I was reading this morning about detachment...letting go of things in order to get free. The examples of things used that we hold to were houses, cars, books, antiques and the like. All of which, according to me, boil down to security. I believe what we must needs let go of is our attachment to our own ego's dictates. Being named a liar by a liar! Being called ugly by a frog!! Resentment aborning...attachment personified.
An example of attachment is being called anything and resisting...even (especially?) the good stuff. Being called spiritual is a trap if ever there was one. Calling another spiritual is another trip-up. Yet being identified as spiritual is hard to hate, who's kidding whom? And when we recognize another as living by spiritual principles, we automatically identify him as spiritual.
The trap is that being known as spiritual appeals to the ego. It inflates our ego, elevates our self identity, and since we weren't the originator, we get a feel-good freebie. Which leaves us torn, feeling phony, because those of us seeking still more spiritual growth know ourselves now. We know right well we're not that spiritual. We hear our thoughts. We condemn ourselves for our thoughts! But our feel-good freebie is really hard to detach from.
Our identifying another as spiritual is even trickier. We make that identification, and sooner or later we need to shoot the other's pretentions down. The problem being, we are unaware of what really got our back up. We label her spiritual, than at some point become convinced she thinks she's closer to God than we are, and...BINGO...she's such a phony.
I wonder if spiritual life isn't simply learning the art of detachment...from everything our mind can conceive of. As has been said of God, if you can conceive of him, that ain't him.
Thank you.
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