8 Common Ego Traps On The Spiritual Path (and How To Avoid Them)

[Guest Annetta]

Hello, Mary Shutan is a spiritual worker aka shaman and has a lot of insights into the spiritual path.  I thought I would share with you two of her blog posts found here and here.  Enjoy!
Check out her blog, she has a lot of really quality insights!

Below is an interview she has done on Kundalini awakenings.  She has quite an intense presence in her eyes, doesn't she?

(I know it's kind of silly to copy and paste what I linked to, but I wanted to be sure it got read.  Quality info.  Peace!)

To begin, I will say that my definition of the word “ego” is simply that it is our identity– the thought of who we are and what the world is like (so, perhaps more based in Eriksonian thought than Freudian if we were to talk Psych 101). We formulate this idea based off of the wounds that we carry. These are either emotions and trauma that have shaped us (been handed down to us), or that we have developed over the course of our lives here.

Basically, our ego is our mind, our “I”. It is not something that needs to be “killed”, maimed, or treated like a second-class citizen. We need an identity, and our differences make us beautiful. What we are made up of– all of those forces coming together to shape us, what we have been individually through, as well as our culture, traditions, and personality– mean that we are a unique spark that can bring a lot to the world.

Finding that spark, realizing that spark, and moving beyond the wounding that created the framework for current identity (and beliefs about yourself or the world being a certain way) is really the issue. If we can move beyond the mind, beyond the ego, it really isn’t a process of “death”, but a process of expansion. The spiritual awakening process as a whole is really about moving beyond the idea of “I” as the center of the Universe (and that “I” being your current, physical expression of Self), beginning to see others as an extension of self, and moving past the sort of falsehood of Self that has been created out of a tapestry of wounds.

This seeing of others as an extension of you is not in a narcissistic way (as in, you do not control others and you have not created them), but a realization that what you notice and are reactive to about other people… the sort of projections that you put on them… how you have “cast” them in your play (cycling through your wounds again and again seeking closure) are unreconciled issues within yourself.

Our minds do view this as “death”, because to move beyond our current conditioning– who and what we consider ourselves (and by that, the world) to be is a sort of “death”. Our minds like control. They like rules and procedures and black and white thinking. There is comfort in the known, and we do a lot of things to hold ourselves back from releasing patterns that may prop up a significant portion of our worldview, and to protect ourselves from noticing the inherent falseness of our beliefs and constructs. I discuss some of the most common ways that we can fall into “ego traps” below.

Ego Trap #1: Creation of Further Rules on the Spiritual Path
I am sure many of you have seen long, admonishing lists about what “high vibration” people do and act like. They don’t watch violent movies, or listen to heavy metal. They don’t eat meat, think bad thoughts, get angry, get emotional, they treat everyone the same (don’t judge or think one person may differ than another– a total misunderstanding of oneness– and more on this later), and other things I am sure I am forgetting.

There are further rules and one-on-one meanings created for everything about what cancer “means” spiritually to what a color orb means to how emotions “must” be taken care of, to how spiritual situations “must” be approached. I could go on, but you all likely see the point here.

This is a “trap” because although plenty of people on the spiritual path may choose to abstain from alcohol, or eat differently, or not watch certain movies (insert rule here) the spiritual path is a freeing process. 

Rules are a creation of the mind. They are created out of fear. In many of the situations like the ones I listed above, they are created by minds who have been wounded by separation and feelings of emptiness… which creates a pattern in which people must constantly create the idea that they are superior to one another and prove that sort of superiority.

While certainly people understand social constraints and the sort of created rules created by communal minds (and wounds) and act appropriately, the need for such rules and constraints lifts when you go beyond the need for the sort of fear, control, and woundedness that need rules to separate and constrict (rather than free and expand).

Ego Trap #2: Belief that you are Further than you are on the Spiritual Path
If we believe that we are at the end of our journeys, that we are “beyond” things (the whole wounded “superior” thing again) we don’t have to do any more work. We don’t have to learn, or question, or “die” any more… we do not have to move beyond who we currently are and what we currently believe the world to be. We stop questioning, and accept ourselves and the world as is (complete with whatever unhealed material/wounds that have constructed such things still present).

This is such a common ego trap, and can easily lead to “ego awakening”, wherein the person simply stops themselves on their path (you can read more about ego awakenings in my Spiritual Awakening Guide book)

I continually hear from people things like:

“I don’t need to look within to see why I am reactive to that person, I have been doing work on myself for a few years now!”

” This is how things are (the “truth”)”- said rigidly to others while announcing the rules of #1 ego trap

” I am (enlightened, kundalini, super special shaman, an empath) and that means…”

” I am a hereditary witch/shaman/spiritual something which means that I have so much power.”

” I don’t have a shadow/anything to work on/I don’t have an ego because I am beyond that”

” I don’t judge/have any biases”

There are more that I could list, and some of these are paraphrasing (of course) after hearing them pretty much on a daily basis over the last ten years. I will talk about labels in the next section, but the spiritual path is about constant unfolding. This means that if you are reactive to a situation, you always question inwardly what is going on. That you realize that there is always further to go. That no matter what you know, you could know more, you could surrender more, you could understand more.

Additionally, if you need to prove something to the external world, it is well worth looking internally to see if there is anything unhealed there. There is a great Margaret Thatcher quote: “Power is like being a lady… if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t” and that sentiment applies. We hold such wounds around power, around knowledge, and if we internally are at peace with such things, we no longer need to perpetuate into the world (or prove) that we are worthwhile, or have power. We simply embody it.

Because modern spiritual aspirants rarely have a physical teacher, or one that is willing to reign in their egos a bit, there are quite a lot of people who believe that they are at the end of their path when they are the beginning. There are quite a few people that create their entire spiritual path based off of wounding, and the needs of unhealed parts of themselves. There are also those who believe they are “enlightened” or beyond things so they don’t have to take personal responsibility for themselves, or are creating a mask for others. I occasionally have to offend people when they want to take my advanced courses when they have not learned any fundamentals yet. The fact that those courses wouldn’t be understood or safe for them (or that I am looking out for them and being compassionate in saying “no” to that course at that time for them) is disregarded by those who really need to believe that they are a specific way due to wounding.

We constantly believe that we are further than we are, and it is a rare mind that is willing to look at that as a mask, as a way to actually stop development, rather than something that really speaks to any form of truth.

I rarely respond to people like this (or will simply agree with people) as cutting through too much illusion and ego either results in an act of protection or retaliation from a mind not ready to hear such things (it is a balancing act, basically, finding out how to appropriately respond to people compassionately while not attempting to perpetuate their illusions at the same time), but there are questions here for those willing to ask it of themselves:

If I were not (insert stage of development, belief in static “truth”, enlightened, powerful, etc.) what would I have to work on?

If I did have a shadow (emotions, ego, stuff to work on) what would I be working on?

What would happen if this belief (about myself or the world, or the nature of my development) were an illusion?

Because these beliefs are perpetuated by wounds that can be worked with and healed. It is only a question of if the person is ready and willing to look beyond the mask, beyond the stage of development that they are in, and are willing to hear from themselves (or ideally, another person, as it is difficult to have clarity about ourselves… and these days, unfortunately, many teachers cater to to these illusions rather than move people away from them) what they have to work with and on if the belief wasn’t there.

Ego Trap #3: Labels creating separation and perpetuating illusion and wounding
Labels in the spiritual realm (such as Empath, Medium, Shaman, Starseed, etc) can be quite important in the initial stages of the journey. There is a need for the Self to realize what and who they are– how they individually filter things, how they interact with the world. There is a lot of peace in finding out you are a “highly sensitive person” or realizing that your tendency to pick up emotions like a sponge is called “Empathy” and specifically you are an “emotional” empath.

Realizing labels like this can bring a lot of clarity. It can also bring community, as you can find others online and in person who relate similarly. We still live in a world where only 15- 20 percent of the population is considered in any way, shape, or form “sensitive” (to psychic, the divisions of highly sensitive to highly psychic and what they mean are in my book Managing Psychic Abilities) and being heard by others who have shared your experience, whether it is being an Empath or being a veteran of war, with others who have the direct experience of the same, is really vital in the healing path.

But it can also be a bit of a trap, a convenient way to disguise things that need to be healed. I have heard so many times things like:

“All men (or women) hate me because I am an Empath”

“I need to separate myself from the world because I am a (Sensitive/starseed/Shaman etc)”

“Of course I relate that way, I am highly sensitive!”

“I am moving to the eighth dimension so I no longer relate to people”

“I am from a different world/am ET/am insert thoughts here and that is why I feel so separate”

As a spiritual worker I am not here to make light of the wounds that people carry, but even if you are from another world, or are the most highly psychic individual to ever walk the earth, wounds are wounds.

What I mean by this is that if you believe that you cannot get into a relationship, it is easier to believe that it is because you are an “empath” than to look at the wounds within that created such beliefs and to heal them. Whether those wounds are actually from being an empathic individual or not doesn’t really matter. It is a constricting belief that is creating pain and difficulty, and it can be healed (or at least looked at).

Even if you are from another world, or being highly psychic in this world has created pain, looking at the pain, and the source of that pain, instead of the label, can allow for a lot of healing to occur. It is really a question of if someone is willing to move past a label that they have ascribed behaviors and patterns to as a protective mask… and to look at what lies beneath that mask and do the healing work that would allow for them to thrive as an Empath, or not feel separate as a person on a spiritual path.

As a last note (I will do part two relatively soon of this list) I will say that there is a lot of confusion about being highly sensitive, on a significant spiritual path, or psychic, and the need to separate.

What I will say about this is that primarily this is a wounding mechanism. If you look at people as “lesser” than you, as something to be avoided, as something that is fueled by pain, that is a wound. It would be something to look at as parts of yourself in the outer world. By this I mean that if you look at someone that you are trying to avoid (or even people in general), is there a part of you that resembles this? 

By this I mean that we frequently dislike portions of our past selves, and frequently need to reconcile or offer forgiveness for ourselves in the past. Can we offer forgiveness to ourselves in the past for not knowing, for being “unawake”, for being unconscious of their emotions and needs and inner pain?

Can we become conscious of the parts of ourselves that are still angry, chaotic, “unawake”, ignorant, violent, abusive (etc.)… are we willing to shine a proverbial light on the parts of ourselves that are still sleeping?

I will say that it is natural to be more comfortable with solitude on a spiritual path, to separate from the sort of chaos and din of noise that people create… and to with further and further clarity see people creating chaos for themselves again and again. The difficulty is, of course, them trying to cast you into their “play” of chaos, and you having conscious awareness of when you are doing the same to others, and being willing to work on whatever you find, whatever you are reactive to, in the world.

Basically, there is a big difference between separating oneself out of woundedness, and separating oneself because you enjoy solitude. In the latter, you are still part of the whole. When you say “people are like this” you are people. You can interact with anyone with compassion and grace, seeing them simply as they are with no emotional reaction or “hooking” into their projections or wounds. You see everyone and everything as an aspect of you, and work on the concepts, situations, and people that you find yourself holding separate or reactive to. You are part of people, you are a part of the Earth, you are part of the Universe, and all that you react to is something unhealed within yourself.

The question is, of course, if you are willing to approach things this way… and to question with willingness to heal and move beyond the barriers and constrictions that you have been given, as well as have erected for yourself.

 

There are many ego traps that I could go over here, and some I will not talk about because I talk about them quite frequently in other blogs. The spiritual path is about becoming whole– about expressing compassion and love for ourselves (and every aspect of ourselves). Our darkness is not “bad” and does not need to be turned into “light”, we do not need to set up rules for fear or anger to make them more palatable to ourselves or provide the illusion that we are in control of them, and without truly engaging with the primal aspects of ourselves, and aligning with their power and wisdom, we cannot come into our full capacity and power as human beings.

The spiritual path requires a certain amount of discipline and education, and I do think that one of the greatest ego traps is playing into the mentality that this sort of thing is not needed, thus fueling the outer societal thoughts about how spiritual sorts are ignorant or delusional. It is rare that people are willing to engage in the sort of discipline and move beyond the easy or one-step fix-it popularized spirituality that is ultimately illusory and perpetuates cultural myths about spirituality and the direct spiritual path being “inferior” or even laughable to a society still steeped in materialism, thus creating an outer split between material and spiritual “consciousness”, but I will end my soapboxing (about this at least) and move on with the rest of the list.

I do realize that these are difficult questions to ask of oneself, but the sort of restrictions and blockages that are carried within (and the sort of “traps” they create) can be realized and moved through, allowing movement towards more freedom and wholeness on the spiritual path overall. The question, of course, is if we are willing and ready to sit with difficult questions and realizations and openly and honestly ask ourselves such things… and be willing to hear, openly and honestly, the answers.

Ego Trap #4: Not taking Personal Responsibility for Ourselves
As long as any part of us is fractured, or separated from itself, we will find such aspects in the outer world. In an unawakened state, we blindly and chaotically react to the world around us, living from the wounds and beliefs created from those wounds.

The spiritual path is really one of radical responsibility, one in which we become more adult. When we are wounded or traumatized, a part of us becomes frozen in that state. We may have had many experiences like this (as well as trauma that was passed down to us from varying sources), and most people are in a childlike state, living from their wounds and constantly re-creating their wounds in the outer world in an effort to heal them.

While the spiritual path is one of deep questioning (at times which is uncomfortable), temporary chaos, dissolution of ideas and the destablization that happens as a result of coming into a state of greater wholeness… as a whole, the spiritual path should make one more “adult”, more centered, grounded, and with less baggage. If this is not happening, it is something to question.

If we are willing to take any sort of responsibility for ourselves, we can begin to realize that we constantly project our wounds onto others. What we see in others is a reflection of what is unhealed within us. Our reactions to others are rarely coming from a current, adult state– they are coming from engaging in a scenario, or with an emotion, that is “looped”– that part of ourselves, unhealed, that is frozen in time.

So there are some questions here that can be asked to move past this:

What do I see in this person that is a reflection of myself?

What am I projecting onto this situation or person?

What age is this response from? (when reacting to a situation or person… as in, is it your current, adult self, or might it be a surly teenager, a know-it-all twenty-something, an abused child)

Am I finding an outlet for my internal emotions and pain in the external world?

For that last question there is a realization that when we have a stockpile of anger within, we will always find things (or people) to fixate that anger on. Same with anxiety, or fear, or grief. If we believe that the world, or the people in it, are always out to victimize us, we will create that scenario again and again until we heal whatever is within that caused that belief to be created. We can find external ways in which to validate and externalize our emotions into the physical world. If we sit with our emotions long enough, we can understand that our inner pain is always looking for an outlet, and we can always find someone or something to make us angry, cause us to grieve or despair, someone to recreate our issues with our mother, or father with. The question of what am I really angry (fearful, anxious) about always comes into play here… because chances are that it is not your current, adult self that is feeling this way.

I will say as an aside that this world is chaotic, and noisy, and filled with wounded people who do wounded things. It is wonderful to feel emotions, to get angry at your boss, or to feel grief at others looking to simply take and wound in their pain and separation. We should feel emotions that are from the present moment, and allow ourselves to deeply feel them and use them appropriately. But there is a question of if what we are feeling is current and appropriate for the situation. This distinction can only be had if we are willing to take personal responsibility and assess how we may be projecting our inner wounds onto others, and the world. There is also the question of if you are using your anger as a creative, vital, flowing “get stuff done” sort of force of action (as it can be in its healed state) or if you are simply shoving it down or stockpiling it for later because you do not wish to feel it, or do not have the skills to feel it (or the compassion and/or wholeness towards the emotion to recognize it as a valuable source of wisdom).

Ego Trap #5:  Not recognizing the Persecutor- Selfishness and Lack of Heart
When we are in pain, it is nearly impossible to see outside of ourselves. It is important in times of personal chaos to focus on the Self. But for many the spiritual path may be a way to be the eternal victim– always seeing the world and the people in it as looking to take, victimize, or harm us.

Because we have experienced harm in the past, we have closed our hearts in our need to protect ourselves. The difficulty with this is that with a closed heart, we cannot empathize with others. We cannot look beyond our own fleeting and often insignificant needs, our own trauma, our own beliefs. The great irony here is that we have closed ourselves off so we cannot be hurt again, but in doing so, we hurt or are not available to others.

On the spiritual path it is incredibly important to reconcile and heal all of those hurts– all of the pain, difficulty, and integration of the parts of ourselves that have separated, frozen in time, and are “looping” again and again. But it takes a soul of great courage to reconcile the sort of selfishness that causes for one to take, to not give, and to move beyond the mindset of the Self being the protagonist, or the center of the Universe, on the spiritual path.

The end result of a spiritual path is always one of giving. It is about moving beyond those wounded pieces and then about seeing how you can be of service to others. The spiritual path is not about you, basically. It is about you moving beyond your “I”, your ego, to the point that you can be a adult, mature presence of strength, wisdom, and stillness in a world that could really use those sorts of people.

Realizing that we have been selfish, self-centered, and do not consider others is a difficult thing to awaken to. But it is a huge ego trap for people, and realizing how we interact with people, what we ask for others, and if it comes from a place of “taking”, or a place of reciprocity is the first step. Do we express gratitude when others offer themselves to us? In our pain and self-interest, we naturally assume that the world and people in it are going to simply offer themselves to us. When we expand beyond our own selfishness, we realize not only that we can take personal responsibility for ourselves, but that what we ma be asking of others and of the Earth may not be of right relationship.

Moving beyond “right relationship” and basic reciprocity (considering what we offer to someone or something vs. what we take) is the ability to be in a heart-centered place. This does not mean lack of boundaries, or thinking everyone is the “same” with equal value… it means that you can, with compassion, realize that someone is lashing out at you because they are not in a place to take personal responsibility for their pain, and you can decide to not engage in recreating their “loop” or trauma, and can also express compassion towards the parts of yourself that may have at one time resembled or resonate with such pain.

Ego Trap #6: Seeking Bliss and Highs– Spiritual Escapism
Some of the most amazing experiences can be had on the spiritual path– the sort of bliss and expansion that contact with divinity can create is addictive. The moments of bliss can help for those going through difficult spiritual experiences to have a proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel” and see them through some incredibly rough patches on the spiritual path.

There are also those who seek out drugs, spiritually vacation, attend endless retreats, or create imaginary worlds for themselves in which they are a goddess, god, or demi-god in order to move away from their daily lives, and to escape the pain and difficulty of being human.

If we are seeking spirituality because we are unhappy about our lives, the solution is to use spirituality, or to work with a spiritual path, to heal that. Our spiritual existence is not separate from our physical existence, and if we are disassociated, disembodied, unhappy, or constantly seeking the next high on the spiritual path, that indicates that something within needs to be healed.

Ego Trap #7: Not Reconciling Race, Class, and Privilege
We tend to not want to look at how we may have had privilege in our lives, about how what country we live in, what race or culture we are from, or what class of society we are in affords certain privileges.

We tend to largely surround ourselves with people with the same backgrounds, the same race, class, and ideas as ourselves. We also tend to read things that we agree with (and the same shows and books over and over again, just with different names on the cover) to shelter ourselves from new ideas, contrasting ideas, or the reality of our sheltering.

In our spiritual seeking, we may not realize that we are enacting history and the same issues of “taking” that colonization created. Without reconciliation that we are participating in the same “loop” that our ancestors did, just in a different way… without reconciling that we are ignoring that such a history or loop exists, we cannot fully move beyond and heal the internal judgment, persecution, and dominant beliefs that have been passed down to us by society, by our family or ancestry, or by world history at large.

All of us, no matter race, religion, spiritual path, class, or caste, have judgment or seek to separate from others in some fashion. Recognizing and being willing to admit our own biases is a difficult thing to ask, but the effects of this are not only personal wholeness, but the realization that our differences make us beautiful. Cheesy sentiment, I realize, but if you consider that the spiritual path is one of relational changes– meaning gradually understanding that your neighbor, your community, the world, the Earth, and the cosmos are all part of you… and being willing to see what judgments, hatred, divisions, persecutions, and unwillingness there is to engage with some of those parts, and that inner hatred, racism (etc) that you have unreconciled within will give way to wholeness (and the ability in the outer world to engage with more than just people that look, act, and think exactly like you).

The solution to this is to realize that your mind/ego wants sameness. It doesn’t want to reconcile disparate ideas. So read books by authors totally different than you, read about religions and spiritual paths from people living them, and meet, interact, and most of all listen to the stories, experiences, and pain of others. We have a tendency to dismiss pain that we have not experienced directly, to dismiss the experiences or see them as invalid if they are not the same “truth” as our own. Actively seek to expand and open your mind to people, places, and ideas that you do not agree with, and see if you can feel compassion or understand how others who think, believe, or have experienced differently than you, as it is the key to your own expansion.

Ego Trap #8: Not realizing our own Beauty and Worth
One of the funniest things on the spiritual path is that you get to a certain point that you realize that you are restricting yourself not out of some deep, dark, childhood wounds (or ancestral, etc) but because there is a mechanism within you that doesn’t believe that you can move beyond a certain point on the spiritual path

Who are you to feel power? Who are you to feel joy when others are struggling with so much? Who are you to be great or worthwhile or succeed or awaken? Who are we to feel divinity or oneness or grounded or heart-centered? Who are you to heal? Who are you to have a job that you love, to know what you are here to do? Who are you to know who you are on the deepest levels? Who are you to move beyond the blind pain and reactivity that the world and the people in it engage in? Who are you to be whole?

We struggle so much with healing the parts of ourselves that are broken, frozen, disassociated and afraid. We come up with realities, and like a six year old putting on a super-hero cape, we pretend to be powerful and the “chosen one”. We pretend to be happier than we are, more complete than we are, superior to one another. All of this is a perpetuated outer reality created by inner pain and trauma.

When we come to states that we have not felt before, we feel uncomfortable with the unknown, of treading new territory. Of experiencing what we have not before, and what sort of changes that will create.

We fear our own greatness, what we could be if we really allowed ourselves to heal and become… instead of being a series of masks and illusions covering up our pain. We fear our authentic, powerful selves.

One of our primal wounds is that of separation, and we fear really and truly being connected. Connected to ourselves authentically, connected to divinity.

We fear opening our hearts, because in our woundedness we have closed them and have created protections around them. When that protection is in place, we cannot truly love one another. We are closed off, and are constantly looking at the world as if it were looking to wound us, to take from us. Opening this center requires moving beyond our various trauma and pain, but it also requires for us to move beyond the idea that we are worthless. That we deserve to be happy, that we deserve to be connected, that we deserve to be open and embodied and authentic in a world that is filled with people who are not.

The thing is, of course, that if many people are willing to see their own immense worth, without the cages and masks and illusions, that it would create a revolution. One person can be a catalyst, a way to show others how to do the same. And that person could be you.

[Martin123]

@Annetta so beautiful. Thank you.

[Guest Annetta]

@Martin123 You're welcome, love you Martin <3

[Gailan]

thank you for sharing that with us @Annetta 

[Guest Annetta]

@Gailan  No problem

[Shin]

Edited April 21, 2017 by Shin

[Guest Annetta]

@Shin You're welcome dude!