“Several years ago I lived and worked in South Africa for the whole summer. When I arrived, I could only think that I live in a country with the highest homicide rate in the world, where rape is common and more than half of the population is HIV-infected (men, women, gays, straight people - everything) …
In my work and travels, I have met hundreds of spiritual teachers and thousands of spiritual practitioners. I was amazed at how much our spiritual views, perspectives, and experiences are “infected” with “conceptual contagion,” which is a confused and immature attitude towards complex spiritual principles. It is invisible, but very insidious - just like sexually transmitted diseases. I have divided them into 10 categories. There is no need to turn them into diagnoses, I just want you to learn to distinguish between the most common spiritually transmitted diseases."
1. Spiritual fast food
When spirituality is mixed with a culture that values speed, multitasking, and immediate gratification, we get spiritual fast food. It is the result of a widespread and understandable fantasy that it is easy and quick to free oneself from suffering. However, it should be very clear to us that spiritual transformation cannot be achieved in a snap.
2. Artificial spirituality
Artificial spirituality is manifested in the fact that a person talks, dresses and acts as he imagines, this would be done by a spiritual person. This is a kind of imitation, much like a fabric with a leopard pattern imitates a genuine leopard fur pattern.
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3. Confused motivation
While our desire for growth is always genuine and pure, it is often confused with lower motives, including the desire to be loved, the desire for belonging, the desire to fill the inner void, the belief that the spiritual path will eliminate our suffering, and spiritual ambition - the desire to be special, the best. "One of a kind."
4. Identification with spiritual experience
In this case, the ego is identified with the spiritual experience and appropriates it to itself. We begin to believe that we are embodying the insight that once visited us. In most cases, this disease does not last. But in people who consider themselves enlightened and / or become spiritual teachers, it lingers for a long time.
5. Spiritualization of the ego
This disease occurs when the very structure of the egoic personality is deeply identified with spiritual ideas and concepts. The result is a "bulletproof" egoic structure. When the ego is spiritualized, we become immune to help, new information, or constructive feedback. We become impenetrable, our spiritual growth stops - all in the name of spirituality.
6. Mass production of spiritual teachers
There are several highly publicized spiritual traditions that continually produce people who consider themselves to be enlightened or masters, which is actually not the case at all. This is a kind of spiritual conveyor: here there is a little radiance, here we add insight, and - oh! - you are enlightened and ready to enlighten others in the same style. The problem is not how these teachers are taught, the problem is that they are presented as spiritual masters.
7. Spiritual pride
Spiritual pride arises when a practitioner, after years of strenuous effort, actually reaches a certain level of wisdom, and uses this achievement to justify not practicing further. The feeling of "spiritual superiority" is another symptom of this spiritually transmitted disease. It manifests itself as a subtle feeling that "I am better and wiser than the others, I am higher than them, because I am walking on the spiritual path."
8. Collective Consciousness
It is also called groupthink, cult psychology, or ashram disease. It is an insidious virus, very similar in many of its elements to traditional codependency. Spiritual group members make a subtle and unconscious agreement among themselves about how to think, speak, dress and act correctly. Individuals and groups infected with the "collective consciousness" reject other personalities, values and circumstances that do not conform to their unwritten rules.
9. Complex of the chosen
Unfortunately, the complex of the chosen one does not apply only to Jews. This is the belief that "our group is more spiritually developed, stronger and more enlightened, or, simply put, better than all other groups." There is a very important difference between the understanding that a person has found the right path for himself, a teacher or a community and the feeling that he has found the One.
10. Deadly virus "I got it"
This disease is extremely dangerous because it can be fatal to our spiritual evolution. It is the belief that "I have achieved" the goal of the spiritual path. As soon as it freezes in our psyche, our spiritual progress ends. Once we begin to believe that we have reached the end of the road, further growth is impossible.
based on Marianne Kaplen's book "Traps of Enlightenment"