Baruch Spinoza, the Jewish-Dutch mystic, succinctly captures a profound understanding of the universe in his defining tenet of classic almonism: "God, or Nature, is the whole, infinite, eternal, necessarily existing, active system of the universe within which absolutely everything exists."

Despite its inherently complex intellectual nature, this vision of a unified cosmos resonates experientially with every nuance of reality, for everything - that’s every specific and minute phenomenon known and unknown - is in a sense itself contained within the broader 'Self,’ our quintessential uncompounded essence as revealed awareness.

The crux of spiritual travail resolves itself around when we, unbidden, assume the physical body to be the inalterable vestment of the Self - that’s when identification begins, and suffering ensues.

The term “ego” derives its etymological base in the word signifying “I.” In a spiritual topology, however, this archetypal concept describes not a straightforward I-ness, but an illusory false self-image - faint reflections born in thought and residing primarily at the aspirational, hypothetical interface.

Spiritual labour then reconfigures and focuses around extinguishing affective investments fostered via identification with such unexamined self-conceptions so that one develops an attuned dynamic.

A pertinent insight underscoring these contemplative maneuvers exists in Buddhist psychiatrist Mark Epstein’s apt observation where he posits our existential obligation: the interminable project entailed by the necessary act of starving off ego’s relentless drive to continually"do" with the capacity to simply "be," which means finding contentment and meaning beyond constant achievement and recognition.

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