be a healer or teacher or whatever it may be. But again, all this is bullshit, it’s delusion. It is to fail to see the wisdom of emptiness — the selfless, ever-changing, interconnected nature of all things. It’s more ego.

Now, of course, I’m not saying it is wrong to want to become a healer or a teacher or to open to a new direction in life after some meditative or psychedelic experience. But these are just stories. And on the relative plane, on the level of concepts, there is no certainty, there’s no finality. There are only bold conjectures, there are only creations, conceptual Legos that we piece together to build imagined ideals and worlds. But This, whatever This ineffably is, can never be reduced to an idea or string of words and images. It’s always moving, flowing, changing. It’s without limit or border, completely undefined.

Stories are useful, of course. It’s stories that allow us to operate in and navigate through the world. But they’re just stories. And often we’re wrong about our stories. We may discover that tomorrow our stories will change. Many of us no longer want to be a firefighter or doctor or veterinarian, like we did when we were kids.

In Buddhism, clinging is identified as the source of all mental suffering. Clinging is to live in delusion; it is to live in opposition to the way the world is. It’s like trying to grab and hold onto a river. It’s impossible. To live with wisdom, however, is to come into harmony with nature, to align ourselves with reality, with its open, ever-changing, interconnected nature. To live with wisdom is to remain entirely open and free.

So, as you navigate spiritual circles, as you move through your practice, I invite you to stay aware of the trap of spiritual identity. Keep close those who can act as a safeguard against spiritual pride. And if you find that you have collapsed into this spiritual ego, no big deal. None of us is immune to it. Simply note that awareness has collapsed into this identity to emphasize your awareness of it, apologize if necessary, if you’ve belittled or offended anyone, and then once again open to your unbounded nature.

May you truly be at peace,

John Driggs | Meditation Teacher & Founder of The Space of Possibility Podcast, Blog, & Retreat Center | Explore & Expand the Space of Possibility that You are!