One of the great dangers on the spiritual path is that the ego becomes spiritualized. The ego loves to think of itself as spiritually evolved. It is just another way that it manages to feel important and in control. It is very difficult to free yourself from an enlightened ego.
Interpretation
The quote warns against the ego's tendency to adopt a facade of spirituality, which can hinder true enlightenment.
Leonard Jacobson emphasizes the deceptive nature of the ego on the spiritual journey. He argues that individuals may mistakenly believe they are spiritually advanced when, in fact, their ego is merely presenting itself in a more refined form. This self-deception creates a barrier to genuine spiritual growth, making it essential to recognize and confront the ego to achieve authentic enlightenment.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, you might use this quote to illustrate the pitfalls of inflated self-importance.
Once you have found yourself and accepted your aloneness, then the greatest blessing is to share the love that arises within you. Each new moment presents the richest opportunity to be loving. And you can share love in the simplest of ways. Be soft and gentle. Be caring and kind. Be loving in an ordinary way, without any sense of wanting anything back, Life offers you the most precious gift. The gift of allowing you to be present and share love.
Coffee, the sober drink, the mighty nourishment of the brain, which unlike other spirits, heightens purity and lucidity; coffee, which clears the clouds of the imagination and their gloomy weight; which illuminates the reality of things suddenly with the flush of truth.
After the horse dance was over, it seemed that I was above the ground and did not touch it when I walked.
The personal vocabulary, the individual melody whose metre is one's biography, joins in that sound, with any luck, and the body moves like a walking, a waking island.
Where there is no imagination there is no horror.
It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it.
It is never the thing but the version of the thing.
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