The title of this month’s column sounds pretty heavy, and it sort of is. But as with all I find myself pulled to write about, the subject is on the table for a reason: it’s something that I have been witnessing and considering writing about for a while as a result of my own experiences and observations.

I know a number of people who have been engaged in spiritually related studies and practices for quite some time, and consider themselves pretty knowledgeable and sophisticated. There have been some rather heady conversations and email exchanges between some of us, and my friends who possess both a strong intellect coupled with considerable book and three-dimensional learning can keep the interactions all quite juicy and stimulating. For the most part, I have found this to be a great deal of fun; that is, until I see that same knowledge and sophistication become a detriment to both interpersonal relationships - as well as the one we have with ourselves.

It is extremely rewarding on a soul level to have worked hard at chipping away our dense outer layers of rock by putting into practice what we’ve learned along the journey of our lives, to magically begin to unveil the beautiful shape within that is our Higher Self. And although if experienced with humility and purity this gained wisdom can propel us ever forward with integrity and grace, when the ego still takes credit and is simply more cleverly masked, that sense of accomplishment is easily marred by smugness and a whole new slew of blind spots that are even more difficult to acknowledge than the first ones we transcended. The more we think we know and feel we’ve absolutely gotten down, the more vulnerable we are to our uncleared egoic shadows, especially if we actually believe we are no longer vulnerable.

The spiritual stakes are raised and the razor’s edge becomes sharper as we shed each old layer of self and upgrade our internal operating systems, and if we rest on our knowledge and sophistication and the self-descriptions those two elements have framed in our minds, we can careen headfirst into some big problems. One of the most blind-sighted scenarios that can occur is feeling we are above other human beings, and if so, all actions – even compassion, generosity and kindness – can come from condescension or pity. If we then pat ourselves on the back because we delight in how compassionate, generous and kind we are for doing good works for the benefit of others and seek out accolades from them as well, then our authenticity goes down the drain.

What is even tougher for the ego to acknowledge is when we have created a high-and-mighty communications skill set that runs on autopilot when dealing with problems that arise between ourselves and others that sound good, and appear to make sense to our intellects, but are in fact often just a cacophony of great-sounding, lovely (to us anyway) well-framed defenses, justifications and excuses. The more spiritually knowledgeable and sophisticated we feel we’ve become, the more cleaver our egos can be in fooling us that we are coming from an awakened place 100% of the time. This is an extremely difficult blind spot to see on our own, or acknowledge when someone points it out to us, as it is self-delusion busting. Even if we have done well with transcending some of the lesser self-delusions we grasped tightly for years, the bigger ones are really pretty tough to let go of. It’s very hard to admit we messed up when we think we’ve advanced pretty far along the path. When someone either innocently or deliberately reveals a place we haven’t quite fully gained self-mastery over when we were quite positive we had done so, the ego, cloaked in its airs of feeling quite good about its spiritual appearance, doesn’t take it very well if we have not truly adopted both genuine humility and a strong sense of self-effacing humor.

Another self-created mess we can find ourselves in but may be quite clueless about the karmic effect of is imposing our beliefs (which are rooted in what we feel is our spiritual knowledge and sophistication) upon others, especially if it includes negating the ones they hold. Even if we may be correct, we are missing the mark spiritually if we are disrespecting the other person so much we are rabidly trying to make them “get” what we are espousing. This goes hand-in-hand with what we may call “righteous indignation” over what we feel is our justifiable anger and feelings of superiority over someone else’s point of view – whether it is about politics, religion, or any of the plethora of what we deem are noble causes to get behind. Our spiritual knowledge and sophistication turns into just another flavor of fevered fundamentalism if we attack others’ positions with so much venom and self-righteousness we dig a deeper moat between our fellow human beings and ourselves. This also includes feeling and expressing we know exactly why something “bad” has happened in someone else’s life because of some book we read and the persuasive (yet deluded) position of the person who wrote it.

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