Psychotherapist dr. Mariana Caplan has devoted her life to the exploration of discernment in spirituality. She summarized her findings into a list of 10 spiritually transmitted diseases, which you can read about below.
"I was shocked to learn how spiritual views become 'infected' by creating a confused and immature attitude towards complex spiritual principles," he says Mariana Caplan, author of Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path. "Do we really think that if someone meditates for 5 years or practices yoga for 10 years, that they will be a less nervous person than anyone else? No, not at all, at best he will be a little more aware of it.”
Mariana is like that researched for the past 15 years discernment on the spiritual path, especially in all slippery areas such as power, sex, enlightenment, gurus, scandals, psychology and neurosis... Thus she defined 10 "spiritually transmitted diseases". This is not true spirituality, because, according to Mariana, it is about confused and immature ideas in relation to complex spiritual principles, which, however, spread like an infectious disease.
1. Instant spirituality
Mix spirituality with a culture that celebrates speed, multitasking, and instant gratification, and the result is instant spirituality. Instant spirituality is a product of common and understandable fantasy, that relief from the suffering of human existence can be quick and easy. One thing is clear: spiritual transformation cannot be achieved quickly.
2. Artificial spirituality
It is an artificial spirituality a tendency toward speech, dress, and behavior that we imagine to be characteristic of a spiritual person. It is a kind of mimicry of spirituality that mimics spiritual knowledge, just as leopard print fabric mimics the skin of a leopard.
3. Confused motives
Although our desire to grow is sincere and pure, it often becomes mixed with lower motifs, for example with the need for love, the need to belong, to fill the inner emptiness, the belief that the spiritual path will eliminate suffering, and the need to be something special, to be better, to be "the one".
4. Identification with spiritual experience
In this disease, the ego identifies with spiritual experience and appropriates it. We come to believe that we embody the insights that have arisen within us at a given moment. In most cases it does not last forever, although this identification can last for longer periods of time in those who believe they are enlightened and/or act as spiritual teachers.
5. The spiritualized ego
This disease occurs when it becomes the structure of the ego personality is deeply embedded in concepts and ideas. The result is an egoistic structure that is "impenetrable". When the ego becomes spiritualized, we are invulnerable to help, new input, or constructive feedback from others. We become impervious human beings and limited in our spiritual growth, all in the name of spirituality.
6. Mass production of spiritual teachers
There are many trendy spiritual traditions that produce people who believe themselves to be at a level of spiritual enlightenment or mastery that is far beyond their true state. This disease acts as spiritual conveyor belt: surround yourself with this radiance, acquire this knowledge and – boom – you are enlightened and ready to enlighten others in a similar way. The problem is not that these teachers teach, but that they present themselves as spiritual masters.
7. Spiritual pride
Spiritual pride arises when a practitioner through years of great effort actually he attains some level of wisdom and uses it to justify his closure to further experience. A sense of spiritual superiority is another symptom of this spiritually transmitted disease. It manifests as a subtle feeling "I am better, wiser and above others because I am spiritual".
8. Group mind
Also described as groupthink, cult mentality or ashrama disease. It is an insidious virus that it contains many elements of traditional interdependence. A spiritual group creates subtle and unconscious agreements about proper ways of thinking, speaking, dressing, and behaving. Individuals and groups infected with "group mind" reject individuals, approaches and circumstances that do not conform to the unwritten rules of the group.
9. The complex of the chosen people
The chosen people complex is not limited to Jews. This is the belief that "our group is more spiritually developed, stronger and more enlightened and, simply put, better than all other groups." There is an important distinction between acknowledging that one has found the right path, teacher, or community for oneself, and discovering "the right one."
10. Deadly "I've Arrived" Virus
This disease is so powerful that it can be fatal to spiritual evolution. It's a belief I have "arrived" at the final destination of the spiritual path. Our spiritual progress ends at the point where this belief becomes crystallized in our psyches, because the moment we begin to believe it, further growth stops.
"I believe that a critical part of learning is learning about spiritual paths and discovering pervasive diseases such as ego and self-deception that are in all of us. When we encounter obstacles on our spiritual path, there are moments when we fall into feelings of despair, lose confidence, but then we have to keep faith in ourselves and in others in order to really change something in this world." adds Mariana Caplan.
