So, you’re on the spiritual path and you feel like you’re getting somewhere, making progress, should you acknowledge that to fellow seekers or shut up and pretend you’re not aware of it?
I, personally, feel like there are pitfalls on both sides of the fence and being aware of them is important.
On the side of staying humble and diminishing one’s spiritual growth either to ourselves internally or externally as well, what can happen is that we disown some or all of our positive qualities onto some external figure. This might be a guru, a teacher or anybody else that we look up to or admire.
This can be a pitfall because we can end up feeling barren, empty, like we’re stuck or going nowhere on the path. We fail to recognise the significant progress we’ve made since we started the spiritual search in terms of becoming more present, becoming more open, becoming more accepting of life or of being more aware.
These positive qualities get shadowed out. That is, we can’t see them in ourselves at all. Even if someone were to point them out in us, we would disagree with them and say that they weren’t seeing clearly.
They become unconscious to us in the same way our anger and hatred can become unconscious to us because we don’t WANT to see them.
So, in that scenario, we aren’t in touch with reality.
We may have made significant progress, but don’t know that.
In addition to that, what often happens is that we become dependent on some external figure for “the presence” let’s say. We feel like they have it all and there is nothing in us of value and, therefore, we HAVE to stay with that teacher in order to get access to the goodies. Rather than a healthy mentor relationship where you develop your independence and self-trust in a spiritual sense, you are in a co-dependent relationship with someone that you see as further ahead and that just doesn’t work in the long run. You will never develop the qualities necessary to stand on your own two feet awake and alive while that process is playing out inside of you.
However, having said that, this doesn’t mean that the answer is then to just toot our own horn and tell everyone we meet how advanced we are.
There are pitfalls on that side of the equation too. Developing a false sense of pride or a false arrogance are just are destructive on the path to awakening. The spiritual ego can hide as an insidious near enemy to genuine spiritual attainment. (If you’re not familiar with the term “near enemy” here’s a brief article that will give you an idea of what it means: https://centerformsc.org/blogs/blog/the-near-and-far-enemies-of-fierce-compassion)
The spiritual ego can give us a false sense of value, or worth, or being better than others, but it often propping itself up on falsehoods and half truths.
So, in order to avoid developing a spiritual “pong”, in other words buying your own bullshit, it’s wise to be really, acutely discerning about where we actual are on our path of self unfoldment.
One way we can do this is by having a teacher or peers who are willing to call us out on our crap. Another way is to have impeccable internal integrity. In order words, to have ruthless honesty with yourself inside your own mind. But that takes a lot of skill and practice to develop.
I wish you luck on your journey! 🙏❤️