specialness and the ego

i remember watching a collection of videos of UG krishnamurti some time ago and being both shocked and delighted by his unconventional--to put it mildly--delivery.

for whatever reason, one of UG's messages that really struck home was that we humans are capable of taking just about anything and weaving it into a means for distracting us from the truth. of course by that point in my spiritual journey i thought i already understood this kind of thing, but the lesson i learned was that the drive for enlightenment can--and very often does--serve this purpose as well (and perhaps even more insidiously than more conventional distractions).

this shocked me, and i think it marked the beginning of a bout of self-reckoning that eventually forced me to acknowledge that i had been playing out the role of a spiritual person in order to feel special, unique, valuable, and above the "common herd."

the last thing i wanted, i realized, was to be common. i'd given up TV, meat, even music and socializing... pretty much everything except meditation, school, and work. in my mind, i was doing something those around me couldn't fathom, crafting myself into the rarest of human beings, putting lightyears between myself and average joe.

years later, i realized that the closer you are to truth, the closer you are to those around you. the larger the sense of separation, the deeper the delusion. when one is perfectly content with things as they are, one is not only quite happy but extraordinarily grateful to be "common." it was easy at this point to look back and see a certain stage in my "spiritual development" where i was actually quite stuck because i was using my newfound "wisdom" to set me apart in my imagination from others.

UG said something like: "i became enlightened in spite of my sadhana [spiritual practice]." when i first heard this, it was hard to imagine how things like meditation and abstinence could actually be an obstacle to truth-realization. to me, it was a simple equation: sadhana + time = enlightenment.

in reality, there is nothing we can "do" to realize truth. any action or accomplishment designed to "bring about" enlightenment is merely illusory, since the truth is already real and doesn't need to be "brought about."

as beginning spiritual seekers, it's natural that we should approach truth-realization the same way we've been taught to approach everything else: by planning and executing a set of actions. but the truth isn't the effect of anything; nothing can cause it. it doesn't even need to be caused--our only job is to realize it as it is. in order for this to happen, we have to "stop doing" rather than "do more."

stop doing what? that which distracts us from the truth: selfing, identifying, constantly investing in an illusory image of self. this is something that we literally devote 99% of our waking (and even much of our non-waking) energy to. it has taken on a life and momentum of its own, but with the practice of awareness we can stop investing in it and let the inertial drive run itself out. the question is, are we truly prepared to dismantle that which we think we are?

please feel free to post any thoughts/reactions/questions related to this post.