The point of meditation is not merely to be an honest or good person in the conventional sense, trying only to maintain our security. We must begin t… - Chögyam Trungpa

According to the Buddhist tradition, the spiritual path is the process of cutting through our confusion, of uncovering the awakened state of mind. When the awakened state of mind is crowded in by ego and its attendant paranoia, it takes on the character of an underlying instinct. So it is not a matter of building up the awakened state of mind, but rather of burning out the confusions which obstruct it. In the process of burning out these confusions, we discover enlightenment. If the process we otherwise, the awakened state of mind would be a product, dependent upon cause and effect and therefore liable to dissolution.

Unless we are able to make friends with outselves, there is no hope at all. If we abandon ourselves as hopeless, as villains, then there is no steppingstone.

Walking the spiritual path properly is a very subtle process; it is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous sidetracks which leades to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques. This fundamental distortion may be referred to as spiritual materialism.