Spiritual Ego and How to Tame It

Do you feel a deep inner resistance when reading the title of this article? Our ego wants to remain hidden because once it is revealed to us, it can no longer survive. The following words act as great beams of bright light that uncover the dustiest parts of our subconscious mind. Projecting light onto these shadows awakens an awareness that once realised, is truly irreversible. 

What is Spiritual Ego?

During awakening, we come to intellectualise exceptional spiritual concepts of a boundless existence and an interconnectedness with all that is. Upon such revelations, the ego very rarely vanishes in an instant, rather we begin a process of disidentification. We once identified solely with our name, occupation, looks and so on, whereas we now start to identify with ‘immortal spiritual being’. All the while, the ego is looking for its survival mechanism and we inevitably fall into its traps. 

If we fail to remain alert and aware of the conniving nature of the ego, we may develop a new conceptual identity and self-image. As the ego creeps in through the back door, we may form an underlying superiority complex. Being totally unaware of our newly forming identity, it gradually grows and strengthens. 

Remaining observant of our ego and being honest with ourselves on our spiritual journey is crucial. Awareness itself is all that is truly needed to shrink the spiritual ego for it cannot survive in the light of our consciousness. 

Examples of Common Spiritual Ego Traps

1. We judge others for things that we once did ourselves or things that we feel are not ‘spiritual’ in our eyes. This creates an increased notion of right or wrong according to a new set of beliefs that we have personally adopted in the name of ‘spirituality’.

2. We use excessive positivity to live up to a false notion that to be ‘spiritual’ means to be constantly happy and to be flawlessly flowing through all experiences. Subsequently, we wear a mask, hiding our truth and resisting reality.

3. We compare our journey to others on a similar path, believing that we are more or less ‘spiritually evolved’ than them in our eyes. In doing so we create an imaginary spiritual hierarchy. 

4. We can think it is our job to save the world and help everyone that crosses our path. This creates an impossible task and an ever-increasing ‘messiah complex’. 

5. We are fixed, rigid and dogmatic with our beliefs, often defending our mental position. In doing so we restrict ourselves from being open to alternative concepts and run the risk of becoming a ‘know it all’. Ultimately we become stagnant in our expansion.

6. We often boast about and outwardly express our moral values, settling into a moral high ground based on our spiritual beliefs. We try to appear ‘good’ and make others ‘bad’.

7. We constantly find ourselves giving unasked advice to feel empowered through ‘helping’ people. We find that instead, we push our knowledge and opinion onto others.

The Superiority Complex 

Spiritual awakening whilst in physical form is nothing short of profound. We suddenly find ourselves thrust onto a spectacular journey of discovery. We uncover universal laws and a myriad of intellectual understandings that can often feel like opening a box of treasured secrets. 

As we peel back the layers of social conditioning, we begin an adventure of ever-increasing clarity. Our new vision brings with it new perspectives of not only the way that reality works but how we view our place in this reality. 

If we lose sight of our ego we can easily develop an underlying superiority complex that, if left unrecognised, can mutate into a rather troublesome egoic identity. Even if we are not conscious of this, the souls we interact with can sense this underlying identity and we can cause them to feel ‘small’ or less enabled. 

In truth, we may have chosen to awaken specialised spiritual gifts in this lifetime and we may have a clearer perspective of the ‘earth game’; yet we are still an ordinary human like everyone else. 

What is extraordinary, is what we can channel through our physical form. Although the essence that is moving through us is what every one of us is, we share this divinity with everyone around us. As awaken ones we are not superior, we are simply surrendered vehicles allowing the grace of divine to flow through us. 

How can we ‘shrink’ our spiritual ego and stay humbled?

If we uncover (and are willing to admit to) a deep seated superiority complex within us, we have already accomplished much of the work by exposing the subconscious ego identity.

In order to keep tabs on our spiritual ego, it is important to prevent over intellectualizing spirituality. It may be quite easy to fill our mind with an abundance of knowledge that forms into new ideas and beliefs, however relying on our intellect alone may result in a wild and uncontrolled emerging spiritual ego. 

Our spiritual beliefs and ideas can rarely dislodge core concepts of who we think we are because our human mind has been conditioned to think in a certain way. For this reason, we must seek to know thyself beyond the thinking mind. 

In this way we prevent ‘talking the talk but not walking the walk’, as we throw ourselves into raising our awareness through ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’. By stretching past mind based spiritual concepts and ideas, we open ourselves to a more humble and deeper spiritual experience. 

Being the Observer

In order to incorporate ‘being’ into our spiritual journey, we may choose to meditate or become the ‘observer’ of the mind. By becoming the watcher of our thoughts, we awaken a new consciousness within us because we no longer identify solely with the thoughts themselves. 

Hidden within this new found perspective is an inner spaciousness. In this space of inner stillness, we become aware of our egoic voices in the mind. We have no choice but to be completely honest with ourselves and expose such voices as we increasingly become the observer of them. 

When we begin to become aware of our spiritual egoic tendencies through observation, they may appear to ‘worsen’! However, they were always there, we are simply more aware of them. Now we can observe our ego, whereas before we were lost in the spiritual ego itself. 

Our powerful shift in awareness shines a bright light on our shadowy spiritual ego, revealing its true colours. It is important to be patient and love ourselves through this process of unravelling the spiritual ego. We may find comfort in knowing that the moment we notice a spiritually egoic behaviour within us, it is no longer ego.

Although such egoic patterns are conditioned and do not vanish immediately, the light of awareness and clarity will shrink them overtime. If we try to fight our spiritual ego by projecting hatred, anger, frustration, guilt or shame onto it, we simply fuel it with more ego. Instead we are the silent observer of it and as a result we tame our spiritual ego and through time, we dissolve it completely. 

How do we shift core concepts of who we think we are?

Spiritual ego is a mind based identity that we may adopt after awakening and yet just like any mind based identity, it is a phantom sense of ‘self’. If we want to shift our core concepts of ‘self’ we can begin to look past ‘object’ and into ‘space’. 

Spirituality has little to do with ‘things’ and identification with any ‘thing’ or form, rather it is to do with the no-thing or the formless. To grasp this, we may choose to dwell more frequently within the spaciousness of the mind, when thought is absent. In this formless space, we are no ‘thing’. We do not identify with our spiritual identity or any identity for that matter. In this place, we exist purely within space consciousness and our true nature can flood our being

Give up defining yourself – to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life. — Eckhart Tolle

Final Words

Whenever we begin to form a spiritual ego, we create separation between ourselves and the rest of humanity. In reality, this is not why we came into this earthly experience; we came here to bring humanity closer together. The judgement, comparison and separation, that is inherent within spiritual ego, are fear-based concepts existing in an old paradigm that is fading away.

The more we feel into our awakening and live from our heart, the more we truly see into the souls around us. Out of the fogginess arises an unparalleled sense of oneness and we begin to see others as ourselves. In the shining light of clarity, it becomes clear that we must work in unity to bring about change in human consciousness. As a whole and equally as divine as each other, together we enter the new earth. 

With Gratitude,