Let Go Of Your Spiritual Crutches And Walk Freely

Crutches Are Only For The Ego

Do you find yourself seeking new spiritual teachings instead of deepening the practice you know you should be doing?

Do you keep daydreaming about spiritual fantasies instead of realizing them?

Do you depend on a specific teacher, community, teaching, or belief system to escape feeling anxious and overwhelmed?

Most spiritual people seem to rely on a “spiritual crutch” to hide from their feelings of being incomplete. Because they haven’t realized their true self yet, and still identify with their egos, they feel incomplete. They mistakenly identify with a lesser part of themselves and not the ultimate self, the boundless universal reality which stands alone, not depending on anything.

This lesser part that people identify with can sense that it’s just a limited aspect of the universal truth. It’s limited because it’s just a small part of the bigger reality. It is born and dies, doesn’t last, has no real self nature, and relies on the whole to exist.

Compared to the vast and infinite reality of our true being, the ego—our identification with a false self—is just a temporary illusion with no lasting substance.

Now when people are too strongly attached to their false selves, they can't help but feel incomplete. Instead of confronting their false identification and becoming clear of the true purpose of their spiritual paths, they get stuck with all kinds of “crutches”.

A crutch can be defined as a coping mechanism that someone relies on too much.

Anything Can Become A Crutch

It becomes very obvious when we just take a look at society.People rely on their status, charisma, success, material possessions, book-learned knowledge, and the company they keep. They are so desperate and lost that they cling to any pat on the back they get from the universe and use it as a crutch.

Just look at what happens when a rich person loses all their money, when a famous person is forgotten, or when a scientist becomes irrelevant because their theories are proven to be wrong. Unfortunately, in many cases, this ends tragically, and the person just can’t recover when their crutch is taken away.

Instead of staying aloof from worldly things and rooted in their true being, which is divine and depends on nothing, they crumble when the things they're attached to fade away. 

And the fact is, that everything that came into being will sooner or later fade away. 

There is nothing to hold onto.

Again, I’m not here to judge or condemn any profession, lifestyle, or worldly goal someone might pursue.

In spiritual circles, it’s easy to point out that being attached to fame or money will cause suffering, but attachment can go the other way as well. For example, a monk living in a temple with no material possessions might become attached to this lifestyle, feeling superior to worldly people because he has given up material things. This monk may have given up all his material possessions, but he could still be holding on to pride, believing he is spiritually advanced. When he sees a rich person in a sports car, he might think to himself, “I am superior because I have let go of the need for wealth.”

It’s possible that the rich person is actually more spiritually evolved if he isn’t attached to his wealth, compared to the monk who is attached to his identity of being poor and not needing anything.

It’s always the same mechanism. Individuals who are not rooted in their true being will always look for ways to elevate themselves, and they will use everything in order to achieve that.

Instead of confronting and exploring their lack of feeling whole, they will rather become passive and unconscious. 

They resort to a familiar crutch for support. And this crutch can be a specific feeling, a fantasie, a teaching, a community, a person, a belief, and so on.

Have you ever noticed yourself feeling uncomfortable and, instead of exploring this feeling and asking who is actually suffering, you simply covered it up with a comforting belief?

And it doesn’t stop here. We might also start justifying it, finding excuses for it. We might tell ourselves that we do it for a higher purpose, and here it can become really dangerous.

I think most people who claim to try to save the world are just distracting themselves from their existential worries and the unresolved issues within themselves. They resort to a belief system, an idea and community that confirms their illusory beliefs and comforts them.

What they are basically doing is running away from their inner conflicts and projecting their feelings of incompleteness onto the world. All kinds of troubles do arise from that.

Stand Alone and Throw Away Your Crutches

So is there a solution to this?

The answer is quite simple.

Throw away your crutches and walk freely!

Realize that you do not need these crutches or whatever you use in order to compensate for your imagined lack of completeness. Any crutch you hold onto will be a burden on your path. It will make you heavier, exhaust you and keep you from walking freely. But you are already complete. You can’t but walk the path of completeness, even if you imagine otherwise.

Your true nature does not depend on anything. 

Only our false identification with our egos require support in order to stay alive. It takes energy to uphold this illusion of being a separate self.

So the easy answer is to just let go of all your crutches.

Walking the Path of Completeness

Just be honest with yourself and become aware of whenever you are using a crutch to comfort yourself. 

Then, turn your attention to the thought or feeling you are actually trying to run away from. Open yourself towards it. 

See if you can just stay with this feeling. 

See what stories arise in your mind. Maybe you can even feel into the emotional pain that’s coming up when you allow these feelings to be with you. 

Stay with the pain. See how your mind wants to distract you from it, how it tries to hide from it, but don’t follow it. 

Open up to whatever arises, and see if you can just let it stay with you.

See if you really need a crutch for overcoming the pain or the uncomfortable feeling. Or if you can stand alone in the face of whatever comes up. 

Don’t look left or right, confront it openly, and stay with it. 

Trust in your inner strength, in your true being that does not need to be protected or supported. 

See that it’s only our imagined idea of ourselves that needs this support, but not the universal being that we truly are.

No fire can burn it and no water can drown it. It remains untouched, standing above all things.

I hope this was helpful, and if you want to learn more about how we deceive ourselves and find your strength in your true being, subscribe to my newsletter.

Wish you all the best,

Your friend of the way!