But if we were to realize that we are, as it were, all action, all deed — the doer vanishes, and with it vanishes this sense of man as something sepa… - Alan Watts

Indeed, the power of words has gone to man’s head in more than one way. To define has come to mean almost the same thing as to understand.

In having a flawed sense of identity, we act in a way that is inappropriate to our natural environment.

This is why I am not overly enthusiastic about the various “spiritual exercises” in meditation or yoga which some consider essential for release from the ego. For when practiced in order to “get” some kind of spiritual illumination or awakening, they strengthen the fallacy that the ego can toss itself away by a tug at its own bootstraps. But there is nothing wrong with meditating just to meditate, in the same way that you listen to music just for the music. If you go to concerts to “get culture” or to improve your mind, you will sit there as deaf as a doorpost.