The Seven Deadly Sins of Spirituality

The Messiah Complex [Pride]: Everyone knows about the messiah complex, where someone unfortunately takes a wrong mental turn in spirituality and the ego takes over completely, and the person believes that they are so special and above all others that they become a god in their own minds. What is lesser-known is that there are varying degrees of this complex: an overly-strong desire to teach others is also still a spiritual problem, because it is an imbalance of egoistic hierarchy. One must be introspective and save themselves first in order to be able to help anyone else. Also, believing oneself to actually be enlightened when one is not is perhaps the greatest spiritual trap possible.

Endlessly searching [Greed]: It may be tough to understand at this point or even believe, but in spirituality, all you can ever find is ultimately yourself and what you already are. The search for enlightenment is a good thing of course and sometimes that might take a great tenacious effort, but people must understand that the search will only ever lead to what's been right in front of our faces all along. It is in fact in the direction of mind, but what is often confusing to most is that the mind is endless and universal; if you go off continually looking for something else other than mind, it will always be somewhere else other than where you look.

Spiritual depression [Wrath]: Depression is anger turned inward. We've all seen it here in this forum nearly every day: posts about a 'dark night of the soul' or 'awakening ruined my life'. In matters of real spirituality, we are in fact looking towards our own minds and thus unlocking secrets about ourselves and revealing what we really are deep down inside, and this is not to be taken lightly. Spiritual depression is a trap that one must move on quickly from if at all possible; lighter forms of non-clinical depression can be alleviated in some manner by realizing that this stage is still heavily mired in ego, and therefore not real understanding. Awakening is only the first step: one must keep being introspective and keep 'seeing through' to get beyond it, and must 'get out of their own heads' by moving forth with real study and practice instead of stagnating here.

Faith in spiritual gurus [Envy]: Spiritual teachers, especially popular ones, create a sort of paradox in matters of spirituality: they get so popular that people often look outwardly to them and their wisdom as opposed to looking inwards towards their own minds. That's spiritually backwards. The best teachers, take the historic teachers in original Zen history for example, will only point you back in the direction of your own mind over and over again without adding anything extra. Use your intuition: one should be especially wary of teachers who aren't enlightened themselves and try teach based on their own egos for selfish gain.

Clinging to oneness [Lust]: This rarely-understood point is probably going to cause some controversy, but please bear with me. If you want clarity and real understanding in matters of spirituality, it's a good idea to come to the understanding of not one, not two. Nearly everyone who is awakened understands the obvious fallacies and problems of separation, but what isn't as apparent is that concepts of 'oneness' are the other lesser-known side of dualism and are a more subtle problem. Everything is not separate due to the underlying principle of all things of course, but everything is not 'one' either because there are obvious distinctions between this and that and right and wrong. If everything were truly only one, then theft and killing would be one as well therefore perfectly fine to indulge in, and if we aren't absolutely deluded we know that this is far from the case.

Intellectual understanding and over-practice [Gluttony]: The paradox of spirituality or even searching for enlightenment and awakening is that usually an intellectual framework or a sort of practice must be enacted and built upon, but this very same understanding or practice can become a sort of hindrance at a certain point. As before, all you can ever really find in matters of spirituality is only your own mind, so to over-study or over-practice without seeing through both is to create more divisions from true understanding. An intellectual understanding without practical application and integration in one's life is worthless no matter how many books you read on spiritual subjects.

Not helping others [Sloth]: "The meaning of life is helping others" ~ The Dalai Lama. The nature of the ego is such that it is usually the real problem when it comes to matters of spirituality. We're all in this together, and to separate oneself from others and not go back in some way to help is ultimately self-oriented and limiting. Even in the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures of Zen, the final stage notably isn't enlightenment, but "entering the marketplace with helping hands." It's very important to note that this doesn't mean to try to awaken people who are sleeping or to set up shop and start trying to teach; helping others is often best done by simply listening to people and hearing what they have to say, or being openly accepting and tolerant of differences in understandings.