Adyashanti reads the word spirituality as pointing to a transpersonal dimension that is not centred on the self. He argues that the freedom of awakening is not freedom for the self but freedom from the constant demands of what he calls the tyrannical little me.
Transcript
But really spirituality, I mean the word spirituality suggests a a reality or a dimension of being that is that is transpersonal. that is that's that's beyond the personal that's that's not dominated and not fundamentally oriented around the me. It's one of the reasons we talk of kind of the freedom that's experienced. In many sense, the freedom that we realize is not the freedom from the world or free freedom for others or it's actually the freedom from the tyrannical little me. And it's constant search for happiness and all the ways that it it moves in the world. And you know certainly we can see this in the world all around us. Um what life looks like when it's oriented around the mi. Whether the mi is wanting everyone to agree with it. Whether the mi is wanting unending happiness. Whether the mi is wanting power or control, whether the mi's well, it's doing whatever it does. I think the operation of this me, if you look around you, if you look at the world around you, it's ex it's very very obvious. you you can see what's what's driving so much of life for human beings, right? And this leads to ultimately it leads to deep and profound consequences not just individually but also collectively. And so this fundamental orientation is one of the most central questions of spirituality. And it's not when I say it's foundational, it doesn't mean that it's sort of elementary that that you only look at it say at the very beginning. It's it's something that we you kind of it's useful to check upon all along the way. What is my fundamental orientation? Am I am I actually just being led around by the mi's endless search for satisfaction in all the various various ways that it does that? And is that dominating my spiritual orientation or the orientation of my life? Because when that's the case, of course, what it leads to, like I said, it's not that it's right or wrong or good or bad. It's just that it leads to well, I suppose the Buddha would have called it unsatisfactoriness. It's ultimately unsatisfactory. And and that's about the best you can say about it. You know, from there it just goes downhill, right? hate, ignorance, greed, violence domination control on and on it goes. So to say that it leads to dissatisfaction is sort of the the most mild way that you can describe the consequence of the life that's oriented only around the me. Now it's not that you can therefore see that and just discount it. Right? Because if you just try to discount the me, then of course it's always sort of pulling at you. It's it's it's always looking for resolution. But here's the difference between spirituality and a lot of the more meoriented therapies, which most therapies say are. And that's why they're actually pretty useful because they're some of them are are actually pretty good at getting the me to be more less divided, less in conflict, more more happy, right? But like I said, there's a limitation. And the thing that makes spirituality what it is is because of its orientation. Its orientation of spirit. Spirit means you could think of it as simp which transcends the personal self.