The
pitfalls
of
personal development
Firstly, analysing things at a mental level which restricts the way we look to what the mind can grasp, i.e. very little.
Secondly, the desire to improve one’s personal life or change the world which are mistaken goals.
Analysing things at a mental level gives the ego a sense of security, a scope, a reassuring "good/bad" or "I’m on the right/wrong road" duality. Such analysis may play a fleeting role in some dialogues, but it is not an end in itself. Analysis makes it possible to name what we have difficulty in identifying in ourselves, our mechanisms, habits and inherited certainties etc. This provides a sort of balm for whoever was confused about what was driving him or her up to that time. But discovering this does not prevent us from going round in circles with the very same mechanisms. Because the way we look must evolve to the point where we are able to relinquish landmarks.
The
spiritual ego feels safe with the "I’ve seen my ego" thought, for
instance. But if we cannot conceive that we exist outside the ego’s
boundaries, this thought will end up nourishing the ego.
To discover existence outside the ego’s boundaries and landmarks -whether they be spiritual, therapeutic or not- we have to draw closer to a wider space within ourselves that we sometimes relate to emptiness or even death. But this perception of the real space of our life is the way the ego sees things.
Discovering
the vastness of the Living enables us to yield to it without this proving to
be an effort or an exercise.
This is why there is a real chasm between the analytical approach and the nature of spiritual awakening. The mind is not a tool for perceiving life, even if it can easily become its servant.
The desire to improve one’s personal life or change the world stems from the previous pitfall. If it is normal that the primary motivation for seekers is to "feel better" or resolve their personal problems, there must also be a widening of the way they look that I have just referred to, because, whatever appearance we give it, the essential motivation in reality is to open up to the Intelligence of Life and not fight It via our intelligence limited by landmarks, plans and immature expectations.
In so doing, our personal life can improve since it is clear that the fact we give over our existence to the living flow which created it is beneficial at all levels. But this is just a side effect.
For this reason, we should be striving to find innocence once more rather than store up knowledge, welcoming rather than controlling. The need to control one’s existence stems from a mistaken interpretation of life. We combat a force which we take to be an enemy. The force of Life is what creates us, what bears us. The only true improvement is that which comes from surrendering to the omnipresent Intelligence of Life.
This is why it is important to redirect our approaches along less mental and less personal lines. An authentic spiritual approach is not a negotiation with Life but one which is based on the profound recognition that we are in fact its blessed servants rather than its masters or victims.
Thierry