Discovering the footprints: Through dedicated study and consistent practice, individuals can begin to perceive glimpses and subtle indicators of their inherent, authentic essence, uncovering profound teachings and insights along the way.

Every individual who endeavours upon the spiritual path must not accept the fallacy that the ego - their source of attachment, resistance and delusion - is fundamentally an illusion. As spiritual travellers, we learn firsthand how the ego masquerades as our guide, fostering complacency and apathy through the proliferation of self-constructed, albeit blissfully obscure beliefs. Such myopic views only reinforce an illusory sense of freedom when, in fact, they deepen our confusion, perpetuate speciesism, racism and intolerance.

No matter where we begin - and a spiritual leader can mark such a crossing - the ego is palpable. It shows up with the stuff that forms attachments and identification with any sense of me or mine. It’s the chatter constantly remarking on likes and dislikes or accepting and rejecting certain stimuli as if its perspective is singular rather than derivative of unexamined familial, cultural, or social conditioning - all premeditated and rehearsed unconscious programming seeped in co-dependency habits and dissociative tendencies.

As followers seek spiritual guidance and illumination through the eyes of a realized teacher or the sacred texts, they enter with pre-established, limited beliefs which, unprobed, fail to acknowledge the expansive, protean essence of consciousness undergirding observation and thought. By valorising non-involvement or a detached fatalism, they run the risk of retarding the discernment of self-imposed mental limitations and overlooking inner dialogues that precipitate the kind of entrenched beliefs and value judgments to which everyone, including teachers, are not immune.

Consequently, this type of thinking prevents people from exploring the rich complexities of individual perception, effectively stymieing the organic unfolding of wisdom that stems from contemplation combined with direct engagement in the dynamic heart of practice: simply monitoring mental comings and goings until thought releases its fascination with our avowed truths and hypothetical constructions of me-the-environment.

However, once self-effacement has rendered most of our so-called truths void due to their own confounding ambiguity, we may approach true self-inquiry that liberates awareness from the tight confinement of the illusory “I,” which is the great gatecrashing ego. The upshot? An unwavering embrace of the facticity of present moments becomes the vantage point from where spiritual transformation takes flight.

Ultimately, awareness arises no longer caught in a perpetual storm of likes and dislikes but witnessing life - a moment-to-moment immersion allowing for meaning’s transcendence - then can a devotee claim to possess inner peace while respecting the genuine trials the path entails.

The only worthwhile approach involves wholeheartedly letting go of ego’s tyranny over how we value the experience of being a mere point of awareness within the grand cosmic drama unfolding before - but not exclusively for any particular spectator.

And why exactly this focus on transcending and incorporating one’s truth into an even wider, more inclusive awareness? The self, including conscious awareness itself, realizes it resides neither alone nor atop hierarchical planes of existence. Existences interanimate existence itself—it is the very texture of life itself wherein one ‘s inherent happiness and peace of mind is not located separate from nor above in the future or some afterlife but an eternal now of awareness embracing existence—the Self that is no Self other than interplaying and inter-phenomenal modes of existence self-nourishingly embedded.