Spiritual Materialism
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The English language (and probably all Western languages) is object-oriented by nature. Simply by being native Western language speakers, we are wired to position spiritual concepts as objects.
And so we compete and position ourselves regarding:
Am I awakened?
Is he awakened?
Is she awakened?
The issue is that we look at this as if it is an event.
As something you GET or ACHIEVE.
That is not the case. It is called self-realization because you realize that you’ve always been free.
You can’t get something you already have.
But you can realize you have it.
Spiritual materialism causes people to think you can “become” liberated.
And common Westernized spiritual teachings will allow us to believe they are providing us with a THING.
(Because most spiritual teachings are deeply infused with emotional repression).
If you’re driving on the freeway with blinders on, you may pass by many freeway exits without realizing it.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
You might think you’re trapped on the freeway forever, but removing the blinders just lets you see the opportunities that were already available.
We enslave ourselves with unconscious emotional repression programming.
If we don’t check it for it, make ourselves conscious of it, and remove it, then we are going to keep trying to GET something as a symptom of that repression.
We do feel a genuine lack! Because we are depriving ourselves of our genuine experience.
If we look too linearly at the issue, we are not able to recognize that being in denial of our emotional reality is exacerbating the emotion in everything we do.
What might take 3 minutes to process can be pent up for years or decades because we are trying to escape discomfort.
That’s the freeway exit we really want to take but deny ourselves simply because it’s a foreign proposition.
Joshua
