Popping Metaphysical Illusions

After living the spiritual journey for over 30 years, it is safe and appropriate to acknowledge that I myself have indulged in many metaphysical illusions. Ultimately I was never allowed to remain under the influence too long. Sooner or later a situation arose that forced me to wake up and and let go of a respective illusion and correct the error of my perceptions. This recognition of an illusion in one's life is never pleasant and is in direct confrontation with the common ego modality of "being always right and the 'other' always wrong."

Having undergone many surgeries of that illusion-popping kind in my life, I now find myself quite often in the position of popping illusions as we are teaching, in Paris and also in Tokyo.

Generally these illusions relate to some seekers' desire to uphold the image of spiritual perfection that supposedly is obtained in or after the event of spiritual awakening. At other times there does not even exist a desire for awakening (even a wrong motivation for awakening is better than none). Rather, the individual is bent upon the acquisition of psychic or magical powers to erase the feeling of helplessness and lack of control in the face of a universe that is seemingly overwhelming and at times brutally hostile.

Therefore, the acquisitions of power or various psychic abilities has become quite a dominant reality in various spiritual domains and those type of quests are rampant in the world of New Age spirituality.

Therefore it is helpful to stop for a moment and ask "What is the theme of my spiritual quest?" To clarify and verbalize this to oneself seems important to me.

It is because of this corruption of the spiritual quest that the number of sincere seekers, in my opinions, is actually not that high. There may be a lot of spiritual posturing, but without substantial degree of realization based on solid practice.

The good news, however, can be found in this very elating fact: as a human being evolves and genuine awakening experiences take place as a result of the meeting of powerful personal effort and the descending of grace, s/he, by virtue of a growing illumination and expansion of the soul, becomes capable of balancing the negativity of a growing number of people. Meaning, for example, that a Buddha or a Christ ultimately neutralizes the negativity of tens of millions of people.

This summarizes the good news for the day!