The Spiritual Ego

Those of us who travel in spiritual circles are all familiar with the ego, and its ways to limit, debilitate, and cower us.  But very few of us are aware of the 'spiritual ego' which takes over after we believe ourselves to be enlightened, special, or in some way different than anything else.  This is where most people in the spiritual world just end up half-baked, thinking that they've achieved something profound. 
What they fail to recognize is that this new 'awakened' identity is just another version of the same old thing....just a more enlightened ego.  This is that camp out spot where people genuinely believe that they are manifesting Truth, living from Love, and are very Intuitive---but it is actually the place where the ego has constructed a very elaborate, very spiritual sense of self.
I meet people who say oh yes yes yes I know who I truly am, I get that, I've been there already....I am free of suffering, I am free of my past.  All the while working very hard to prove this to everybody else, to demonstrate that they have somehow escaped being like you and me. 
Let us just look and see what we are actually telling ourselves, and let us examine the way in which we corrupt our own deepest nature by making our self into some glorious new thing.  Let us see the arrogance, the fear, the denial that reasserts itself at this stage.  Let us move beyond any idea of ourselves, others, or Truth into that nakedly raw place where nothing can be known, where nothing can be achieved, and where any identity we create is essentially false.
Let us see that the True Nature of all has no specialness to it, because it is that which all beings are equally.... then we will see that this Truth of our self doesn't not make us special, it destroys any notion of being special.
This leaves us being TRULY special~

Spiritual Materialism in Our Time

We are living in a time when great Masters are seldom heard, while all manner of people bearing the 'spiritual look' are venerated.  Just as in all the other arenas of life, we worship appearances and fancy titles, rather than the simplicity of the Truth within the Heart.  We read books and hear stories about these beings who walk on water and dress in robes, or have special powers and we think somehow that truth is found there...
Without knowing ourselves or our own mind we want to follow the next exciting opportunity---maybe this one will lead somewhere, but after so many empty promises...after relying on Buddha's word, or Jesus' word, or Ramana's word we must finally discover for our self what is actually true.
That is the beginning of real spirituality, and the end of our materialistic relationship with life.