The Magician card from the Rider Waite Smith tarot deck. Published by US Games

There's a trap in spiritual work. And the more sincere you are the more likely you are to fall into it. It’s called ego. No. I know what you’re thinking. It’s not that. It’s not spiritual pride although that is part of it. It’s something even more subtle.

It goes like this…

You realize you’ve been living and reacting to life on autopilot. You begin to wonder who you actually are. Conditioned patterns, knee jerk reactions and dulled senses start to become more obvious to you. You want something more genuine, more conscious, more free, more real. 

So you start working on yourself.

And that's exactly where the trap springs.

At first there’s a tremendous sense of exhilaration with new discoveries. You want to shout it out to the world! But then, imperceptibly, without your noticing, a kind of grim determination to get somewhere creeps in.

Without you realizing it, ego has snuck back in and taken over the wheel. It’s a subtle maneuver and very tricky to recognize because ego is as close as the thoughts in your head.

The ego has now appointed itself as the instrument of its own liberation

And it pursues that project with great sincerity and considerable effort. Practices, methods, systems, protocols. Trying to engineer its way to freedom.

Valentin Tomberg, one of the most profound “Christian-Hermetic” thinkers of the 20th century, had a precise name for this orientation. He called it Ahrimanic. Mechanical in its structure despite its spiritual vocabulary. The human being treated as a machine to be upgraded rather than a soul to be loved into transformation.

You can see this operating in obvious places. The biohacking world with its cold plunges and continuous glucose monitors and sleep optimization protocols. The body as a system to be upgraded through increasingly sophisticated interventions. Impressive engineering. But engineering nonetheless.

Note: I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with these practices in and of themselves. Being a good steward of the vehicle is important. The problem is when the practice becomes an end in itself and the engineer never stops long enough to ask who's doing the engineering.

But it shows up in subtler places too. Certain meditation traditions that are essentially about building a better meditator. Self-inquiry practices where the “me” is trying very hard to see through the “me.” Even the Law of Attraction at its most reductive can become “I just need to think the right thoughts and align my vibration correctly and the universe will deliver.” The ego back in charge, now wearing spiritual clothing.

Another issue that can crop up even when a certain practice has been very effective at keeping the ego in the passenger seat is the mind’s defenses.

The mind will reach a point where a certain meditation, prayer or inquiry will no longer yield the same inspired result because it starts to put up a resistance. The senses have become dulled in this regard.

The philosopher and spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti saw this with great clarity. Any method you adopt to free yourself becomes another layer of conditioning. The one who is trying to become free is itself part of the problem.

So what's the alternative?

Let's say you’re triggered with anger. When that happens, you want to be angry. You have a story saying you’re justified to feel angry. Whether that story is true or not is irrelevant for this discussion.

But when you feel that fire of anger, there must be something within you that is aware enough to remember that you don’t need to react out of that feeling. 

You can take a pause.

This awareness is Beingness itself that reminds you to take a pause. To breathe. To put space around things.

Not the ego trying to be better. Not a self working on itself. Awareness recognizing what it actually is and in that recognition the contraction releases.

That's the open circuit. Something initiates the movement from outside the closed loop of the ego improving itself.

The Other Side of the Coin

The more you react out of that feeling of anger (or contracted state), the more you’re conditioning yourself to do so. 

Important: this does not mean to judge yourself or use perfection as a whip! This also is not to deny some things take some time to process. Just don’t get lost there.

This is the ultimate answer to the age-old question of freewill. Our state of mind is one of the few things under our control. Hint: just like The Devil card in Tarot illustrates, you’re not really ever trapped. Getting free is a choice. The chains are an illusion.

The Devil from Tarot Illuminati by Eric C. Dunne. Published by Lo Scarabeo

That said, it’s not always easy! It takes a life time to learn all of ego’s tricks and not fall for them.

But what else is there to do? This is the meaning you’ve been looking for.

Closing Takeaway

The ego is subtle and tricky even when you make progress in recognizing it.

It takes real honesty and passion to see through its defenses. Especially when they’re “spiritual.”

But don’t worry. If you don’t see through them, Life will make sure to point them out for you when you’re ready.

The Magician in the RWS tradition points up and down simultaneously illustrating as above, so below. That's the open circuit made visible.

 “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” -Rainer Maria Rilke

If this is the territory you're navigating and you'd like to work with it directly, Presence Sessions are for exactly that.