Spirituality Series
In this incisive monologue, Richard Rudd uses the blade of lucid discrimination to cut through the many traps of the ego once it is involved in spirituality. Laying out 18 specific patterns that he has either encountered in himself or in others along the path, Richard approaches this little-discussed subject with gentleness and compassion. As we listen, we will doubtless recognise aspects of our own spiritual ego, and this exploration can be used as a mirror to help us let go of the subtle vanities we sometimes hide behind. This is transformative and powerful material for all people on a spiritual path, yet it is delivered with a light and skilful touch.Â
Spirituality and the Spiritual Ego
As a spiritual teacher, over the years and decades, I have noticed many patterns coming and going, both in myself and in the forces and energies I’ve observed in people and in the world at large.
Some of these forces fall into the realm of what we might call the spiritual ego. There are many traps on any spiritual path, and I’ve decided to categorise some of the ones I’ve noticed and share them with you. The purpose of doing this is twofold. Firstly, it helps me clarify, as a teacher, which patterns I may personally fall victim to and gain greater awareness around them. Secondly, it offers a mirror that you can hold up to yourself and ask, ‘Which of these patterns might apply to me?’
I hope this can serve as an inspiring and useful checklist. I’ve identified 18 patterns, though I’m sure there are many more. I encourage you to explore them for yourselves because there are layers to this ego. As your spiritual understanding becomes more refined, the patterns become subtler and subtler.
I’ve given these patterns names, and I’d like to begin with the first one.
The Spiritual Materialist
The Spiritual Materialist is really about the leader or the master.
Many leaders build credentials. I personally wrote a large Gene Keys book, and that can be very impressive to some people. Others may have had a profound spiritual experience at some point. Someone else may have spent 20 years in a monastery. Others belong to a lineage.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things. I’m not suggesting otherwise. The point is that we build stories around ourselves. You could be a life coach who writes a book, or a teacher guiding others in any capacity. In any situation where you are teaching or supporting people, spiritual materialism can enter the picture.
It becomes a trap because recognition arrives. Sometimes admiration arrives. You may be placed on a pedestal and seen as the healer, the saviour or the master.
You have to be extremely careful with that because it is easy to become trapped by the glamour of spiritual fame – or by the pursuit of it. It is also easy to become attached to the appreciation people feel when you offer them something meaningful, especially when it touches their heart or soul very deeply.
It is easy to be trapped by the glamour of worship, adoration and recognition.
At the same time, all of this serves a purpose. There are many teachers and many people offering spiritual teachings today. It sometimes seems as though everyone is doing it. Among them are authentic voices and less authentic voices. There are genuine teachers, and there are tricksters.
Together they form a rich canvas, and the purpose of that canvas is to help us develop discernment. Often we follow a teacher and place them on a pedestal only to watch them fall from it. That is often a valuable part of the journey.
This forms the backdrop of many spiritual paths. You are fortunate if you find a teacher who is crystal clear and remains the right guide for your entire journey. But many of us encounter a variety of teachers and teachings, and that requires an increasingly refined level of discernment.
We learn through trial and error.
The Spiritual Materialist can be the leader, the follower or anyone involved in the spiritual exchange. It is a pattern that affects all of us in one way or another.
For that reason, it is one of the most important patterns to watch for.
The Spiritual Victim
The Spiritual Victim is more often a follower.
These are people who follow blindly and without question. Everything their teacher says is considered right.
That isn’t necessarily a negative thing. Absolute faith in a teacher can be extraordinarily powerful. Osho once told a story about a sincere seeker who followed an inauthentic teacher – a master who was essentially pretending. Yet because of the devotee’s sincerity and devotion, they still experienced transcendence.
There is an important lesson in that story. Sometimes we have to leave our teachers behind. Again, this comes back to discernment. Sometimes we move beyond a teacher, and sometimes we don’t. There may be exceptional teachers and exceptional followers. However, if a teacher is true to their nature, they should welcome your growth beyond them. A true teacher wants to lift you up. They want you to transcend them. If they don’t, then it may be worth asking questions.
Often we follow a teacher, a philosophy or a spiritual system until a point arrives where part of us wants to expand even further. That is a powerful phase of development. Sometimes it is not merely about moving beyond a teacher. Sometimes it involves stretching beyond a set of teachings or philosophies that have served us well.
We are occasionally called to move beyond even the great wisdom traditions we have inherited. Part of the journey is not becoming a victim of a lineage or a teaching. It is remaining available to the possibility that life may be asking you to go beyond it. That is something worth considering.
Be careful not to become trapped by credentials, lineages or systems of thought that close down your capacity for exploration.
The Spiritual Escapist
The Spiritual Escapist is what I call the up-and-out seeker. I used to be one myself.
These are the people who say, ‘This is my last life.’ It may be. But that’s often the language of the escapist. ‘I’m here to escape samsara.’ ‘I’m here to attain nirvana.’ The trap is not in the teaching itself, the trap is in the desire to escape.
There are subtler versions of this pattern as well. In the Advaita tradition, for example, there is the teaching that there is nothing to do, there is no need for spiritual practice, you are already enlightened.
There is profound truth in that, but that insight must arrive naturally, like fruit falling from a tree. If you are still a seed, you cannot force yourself to become the fruit. You may hear someone speak from a place of realisation and deeply resonate with what they are saying, but resonance is not the same as realisation. I’ve seen people encounter these teachings and feel enormous relief, ‘Oh, I can stop. I don’t have to seek anymore. What a relief. No more searching.’ That relief itself can create a feeling of expansion, and that expansion can easily be mistaken for awakening.
The question is: have you earned that stage? Is it a temporary state, or is it truly a stage of development? Because when something is genuinely realised, it doesn’t disappear, it remains. Just because a realised person says something doesn’t mean you have realised it. You may still need years of searching before that truth becomes fully embodied.
So be aware of the Spiritual Escapist – the part of us that always wants to get away rather than arrive more deeply. Personally, I’m interested in the opposite movement. I’m interested in going down and in. I’m interested in bringing spiritual realisation into the body, into form, into the world. Not escaping life, but inhabiting it completely.
When someone says, ‘I don’t want to be here anymore,’ I think: be here, be here fully. Be here so completely that you would never want not to be here.
Then you are truly present.
Then you are truly embodied.
That is empowerment.
The Spiritual Extremist
The Spiritual Extremist is addicted to the high. We become attached to elevated states of consciousness.
Whether it’s Kundalini yoga, plant medicine, meditation, chanting or any number of spiritual practices, there are many ways of reaching those exalted states that connect us with our higher nature. These experiences are beautiful, but they can also become addictive. The pursuit of spiritual highs can make us very tight internally. We become attached to extraordinary experiences rather than grounded transformation. As I understand it, genuine revelation most often arrives through balance. The Buddha called it the Middle Way. According to the story, Siddhartha once heard a musician say,
‘If the string is too tight, it will snap. If it’s too loose, it will not play.’
The same principle appears in many traditions. Too much intensity creates its opposite. We burn out, we collapse, we become rigid. That doesn’t mean extremes are wrong for everyone. There are genuine ascetics whose path requires extraordinary discipline. For some people, those extremes are correct, but they are probably the exception rather than the rule. My question is always: what’s the hurry?
One teacher once said, ‘Enlightenment is not in front of you. It’s behind you. If you slow down, maybe it will catch up.’ There is wisdom in that.
Be careful of becoming too tight, too intense or too driven.
The Spiritual Provocateur
The Spiritual Provocateur loves to challenge. They enjoy questioning other spiritual paths, exposing contradictions and positioning themselves as rebels. There is often a subtle pride involved – ‘I say it how it is. I’m a rebel.’
The irony is that identifying as a rebel is simply another form of identification. The ego can attach itself to anything. These are often the people who enjoy debunking the views, beliefs and practices of others, yet there is beauty in the diversity of spiritual paths. There is even beauty in paths that seem mistaken, incomplete or misguided. Why stop someone from walking down a dead-end road? They may discover something valuable there. They may find exactly what they need before turning around and choosing another path.
Even seemingly extreme or irrational paths can serve as necessary stages in someone’s development. For that reason, all paths deserve a degree of respect. Certainly there are times when spiritual inauthenticity should be challenged, but the way we challenge matters.
Kindness matters. Sometimes the impulse to provoke comes not from wisdom but from unresolved trauma. We look outward because we have not looked deeply enough inward. When we fail to examine ourselves honestly, spiritual knowledge can become a weapon. It becomes another form of projection. We seek reactions from others because those reactions reinforce our sense of identity. It’s a common pattern, I’ve experienced it many times myself. And how we respond to provocation becomes part of our own learning.
Eventually, we may discover that compassion is the strongest response available to us.
The Spiritual Dogmatist
The Spiritual Dogmatist, or Spiritual Puritan, is similar to the Provocateur but often operates more subtly. This pattern carries a sense of superiority. ‘My teacher transcends all others,’ ‘My teaching is the ultimate teaching.’ You hear different versions of this attitude. Another common variation is, ‘It’s not all love and light.’ People often say this as though love and light are somehow naïve. Whenever I hear it, I find myself thinking, ‘Well, I love unicorns. What’s wrong with them?’
The Provocateur attacks, while the Dogmatist defends. The Dogmatist uses spiritual knowledge to reinforce a defensive worldview. These are the people who look at others and think, ‘They’re asleep’, ‘They’re in their not-self’, or ‘They haven’t found the way yet.’ It may even become, ‘Those Gene Keys people are lost souls.’ I’ve heard things like that said about entire spiritual communities. It’s remarkable how quickly we can condemn large groups of people. On the other side, there is the belief that our teacher is the world’s saviour. One spiritual view attacks another, one group claims superiority over another, and more often than not, a dogma is being protected. Otherwise, why would it matter so much? Why not simply let it go?
The exception, of course, is when a teaching is genuinely harming people. If something is causing real damage, then challenging it becomes a valid and necessary act. But most spiritual arguments are not about protecting people, they are about protecting beliefs.
The Spiritual Cynic
The Spiritual Cynic is always looking for flaws and, naturally, finds them everywhere. If you are a cynic, that is what you look for, and therefore that is what you find. Hearing this probably won’t change your mind in the slightest. This section is really for those who find themselves on the receiving end of cynical energy.
One of the greatest lessons is learning what Native Americans sometimes call ‘duck’s-back medicine’. Water lands on a duck’s back and simply rolls off. Criticism comes towards you, you feel whatever emotion it stirs, and then you let it pass. This takes practice. Eventually, you learn to respond with compassion rather than defensiveness.
There is rarely a need to defend your view. In fact, if you constantly feel the need to defend it, you may want to examine your attachment to it. Your role is not to defend a view, your role is to embody it.
I’ve reflected on this many times through my own work. Whenever you put something into the world, you expose yourself to criticism. Some of it is useful, and some of it is projection. Over the years, I’ve read comments suggesting that I’m only interested in money or that the Gene Keys are simply a marketing exercise designed to sell more products. Those things are not easy to read, especially when you’ve gone out of your way to make your work accessible and affordable.
What’s fascinating is how much weight we give to criticism. Imagine a book with a thousand five-star reviews and three one-star reviews. Most of us read the one-star reviews first and give them more attention than the thousand positive ones. It’s remarkable how strongly we are drawn to scepticism and distrust.
I remember noticing that the most prominent review of my book online was a negative one. For a moment I wondered whether I should do something about it. Then I realised that perhaps it was exactly as it should be. Let people read it, let them discern for themselves. Perhaps the negative review would help attract people who were genuinely meant to engage with the work. Everything can be turned into an opportunity for deeper trust and discernment.
The Spiritual Sniper
Closely related to the Cynic is what I call the Spiritual Sniper. These are the criticisms, comments and attacks that emerge from the undergrowth and then disappear again. The important thing to understand is that this is not really about people. These are energies that move through people, we all embody them at different times.
The Sniper strikes and then vanishes. What’s interesting is that these energies rarely want resolution. Over the years I’ve received complaints and criticisms and have responded by offering refunds, conversations and opportunities to meet face to face. Almost none of those offers have been accepted. The energy wasn’t interested in dialogue, it simply wanted to fire its shot and move on.
If you are challenged, meet the challenge openly. Invite conversation. Listen. Show respect. Show compassion. You have nothing to hide. But if the other person refuses to step out from the shadows, there is very little you can do. At that point, the wisest response is simply to let it go.
Be brave. Be direct. If you have something to say, say it openly. If someone challenges you, meet them with honesty and presence. That becomes an opportunity to model the very values you claim to hold.
The Spiritual Conspiracist
The Spiritual Conspiracist is everywhere these days. Aliens, the Illuminati, reptilians, governments, Bill Gates, 5G, vaccines – the specific subject doesn’t really matter, the pattern is always the same. The Conspiracist wants you to believe the theory, and if you don’t, you are considered a victim of the conspiracy itself.
The difficulty with this mindset is that it doesn’t leave room for people to make their own decisions. If I choose to take a vaccine, let me take it. Trust me to weigh the evidence and decide for myself. Trust me to exercise my own discernment.
Having said that, conspiracy theories often contain a grain of truth. Sometimes they contain a great deal of truth. The real test is whether someone becomes attached to a single issue, or whether they move endlessly from one conspiracy to the next until the entire world appears to be controlled by hidden forces. At that point, it may be worth looking more deeply at the underlying psychology.
There is value in challenging the status quo. There is value in asking difficult questions. But I would be cautious about beginning with the assumption that all governments, institutions or authorities are fundamentally trying to harm you. That assumption often says more about our internal landscape than about external reality.
Freud once said, ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.’ We have a tendency to project blame onto a mysterious ‘them’ – a convenient place to deposit unresolved fear, anger or trauma. As with all of these patterns, the issue is identification. If you identify with the role, you become trapped by it. If you can hold it lightly as an idea, an opinion or a possibility, then you remain free.
The Spiritual Fantasist
The Spiritual Fantasist becomes lost in extraordinary stories and mystical identities. Multidimensional DNA, 24 chakras, past lives as Mary Magdalene or King Arthur – there is an endless supply of fascinating narratives available within the spiritual world.
The line here is very fine. In fact, it is fine with every pattern on this list. I am not judging any of them, because each contains both a gift and a shadow.
There is something I call magical thinking. Magical thinking can be profoundly powerful. Indigenous cultures often employ it as a way of engaging with reality through imagination, intuition and symbolic awareness. It allows us to access truths that the rational mind cannot always reach.
At the same time, magical thinking can become a spiritual bypass. I once met someone who used a tapping technique on different points of the spine. Each point supposedly corresponded to a different spiritual attainment. As I looked down the list, I noticed that one point was labelled ‘Buddhahood’. I asked if tapping that point would actually produce Buddhahood. He assured me that it would.
That is where caution becomes necessary.
Trauma is not resolved in an instant. The shadow is not transcended with a shortcut. Deep healing requires that we enter the experience, feel it fully and move through it consciously. There are no shortcuts.
It is very easy to become swept away by fascinating ideas and lose contact with practical reality, with the earth and with the body. Think magically if you wish, but hold those ideas lightly. Let them enrich your imagination without becoming your identity.
The Spiritual Saviour
The Spiritual Saviour, sometimes also the Spiritual Imposer, is the person whose healing technique appears to offer all the answers. These are the people who are always ready with a healing, a reading or a solution. Beneath the surface, there is often a subtle desire for recognition. There is an eagerness to help that can become excessive.
You may encounter someone who gives a reading that lasts three hours because they simply cannot stop themselves from sharing more. They want to help, they want to contribute, and they want to be seen as valuable. Sometimes this shows up as the belief that a particular diet, practice or healing modality is perfect for everyone – ‘This worked for me, therefore everyone should do it.’
Often there is a lack of boundaries. A classic example is trying to convert your partner. You become deeply involved in a spiritual path while your partner has little or no interest in it. That discomfort can create a desire to persuade them, convert them or bring them onto your path. But perhaps they do not need to be on your path. Perhaps they simply need to be loved exactly as they are.
Another variation appears when someone says, ‘My guidance says you should do this,’ or ‘My guides say you should wear white,’ or ‘You should eat this.’ These statements can subtly undermine another person’s authority. They encourage dependence on an external source rather than trust in one’s own inner knowing.
This does not mean we should never listen to the intuition of others. There are gifted people whose insights can be enormously helpful, but we must remember that we each possess our own intuition as well. It is there primarily to guide our own lives and help us discern what is right for us.
The Spiritual Narcissist
The Spiritual Narcissist knows a great deal about spirituality but has very little humility or capacity for self-inquiry. There are many people with extensive spiritual knowledge who have not yet undertaken the deeper work of examining themselves honestly.Â
As a result, they project spiritual dramas outward. Their attention is focused on what everyone else is doing wrong rather than what remains unresolved within themselves.
Like many of these patterns, this one can be difficult to recognise from the inside. Often those embodying it are the least likely to see it. For the rest of us, the lesson is simple: take what serves your growth and leave the rest. The development of another person is not your responsibility. It is not within your control. The moment you begin trying to manage someone else’s evolution, you drift into becoming the Spiritual Saviour.
The real opportunity is always your own growth.
The Spiritual Pleaser
The Spiritual Pleaser is always gentle, always smiling and always accommodating. They are endlessly yielding and often reluctant to create conflict or discomfort.Â
There is beauty in kindness, but there can also be a lack of backbone. Sometimes a person needs a little more warrior energy. It is possible to listen too much, to defer too often and to avoid speaking with clarity when clarity is required.Â
This pattern is relatively simple. Be aware of the tendency to please. Notice when gentleness becomes avoidance. Spiritual maturity requires both an open heart and a strong spine.
The Spiritual Tourist
The Spiritual Tourist never settles anywhere for very long. There are many of them today. I was one myself for a time.
The Spiritual Tourist moves from book to book, course to course, teacher to teacher and retreat to retreat. There is always something new to explore. What fascinates me is that people will sometimes enrol in retreats or programmes and then never attend them. They sign up with enthusiasm and then simply move on to the next thing. They do not ask for a refund, they do not engage. The commitment itself seems to satisfy something.
The lesson here is simple: if you are looking for water underground, and you dig shallow wells in many different places, you never reach the water table. If you choose one place and dig deeply enough, eventually, you find water.Â
The Spiritual Tourist is often a phase of development. When we begin the journey it is natural to explore many different paths, there is nothing wrong with that. But eventually, there comes a point where depth becomes more important than variety. That is when real transformation begins.
The Spiritual Comedian
The Spiritual Comedian uses humour to deflect depth, pain or genuine connection. They are often delightful people, but they can be surprisingly difficult to reach.
Every time a conversation moves towards vulnerability, humour arrives and redirects the energy. Every time discomfort appears, another joke emerges.
There is not much you can do except gently point out the pattern when appropriate. Even then, the Comedian may simply turn your observation into another joke.
Humour is a beautiful gift and an important part of the spiritual path. We need laughter. We need lightness. The issue arises when humour becomes a defence mechanism that prevents intimacy and authenticity.
The ideal is balance. Be serious when seriousness is needed and funny when humour is needed. Be, in a sense, seriously funny.
The Spiritual Know-It-All
The Spiritual Know-It-All is perhaps a pattern I should be careful about, considering I’ve just created this entire checklist.
The paradox of the Spiritual Know-It-All is that they often have very few opinions of their own. They attempt to maintain a position of spiritual objectivity, but in doing so they can become somewhat disengaged from life. The pattern is often intellectual and can carry a subtle sense of superiority.
Challenge them, and they may become surprisingly defensive because they have constructed a well-fortified citadel of knowledge. Their understanding protects them from uncertainty and vulnerability.
Like many of these patterns, the deeper issue is the inability to be vulnerable. There is tremendous power in being both strong and vulnerable at the same time. When someone can admit uncertainty, acknowledge their limitations and remain open-hearted, they are no longer trapped by knowledge.
Vulnerability breaks the pattern.
The Spiritual Succeeder
The final pattern is the Spiritual Succeeder. This is the person who believes they have arrived, they have reached the destination, they are enlightened, they are awakened, they are a master.
A true master never calls themselves a master. Other people may use that word, but they will not.
This pattern often appears in subtle ways. Someone decides they are no longer a seeker, they have transcended the search. But seeking cannot simply be abandoned through a decision, it must be exhausted naturally.
If the exhaustion is genuine, there is no superiority. If it is not genuine, a subtle hierarchy emerges: there are awakened people and asleep people; there are people living their design and people not living their design; there are people in shadow and people beyond shadow.
The moment those divisions appear, duality has returned.
We never stop growing. We never stop changing. We never stop evolving. Consciousness itself may be perfect, but awareness continues to evolve through form.
Be careful of believing there is an end point. Be careful of believing there is a final escape or ultimate arrival.
Everywhere you turn, there is another trap.
Be Gentle With Yourself
There is a wonderful book by Chögyam Trungpa called Spiritual Materialism. I read it when I was younger. It is not always a comfortable book, but it is a valuable one. One of the themes he explores is the danger of success and the danger of believing that we know. This checklist is not intended as a weapon. It is not something to use in order to identify where other people are stuck. It is not for diagnosing your friends, your teachers or your spiritual community.
It is for you.
Certainly, you may recognise some of these patterns in the people around you, but that is not the point. The moment we begin using spiritual insight to judge others, impose our views or discuss someone’s shortcomings behind their back, we have fallen into another trap. The line is always incredibly fine. The deeper our awareness becomes, the subtler the ego becomes. Every spiritual insight can be transformed into a belief system. Every teaching can become a dogma, every truth can become an identity. The purpose of this discussion is simply to offer a mirror. Perhaps it encourages you to look a little more deeply within yourself and notice some of these roles when they arise.
Ultimately, these are all costumes in the great human drama. They are no different from any of the other roles people play in the world. There are saints and sinners, kings and janitors and countless other identities that human beings adopt throughout their lives. Every costume has its place, every role serves a purpose. The most important thing is to meet ourselves and others with integrity.
If these reflections help us become more compassionate, then they have served their purpose. In my experience, there comes a stage in spiritual development where the only thing that truly helps is the heart. The moment we project blame, apply labels or place people into categories, the heart begins to contract. Use this list lightly. Use it wisely. Most importantly, use it on yourself before you ever think of applying it to anyone else.
Above all, the only real protection against spiritual ego is the heart. Love. Self-love. A tender heart. A compassionate view of the world. Be gentle with yourself.
That has become something of a personal creed for me because it is the only thing I have found that consistently softens these traps of the ego. Simplicity, patience and gentleness are extraordinary guides on the path of self-inquiry and contemplation.
There is a beautiful quote from Vivekananda: ‘Have as many faces as you can for a full enjoyment of life.’ In other words, try on all of these roles. Find them within yourself. Notice them in others. Learn from them and then let them go.
We are not here to be perfect. We are here to be perfectly imperfect.
If there is one thing I hope you take from all of this, it is a greater sense of gentleness towards yourself. The only thing we can really do is soften the heart and allow it to open. That is how we move beyond these patterns, that is how we open ourselves to the deeper awakening already waiting within us.
Thank you for staying with me through this rather mammoth checklist. I hope it has been useful to you. Many blessings to you, whoever you are and wherever you may be.
Thank you.
