It is interesting to observe how we tend to carry certain psychological choices from one sphere of life into another, even though such spheres are completely different. One of such psychological aspects is that as we become more successful in life, we become more unavailable to people that we knew and were even friends with before. It is true that sometimes we have to leave old friends from the past if we lose affinity with them or if seeing them is harmful for us, but often time the main reasons why we decided to become more unavailable is simply because we are now more successful, have more money, and therefore have access to friendships that are of the same or similar social status. Sadly, the same thing is happening in the sphere of spirituality also.

Some time ago I had a conversation with someone in which they said that the more we advance spiritually, the more we become inaccessible to others. This was mentioned as if it is some kind of a rule or a concrete scenario happening to everyone who ascend spiritually. Even though thinking in such a way could bring one into trouble, it is not the only trap that one can fall into when on the path to awakening.

There are many cases where students of spirituality progressed in their social life within spiritual organizations, which gave them opportunity to “climb higher” on the ladder of their respective schools. This often time entails having more responsibility with tasks that have to be done within that school, or progressing to a level of spiritual teacher. Many people when reaching such responsibilities start to change in the way that they interact with others, limiting communication and dedicating most of their time to their new tasks and to those who create such tasks for them. It is not unusual that people in such cases would, partly consciously and partly not, start considering themselves more important than those who are not given such tasks, and therefore they would start making choices of making themselves inaccessible to people who are “bellow their level”.

This is something that is happening in various spiritual schools, and sadly it is a common human trait. It is peculiar however, that it is applied in the same way in spirituality as in other walks of life, considering that spiritual journey is supposed to change someone for the better, making them more awake to the reality of life.

The same thing could happen also to people who actually start to ascend spiritually in a true way. If they discover the level they are on, and if they are not having a watchful eye over their defects, they could be self-mislead into thinking themselves being more important and better than the rest, feeling that they should be surrounded with people  who are more spiritual or even with the masters of wisdom themselves.

Having said that, it is not uncommon nor a problem when those who reach higher spiritual levels want to associate more with people who are on their respective levels (or above). Nor is it a problem for someone to decrease the amount of communication as their responsibilities increase as the result of reaching higher and higher spiritual levels and therefore having to be present at different stations. There is a need to prioritize how we spend our time, because after all everyone has only that much hours in any given day.

Nevertheless, it is good to be attentive of the egos that want us to feel ourselves being better than others; to be watchful of pride and vanity that use circumstances of life to feed themselves. It is good to be aware of this trap, because in the long run we could waste quite a lot of time thinking that we are doing a spiritual work and that we are advancing, when in reality what we do is conforming to the framework of the inner work that our personality and egos have shaped.

Feeling the need to stop being accessible to others because of the spiritual progress that we have made or because of the responsibility that we are given, is rarely justified in the eyes of divinity, and will often time blind us from seeing what it is to truly progress in the inner work.

If we give in to such thinking and make decisions based on it, it means that we haven’t really understood ourselves enough; we haven’t really understood pride and vanity and how they operate. It means that we may want to get rid of some egos that we have, but by not understanding what pride is (and therefore not seeing it), such progress will be limited.

To help others is to sacrifice for humanity, to be accessible as much as we can to help those that need our help. Picking-and-choosing people that we will help based on how we feel ourselves to be, will ultimately be a great stoppage on the road to the Being.

HDP, May 2020.