Becoming the shelter of your own fears, which I wrote about last time, is a continuous process, not a destination. And precisely this nuance, that healing and personal growth are journeys, not arrival points, is what makes a certain type of person difficult to love and to live alongside: the one who has decided they have arrived. That they have healed. That they are enlightened. That they know.
Today's subject is one I consider important and rarely addressed with honesty: the traps of the spiritual ego and of declared self-perfection.
What is the illuminated ego? It is a subtle and paradoxical form of the ego that appears after a period of genuine inner work. The person has read, gone to therapy, practised mindfulness, understood psychological mechanisms, traversed difficult processes. And at a certain point, instead of continuing with humility, they arrive at an implicit conclusion: now I am different. Now I know. Now I am more conscious than those around me.
This is not illumination. It is another form of ego defence, more sophisticated and harder to recognise precisely because it is dressed in the language of spirituality and psychology.
What does the illuminated ego look like in practice? A few concrete manifestations I recognise and which, if I am honest, I have sometimes seen in myself as well.
The first is superiority masked as concern. The person with an illuminated ego does not criticise directly. They observe, with demonstrative compassion, that the other is not conscious of their patterns. That they are in ego. That they have not processed. That they have work to do. All this concern is a way of positioning themselves above.
The second is the use of psychological vocabulary as a weapon. Words like trauma, attachment, shadow, projection, narcissism, become labels with which to judge others' behaviours, not instruments of self-knowledge. When psychology becomes a language of judgement rather than understanding, it is a clear signal.
The third is resistance to feedback. The genuinely conscious person can receive feedback with openness. The person with an illuminated ego receives feedback as an attack or as proof that the other has not understood. There is always a reason why the criticism does not apply to them.
The fourth is the use of self-awareness as an excuse. I know I have this tendency, therefore I no longer need to change anything. Awareness becomes a substitute for responsibility, not a first step towards it.
Why is this trap dangerous in relationships? For a few genuine reasons.
The first is that it produces a masked power imbalance. If I am the conscious one and you are not, all conflicts resolve simply: you have an unresolved issue and I help you see it. This dynamic is suffocating and sometimes abusive, even when dressed in therapeutic language.
The second is that it closes dialogue. You cannot negotiate with someone who has decided they are already right. You cannot express dissatisfaction towards someone who immediately reinterprets it as your unprocessed pattern. The relationship becomes a place where you feel constantly wrong, even when you are not.
The third is that it is a form of abandoning one's own humanity. Genuine growth does not produce people who no longer make mistakes or no longer have an ego. It produces people who can recognise more quickly when they have made a mistake and can return more easily to an authentic relationship. If you no longer acknowledge making mistakes, you have not grown. You have built a new mask.
How do you avoid this trap if you are on a path of personal growth? A few practices of active humility.
Treating any new understanding as a hypothesis, not a definitive truth. Being as curious about what you do not know as about what you do.
Allowing feedback without immediately psychologising it. Sometimes criticism is valid and is not a symptom of anyone. It is simply true.
Checking periodically whether you use psychology to know yourself or to evaluate others. If the balance is unequal, it is a signal.
I believe the clearest sign of psychological maturity is not the conviction that you are healed, but the capacity to remain curious and open even when you believe you have understood. That the process does not end and that precisely this openness to its continuation is what makes a person genuinely pleasant to live alongside.
Is there a domain in which you use psychological or spiritual understanding to evaluate others more than to know yourself? And what would be different if you turned the same lens inward?
