-Raeyshmanita Ramesh Kumaar, MA student from Malaysia

The desire for awakening is one of the few forces on earth capable of making highly intelligent people behave like spiritual tourists fighting over a limited supply of cosmic gold stars. If you point that drive toward something genuine—like quiet humility, washing your own dishes with absolute awareness, or simply being slightly less reactionary when someone cuts you off in traffic—it has the power to completely dismantle your ego. But point it toward an idealized, cinematic version of enlightenment featuring high-end incense, mountain retreats, and suspiciously peaceful sighs, and suddenly you’re decoding your own ordinary thoughts like a mystic translating ancient prophecy. 

The ego does not actually care about liberation; it just cares about looking profoundly elegant while trying to achieve it. Human beings will watch a spiritual trap approach in high-definition and still think, Yeah, but my posture feels incredibly holy right now. The intellect can identify every single attachment in perfect, textbook detail while the shadow is sitting in the corner vaping and yelling, Look how incredibly detached we are! People will willingly sacrifice their comfort, their time, and occasionally their savings just to feel briefly aligned with a concept of purity that exists only in books written by dead masters. 

And the truly embarrassing part is how creative seekers become when justifying spiritual laziness. Nobody gaslights us better than our own spiritual ego. We’ll call emotional numbness “equanimity.” We’ll call a total avoidance of real-life conflict “practicing non-harm.” We’ll treat our deep-seated fear of intimacy as a “solitary retreat calling,” using ancient vocabulary to protect ourselves from the terrifying vulnerability of just being a regular human being. 

Still, not every spiritual crisis is a waste of time. Crashing directly into your own hypocrisy is often the exact moment you are forced to evolve. It exposes your hidden desire for spiritual status, your unresolved patterns, and every piece of psychological baggage you assumed had quietly dissolved during your last silent retreat. Real practice rarely arrives looking calm and photogenic. More often than not, it shows up wearing the face of an annoying coworker or a difficult family member, completely ruining your manufactured zen and forcing you to face the music.