Mega-Thread Of Every Trap Within Self-Help & Spirituality

[Extreme Z7]

Wasting your time trying to change closed-minded fools who scoff at your self-help/spiritual habits.

[Kalki Avatar]

1. Being deluded as to blindly believing you will go through whatever problem you have because you are developing yourself. Instead of accepting the problem and figuring your way out through it. 

2. Not being humble enough to accept you are doing your work wrong. 

3. Not having the maturity to accept you have not learned from your past mistakes in the path. Which repeat themselves because of entitlement and lack of humility. 

4. Telling others about your work and why they should get into it. 

5. Seeing others not into the path as foolish animals. Which can greatly affect your perception of reality and how you relate and deal with them. Even if its just by necessity.

6. Not having a vision as to why you are doing it. This is the heart and fuel. 

7. Doing it for others. Unclear, confused intentions. 

8. Not being wise enough to see that youth is the best time to work and learn this stuff. 

9. Thinking there is a finish line. This is a lifetime work, at your own pace. 

10. Confusing life itself for the process of self empowerment as it becomes habitual. 

11. Not having a plan as to how to make your actualization strategy work properly to prevent the same mistakes. Dont go doing self actualization if you have not figured out external problems limiting your inner growth. Like cutting off toxic friendships that will make you commit into the same old traps, etc. 

12. Not being humble enough to accept all the time you have lost. Which makes you loose even more time. 

 

 

 

Edited June 22, 2022 by Kalki Avatar

[Matthew85]

@Leo Gura Good video topic Leo. I recently made a post about the trap of thinking the ego mind is the totality of God and imagining all of reality and other people. I see some pursuing this work falling into this trap. 

Another fairly common trap I see is a kind of spiritual arrogance in people seeking awakening often holding judgments about people who are not interested in it.

One of the most prevalent ones I see is people giving up their sovereignty and authority to teachers and gurus. You covered this in past videos but it's worth mentioning again. 

Edited June 22, 2022 by Matthew85

[Time Boy]

• Overhelping others in order to avoid one's problems
• Savior complex by teaching others prematurely
• Reaching lower level samadhi and thinking "This is it. I'm fully enlightened"

[Vision]

Off the top of my head:

Putting teachers on a pedestal. Not realizing that you are your own authority – that ultimately, your best teacher is you.

Not making concrete plans and strategies for your life, leaving it to your wishy-washy ideas. Not being strategic. 

Deluding yourself into thinking that you can find clarity in life by merely thinking – ultimately, the only way to know what you want is to take an iterative approach, experiment, and continuously hone in on your strengths and talents.

There are so many more but it would take more time than I'd like to list.

[JosephKnecht]

• Spiritual bypassing: Using Spirituality to avoid personal development
• Attachment to the Method: Getting attached to a Spiritual Method (meditation, Yoga, Breathing, psychedelics) shall be transcended at some point. 
• Victim mentality: Blaming external sources for personal shortcomings.

[Gidiot]

Demonizing valid spiritual teachings as neo advaita or some other buzzword because you don’t agree with what they imply

[ValiantSalvatore]

Continious issues that I encounter for both spirituality and self-help themes

• Problem of the use of language
• Issues of veryfing experiences online
• Techincal warfares about experiences and definitions.
• Negligent of shadow work, trauma
• Lazyness and inabillity to work on emotional issues.
• Meditation as a panacea.
• Confusing survival and self-transendence
• Ad hominem attacks
• Arrogrance and hubris
• Sexual miscondut by authorities
• Moral expectation of followers
• Average SD development 
• Teachers mainly unaware of SD can hinder appropriate feedback as it's just not adressed at that level.
• Delusion, Paranoia, Schizophrenia, people with mental disorders
• Sudden traumatic event errupts while working on personal issue X
• Overprized products
• Overprized retreat centers and teachers
• Valdity of claims of teacher/product
• Toxic communities
• Underdeveloped EQ in spiritual and self-help circles.
• No training seldom provided for EQ, for e.g Shinzen now offers a way to communicate with more EQ with his techniques in one modul of his program
• Only studying one system
• Giving away your authority
• Lonliness
• Blaming others
• Any online warfare is an issue if it's not a healthy discussing based on respect
• Not searching for practical solutions for real life opportunities.
• Esacpism of any form with any substance and or technique
• Inabillity to assess competencies
• Appealing to low desires and putting others or the audience into a low vibe state. Like anger, fear, panic, hate etc.
• Echo-chambers perpetuating any body of thought and believing it's absolute.
• Believing itself.
• Trusting the experience of others to much.
• Not asking for help when needed
• Use it as an intellectual form of escapism and never do any of the work
• Exploiting and manipulating vulnerable people or naive people for sex and money.
• Damaging the physical body because of some rule/regulation/practice scheme etc.
• A lot of stage blue thinking.
• Ethnocentric biases I am more spiritual than you because I am from country X.
• Spirtual one upman ship and ego battles
• Low spiral development in PD circles a lot of blue-orange.
• Inabillity to assess the growth of oneself and of other people without personally insulting them.
• A lot of tough love attitude as an inabillity to express real love
• Using spirituality as escape
• Not using any feedback mechanism
• Not uniting feeling, knowing, thinking and your intuition. Solely relying on any of these only is quiet stupid imo.
• Not thinking you have toxic peers and your enviroment is toxic.
• Risk blind behaviour, overeager, not enough patience, rushing experience and result. Overly competetive people.
• Shaming others
• Drug abuse, addiction, relationship problems won't get solved by meditating alone etc. 
• Abundance of techniques and confusion.
• Not knowing using different techniques produces different results. For e.g classic vipassana won't give you a non dual permanent state.
• Not stating the obvious.
• Terminologies of teachers inabillity to differentiate reaching emphasis. For e.g one teacher might emphasis love more than truth etc.
• Lack of open-mindedness
• Crossing boundaries not having boundaries
• Assertivness
• Isolation, sigma male attitude, mysogny, sexism, racism, homophobia.
• The illusion of online support
• Internet as a distraction
• Demonizing other schools and techniques and methods.
• Lack of taking responsibility for survival means.
• Lack of talking about morals in a way that is fitting for the 21 century. I find myself having to rely on "prudency" a lot.
• Comparrison mindset and competitive mindset.
• Blind faith.
• Overly focused on the mind
• Difficulties getting people out of their head and into their body.
• False sales promises
• Incorrect data, lies, deceit, fake credentials, again issue of validity.
• Confusing the map for the territory
• Just being there for connection and bonding. 
• Lack of opportunities for engaging with self-help content outside larger more densly populated areas.
• Lack of research
• Know it all assholes
• Not expressing what you feel dissociating from emotions through meditation. A common complaint I heard about classic/traditional vipassana.
• Amorality, uncaringness, cheaters, people unwilling to do the "right" amount of work.
• Excusing the human condition to not work on it and improve it
• Unfortunately a lot of unfortunate life experiences, which can be uninspiring as a young person.
• Can be demotivating.
• Inabillity to recognize spirituality and people motivated to do spirituality and not dogmatic religion. That would be blue although it can be authentically spiritual.
• Orange basically is where you pick up the people and tell them there is god..
• Nihilism, inabillity to create meaning
• Not having values not knowing what you want in life or in sector out of a product or course.
• Lack of vision
• Burn out
• Workaholics.
• Specialness, belongigness, elite attitude
• Fake humility.
• Lack of leadership especially for guys imo, giving direction, supporting, mentoring and the theory behind it.
• Loosing friends through growing and implementing
• Seeing failure as a setback 
• Confusing signal for noise..
• Let others dishearten you
• Not doing any mistakes
• Not staying positive and hopeful
• Glee
• Us against them mentality
• The pleasure of disrespecitng one upping
• Not consulting doctors for physical concerns etc. Knee hurts etc.
• Aftershocks after any conscious tool as been used
• Using recreational time in a way that is nuturing to your soul. Instead of running only programm Y on the weekend feeling burned out after.
• Superiority complex
• Inferiority complex
• Not differentiating self-help and spirituality and not seeing how it dove-tails into each other etc.
• Overidentifiying with a significant experience.

That is about it and what I encountered personally and also just generally. Might be good food for thought it's not far of from everyone elses experiences I feel etc.

Mostly it comes down to doing what works in a healthy enviroment. Although seeing my list and personal experiences it's a trial and error process with a lot of refinement for sure.

Hope this helps!

Edited June 22, 2022 by ValiantSalvatore

[Oeaohoo]

1 hour ago, JoeVolcano said:

Getting swept up in "current events" (at any time), politics, or any other cattle shenanigans.

Human society is no more significant than ant society. Truth or even just self-actualization is larger than both, and independent of both. Nor is it in any way related to picking up the pieces on the monkey playground. All this is just the backdrop of your dreamstate. The manure from which you can emerge if you choose, not to continue wallowing in it, but to reclaim your own life and sovereignty as an authentic, self-born individual.

What a lot of rubbish! Ant = ant = ant = ant, human ≠ human ≠ human ≠ human. That is the difference and why human society is far more significant than ant society. What else is an "authentic, self-born individual"? Have you ever met any "authentic, self-born individual" ants?! 

I think this itself is one of the traps that seems particularly common around here: retreating into some solipsistic pursuit of self-advancement away from all integration into society. Then again, it is an understandable reaction to the total banality of modern profane society.

[PepperBlossoms]

Being focused on not doing anything morally wrong; having a hard time with the "dark side" of the grey areas.

[Oeaohoo]

39 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

I wasn't talking about humans and ants, but human society and ant society. I'm also not saying those are not significant, just that they're not significant to Truth, reality, or life. Life is much larger than that. Or are you saying that society = life? I sure hope not!

There is still a nihilism and a subtle denial of the uniqueness of the human purpose in saying that human society and ant society are equally significant. A human birth is uniquely congenial to spiritual realisation because we have access to both the transcendent and animalistic realms, whereas an ant is basically just an animal (still being symbolic in a way of a spiritual reality, as all things are). That is why basically all human societies throughout history, from the most "primitive" to the most "advanced", have been oriented around a central transcendent Principle.

Human society is an expression of Truth and exists within in reality. A society which is in alignment with Truth will be good and beautiful; a society which is out of alignment with Truth will be evil and depraved. Human society is even more significant to life! It would be very difficult to live without society.

45 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

The very first thing you break out of on the way to freedom, is society. If you can't get that far, might as well not bother at all. Society is there to kickstart your dream adventure, not to keep it captive and stillborn.

This is a very specific conception of society: society as something which seeks to smother your ambition, neutralise your individuality and your desire to express your deepest dreams, beat you down and strip you of your "freedom" so as to make you into a mere cog in the wheel. It is the "Disney-world" conception of society... A real society seeks to make you into a cog in the wheel of the Dharmachakra!

45 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

To each their own, of course. But for those who actually want to take off, society is a trap and deserves to be mentioned as such in this thread.

Society can be a trap, so can turning your back on society! I do agree that for most people today society can only be a trap, but there is another perspective.

[Oeaohoo]

@JoeVolcano Ironically, I believe you have fallen into the very trap you claim to oppose! This rhetoric of the superiority of the atomised individual over all forms of social organisation is exactly what the present neoliberal society advocates… It is the trap of forgetting to deconstruct the values which you have inherited from society.

Corrupt society is a fear-based defence against Truth. The ego is the internalised form of that corruption. You as an atomised individual are just as much of a dream as human society so why exalt one above the other?

Society is a diminished reflection of what, who and where I am. I am a diminished reflection of what, who and where I am!

 

[Oeaohoo]

@JoeVolcano I will leave this here but the rhetoric is using words like “cattle” and “herd” to refer to society whilst using phrases like the “authentic, self-born” and “atomised individual”. This is a way to rhetorically exalt the individual above all forms of social organisation. I only mentioned neoliberalism because what you say is in exact conformity to this ideology: “there is no society, only individuals”, as Thatcher said! I didn’t mean to convey any superiority.

4 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

By individual I don't mean you as a character, I mean you as a singular indivisible consciousness.

That individual is beyond any distinction between the atomised individual and society!

[Thought Art]

1. Not tripping 

2. Not trying ecstatic dance

3. not meditating 

4. Not doing Qigong or Tao Yin or Breathwork

[Nilsi]

Climbing to the peak of the mountain and refusing to come back down again

[jimwell]

1. Inablity to take action because of poor integration of various perspectives
2. Inability to experience, enjoy, and appreciate the "lower" beauty of existence (women, food, work, museums, coffee, technology, trees, rivers, etc.) because of desiring only deep awakenings
3. being an evil-enabler as a result of weaponizing the spiritual insight "Evil doesn't exist." 
4. Forcefully converting other people from being normal into being spiritual
5. Using spirituality to escape suffering instead of working on mental-emotional problems
6. Inability to embody or implement deep insights as a result of teaching full-time, running a spiritual community, being satisfied with conceptual understanding, and other seemingly valid distractions
7. Inability or delay in generating new deep insights, and spiritual growth as a result of teaching full-time, running a spiritual community, being satisfied with conceptual understanding, and other seemingly valid distractions

Edited June 22, 2022 by jimwell
added 6 and 7

[puporing]

The "it's never enough" when it comes to psychedelic dosing and peer pressuring people to take more and more and equating it with more spiritual enlightenment, ignoring individual differences with sensitivity and safety considerations.

Edited June 23, 2022 by puporing

[Brittany]

1.  Law of Attraction/Law of Assumption does not prepare people for death.

The Law of Attraction/Law of Assumption ignores death almost entirely. They are a denial that "bad things" DO happen...and WILL happen. It doesn't matter how great of a manifestor you are, the human body will most likely die. And the houses, money, and relationships that you manifested will change form one day.

2. The Radical Non-Duality community avoids seeing the Shadow of the psyche:
The message of radical non-duality says that "it doesn't matter if there is an apparent person who is angry, bitter, dreaming or sees seperation etc. it's all the absolute. There is no one who is angry. There is no one who is bitter. There is no one who is dreaming.  There is no one who feels seperate. It is all just happening. "

In the satsangs, I sometimes see the teachers loosing patience with people, showing signs of narcissism and pride, pursung their own survival strategies and self security etc.. But according to radical non-duality.... you don't need to do any shadow work, heal anything or be aware of anything ..... because it's "all just happening. It's all the absolute." So anything goes.

They mock spiritual practices and healing work while simultaneously saying "even shadow work is allowed, even healing is allowed, everything is allowed".

In the Sam Harris interview, Jim Newman said that he gets mad at bad drivers on the road. And that anger still arises in him after liberation.

But in my opinion, and I think Sam Harris' as well, this anger at bad drivers is conditioning that can be changed through spiritual practices and meditation .... so why not teach this as well? 

Why choose to live forever with the habit of anger at bad drivers?

I can hear all of the typical non-duality responses in my head:

"Conditioning is what arises in THIS for no one.  There is no person to forgive. There is no right or wrong. There is no person to meditate. There is no one to teach.  There is no do-er or choice. There is no time and no one who lives in time. Habits just arise in this for no one, there is no one who has a habit. There is no habit. There is just this. There is no anger. Anger is just a concept.  There are no drivers." 

haha

3.Saying positive affirmations are still ego and puffing up of the self image. 

Anything that you add after I AM __________ and I HAVE ____________  is puffing up the self image. It doesn't matter how positive it is.

- I am awareness-  adding to the self image

- I am consciousness - adding to the self image

- I am God - adding to the self image

- I have a beautiful new house - adding to the self image

- I am a good person - adding to the self image

- I have amazing friends - adding to the self image

- I am happy - adding to the self image

- I have a high vibration - adding to the self image

4. When people are spiritual bypassing, it's not always the kindest thing to force them into seeing their shadows. Sometimes spiritual bypassing is what they need at that time.

Which kind of contradicts with my #2. haha

Shadow work is an endless pile of digging into crap.

And so I think there should be more compassion for people who spiritually bypass.

People are spiritually bypasing because shadow work is painful and seemingly unending.

Sometimes people just want to fall asleep in the boat of heaven.... even if there are holes all over the boat.

5. Western teachers often grab some parts of the Eastern teaching and then combine it with Western values

It's not that Eastern teachings are untouchable. It's just that our western versions are not always an improvement on them.

Instead of trying to focus on "what is true?" we often focus on "how to make this relatable to people?" and relatable is not always synonymous with truth.

Edited June 23, 2022 by Brittany

[Matt23]

Thinking videos are enough and the same as reading books.  Even if the videos and the books are about the same thing.  

[Kshantivadin]

2 hours ago, Brittany said:

1.  Law of Attraction/Law of Assumption does not prepare people for death.

Nail on the head!

point number 2 is basically waking up vs cleaning up a la Ken Wilber, think somebody already mentioned it.

I appreciated your comment a lot. Breathes wisdom.