The Greatest Mistake that Most of Us Commit on the Spiritual Path By Craig Hamilton

Many of us are currently immersed in a great personal spiritual work. We meditate, we pray, we attend workshops, seminars and retreats, and yet most of us make the same mistake; We tend to give too much importance to the need to solve our psychological issues as part of our spiritual path.

It is important to recognize that it is not our fault, this tendency originated in the psychotherapeutic culture that basically told us that we were a mess as a result of our childhood and that we have internal wounds. that they need to heal themselves in order to become fulfilled and happy adults. As the great enlightenment teachings have been imported into the West, this generalized psychotherapeutic view has gradually overlapped in the spiritual path.

The way in which this manifests itself in a practical way is the following: let's say that I take a serious spiritual practice and I realize during that practice that I am defensive against life and intimacy; I do not let other people know me, I always wear a social mask that what is really hidden is a lot of insecurity. Well, upon discovering this as a modern person informed about psychology, my tendency will be to retreat into my interior, go to my past, begin to unblock the depths of my psyche to try to find and take out the personal causes of this fear and insecurity and this tendency to hide from life

But in an authentically spiritual context, we would emphasize that this "personal problem" that you have discovered is in fact one of the most basic and normal manifestations of the ego; and more than sending you to an endless and meaningless archeological excavation of your psyche, we would simply encourage you to face the Truth of what you are seeing, clearly see the psychological tendency and the motivations that direct it in the present. And most importantly, we would encourage you to make a direct effort in the opposite direction to your usual response. So in a situation where you feel you are preparing to put on a good face, we would encourage you to make a terrifying leap and be transparent and vulnerable

When reading this, many psychology experts will protest, ensuring that if it were so easy to change, everyone would have already changed and there would be no need for ... well ... psychotherapy, and this answer is perfectly reasonable from someone who has not had experience in the kind of spiritual practice that I am describing.

But what happens when we let go of this compulsion to solve our problems and instead begin to work on the path of active transformation like the one I encourage to do, is that we suddenly realize that we have access to a part of us that is already free of the limitations and issues of our ego. It is a part of us that has never been hurt or traumatized, that does not need to be healed and that is already whole and complete and that has access to unlimited energy, creativity and positivity and that is already completely ready to participate in life boldly, with passion without retaining anything; and that is how we feel instantly connected to the heart of the spiritual force found in the Cosmos.

Miraculously, what we find in doing this work is that when people wake up and begin to act from this part of the deepest and most true being, all the psychological issues, blockages, wounds, complexes and neuroses that would have taken years to resolve, suddenly they seem to dissolve. They have not really dissolved, they can be reactivated if we return to the old perspective of the ego, but in the light of this newly discovered and higher potential, and the deep feeling of purpose and meaning that accompany it, we discover a powerful reason for not fall back prisoners of the "affairs". In other words, we are no longer interested and that is why they have lost power over our psyche, and that changes things completely. We begin to discover the real meaning of being free from our ego, and we learn that this freedom is not something we have to wait for, it can happen now, if we are willing to put our heart and soul into it.

TRANSLATED BY MARGA

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