April 3, 2025
Spiritual Ego: The Hidden Enemy
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Today's unplanned reflection explores spiritual ego—that subtle feeling of superiority that can arise when we believe we're more enlightened or humble than others.
• Spiritual ego manifests when we think we're better than others or have achieved higher realization
• True enlightenment brings certain values that vary between traditions but always include humility
• My guru demonstrated genuine spiritual maturity by eating bitter fruit without complaint in a remote village
• Expectations inevitably lead to disappointment—freedom comes when we release our grip on outcomes
• I once judged people who practiced murti puja (idol worship) but now respect what their practice represents
• When we reach true realization that everything is one, we find centered peace beyond all judgments
• Taking a break from recording from the 17th April to the 4th May while on a family holiday
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Transcript
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Bearded Mystic podcast, and I'm your host, rahul N Singh.
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Thank you very much for taking out the time today to either watch or listen to the podcast episode.
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So today I don't really have an agenda to speak upon.
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I was going to record an episode about the law of attraction, part two, but I'm busy with work so I haven't had that free time to just look at it and the free mind to just kind of focus on that.
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But I thought it might be good just to see whatever comes up in this moment.
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Whatever comes up in this moment.
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And you know, one of the greatest things I find about YouTube is that we get to see different speakers from different traditions.
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We even have people in non-duality who have a wide variety of thoughts and feelings and teachings and non-teachings and non-teachings, and all that is very, very important for us to have conversations, for us to understand deeper insights and to gain more from each other.
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The concern that can happen is one that I speak about a lot, and it's the spiritual ego.
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I have to constantly check with myself that there is no spiritual ego that comes up, and it's easy for the spiritual ego to come up If you think you are better than everyone, if you think you have a higher realization than someone, if you think that you're more enlightened than the next person.
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All these things are spiritual ego.
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And the essence of spirituality is very simple, you know.
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It's just simply.
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You know, understanding the certain values that an enlightened person should have.
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Now, these values again are going to differ from tradition to tradition, and that's fine.
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That was really hard to say tradition to tradition, and that's fine.
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Uh, that was really hard to say, um and but like in Advaita Vedanta, I think the Bhagavad Gita really defines it very clearly.
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And so I've been thinking, you know, we've, we started the Vedanta Saras series and we'll continue with that soon, and that's just to kind of get to know the basics.
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And I think that once you know the basics, once you know, once you start, you know, observing your mind more, observing your senses more, seeing where your senses go, controlling how your senses go, when you do all that work, the depriving of the spiritual ego seems to be relatively slim, and the reason for that is because the work has been done and spiritual ego only comes up when the ego still has some superiority or inferiority, complex, and to kind of mask that you know it will say I'm humbler than the next person, like that's very, very humble to say that.
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Or when someone says, oh, I have no ego, I'm just like you sit down, it's okay.
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Um, let's put extra salt in their meal and see if, uh, it creates a reaction.
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Um, and, you know, for a truly enlightened person there will be no reaction.
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I, I recall a story of when my guru was.
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My guru would travel to like different.
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Well, they travel to different, like villages in India, like small villages, really small villages, really remote areas.
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And once somebody offered some fruit and the fruit was very kind of bitter.
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My guru ate all of the bitter fruit and everyone was like you know, why is he eating all the fruit?
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And that particular one?
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And later on it was found there's just a little piece of fruit was left.
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So the person whose house my guru went to, when they tried that fruit, they realized how bitter it was.
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Guru went to when they tried that fruit.
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They realized how bitter it was and they didn't see any.
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Uh, and, and my guru refused to give that to everyone else.
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He said you know, let me have it, it's okay.
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Um, and you know these little things, and and there's countless examples from other gurus too I'm not gonna say, oh, it's only in my tradition, no, in.
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I'm sure there's examples of this in other traditions too.
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Uh, but it's just.
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These are the little things that sometimes we don't kind of, uh, we don't observe.
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Now, yes, if I go to a michelin star restaurant, I'm going to expect michelin star food.
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That's an expectation of a service, right so.
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But should one become a Karen about it?
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You know, no, there's no need to become a Karen if.
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If your expectations aren't met, and if you have expectations and my guru used to say so many times, and it's so true, if you have expectations, you're going to be disappointed.
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And that's the one thing I've learned is do not have expectations from anyone or anything.
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Keep yourself free from that.
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Keeps you undisturbed for a while and whatever doesn't disturb the ego.
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That's good.
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But we certainly have expectations, of course, but we don't have to always adhere to those expectations or get worked up.
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It's one of the things I've been working on a lot.
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You know, just letting things be.
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You know just letting things be and just going with the flow and not, you know, not getting worked up, challenging, and especially when you're a young father.
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Well, I say young, but like a father, and you have to juggle so many things At the same time, understanding that how you are is going to be observed, and so, you know, it's always best to be very mindful of how one conducts oneself.
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I, uh.
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So yeah, spiritual ego, man, it, it can be devastating if you, if you ever get, get it and it's so subtle.
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Um, I remember, uh, I can recall times when I had spiritual ego.
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For sure, I can recall times, you know, I'll give a classic example.
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I used to look down on people who used to do murti puja.
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I actually used to look down on them and I used to think that what they're doing is really silly.
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And now I have a different opinion.
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Now I'm just like, like you know, I know what that multi represents, you know it's different.
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So now there's no anger or agitation about it, or or I'm higher, like there's no spiritual, like ego that comes in, like there's this humility that, okay, you know, I know what they're worshiping and I know what it represents.
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Maybe they don't, majority of people may not know, maybe they do, but who am I to judge that they don't know.
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And so these are things we get to learn about ourselves and and we improve, and that's the whole point of spirituality is improving, and when we can get to the height of true realization, we will gain so much.
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So when we get to that realization that everything is one, there is great, centered peace in that stillness and there's no higher or lower, boring or interesting.
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Life simply is being life, and that's pretty cool.
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So anyway, uh, let's see what I'll do tomorrow.
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I don't even know, taking each day as it comes, um, but on the I forgot today, I think the 17th onwards, uh, 17th to the 4th there will be no podcast episodes, unless I record some while I'm on holiday, which most likely may not happen.
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I'm not sure because I'm not taking any of my camera or my mics or anything like that, so it'd be simply just yeah, if it is, it's going to be really bad quality and I don't really want to risk the quality unless I take a different mic with me, which I may do now, thinking about it, smaller one, but um, but yeah, anyway, take care and do look after yourselves and I'll see you tomorrow.
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Take care, namaste.
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