One of the great dangers on the spiritual path is that the ego becomes spiritualized. The ego loves to think of itself as spiritually evolved. It is just another way that it manages to feel important and in control. It is very difficult to free yourself from an enlightened ego.
Interpretation
The quote warns against the ego's tendency to adopt a facade of spirituality, which can hinder true enlightenment.
Leonard Jacobson emphasizes the deceptive nature of the ego on the spiritual journey. He argues that individuals may mistakenly believe they are spiritually advanced when, in fact, their ego is merely presenting itself in a more refined form. This self-deception creates a barrier to genuine spiritual growth, making it essential to recognize and confront the ego to achieve authentic enlightenment.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, you might use this quote to illustrate the pitfalls of inflated self-importance.
Once you have found yourself and accepted your aloneness, then the greatest blessing is to share the love that arises within you. Each new moment presents the richest opportunity to be loving. And you can share love in the simplest of ways. Be soft and gentle. Be caring and kind. Be loving in an ordinary way, without any sense of wanting anything back, Life offers you the most precious gift. The gift of allowing you to be present and share love.
At what point, then, should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about one of them individually...and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest.
You are -- your life, and nothing else.
Let a man set his heart only on doing the will of God and he is instantly free. If we understand our first and sole duty to consist of loving God supremely and loving everyone, even our enemies, for God's dear sake, then we can enjoy spiritual tranquility under every circumstance.
Many Spirit-filled authors have exhausted the thesaurus in order to describe God with the glory He deserves. His perfect holiness, by definition, assures us that our words can't contain Him. Isn't it a comfort to worship a God we cannot exaggerate?
Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
The first step toward maintaining autonomy in any programmed environment is to be aware that there's programming going on. It's as simple as understanding the commercials are there to help sell things. And that TV shows are there to sell commercials, and so on.
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