We’re living in a culture that focuses on the psychological very, very strongly, and in that sense we tend to see psychological problems as things that need to be given primary consideration before one can go on to spiritual work.
In other traditions, for example in Burma, where I study meditation, psychological issues are really treated as pretty irrelevant. You go ahead with the spiritual practice, and the psychological problems keep changing as your spiritual development progresses. One with the other.
In the West, what most of us have done is form an interplay that is often sequential rather than simultaneous. To avoid this, you’ve got to understand that all of your spiritual practices are selected at least partially as a function of your psychological make up. Then, when you follow your spiritual practice, there will be points where you begin to realize that your psychological problems, or neurosis, or patterns are becoming more apparent and coming to the surface really well.
What you would like to do now is stop for a moment, and attend to them because they seem ripe for plucking.
I think that to the extent you keep looking at it and analyzing it over and over, you tend to reinforce it’s reality. I think from a spiritual point of view, the best game is to take a look, see whats ripe, and then go back into your spiritual practices. You’ve got to get it as it comes up, because once it’s up, it has all kinds of secondary effects and it feeds upon itself. You get it at the beginning, and you have to make the commitment, “I really wanna let go of that stuff – it’s not letting me go to God. I don’t need it anymore. It’s not serving me.” And then every time it comes up you get it out. You get rid of it.
-Ram Dass
