Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
Ego is able to convert everything to its own use, even
spirituality.  For example, if you have learned of a particularly
beneficial meditation technique of spiritual practice, then ego's
attitude is, first to regard it as an object of fascination and,
second to examine it.  Finally, since ego is seeming solid and
cannot really absorb anything, it can only mimic.  Thus ego tries to
examine and imitate the practice of meditation and the meditative
way of life.  When we have learned all the tricks and answers of the
spiritual game, we automatically try to imitate spirituality, since
real involvement would require the complete elimination of ego, and
actually the last thing we want to do is to give up the ego
completely.  However, we cannot experience that which we are trying
to imitate; we can only find some area within the bounds of ego that
seems to be the same thing.  Ego translates everything in terms of
its own state of health, its own inherent qualities.  It feels a
sense of great accomplishment and excitement at have been able to
create such a pattern.  At last it has created a tangible
accomplishment, a confirmation of its own individuality.

If we become successful at maintaining our
self-consciousness through spiritual techniques, then genuine
spiritual development is highly unlikely.  Our mental habits become
so strong as to be hard to penetrate.  We may even go so far as to
achieve the totally demonic state of complete "Egohood."

Even though the Lord of Mind is the most powerful in
subverting spirituality, still the other two Lords can also rule the
spiritual practice.  Retreat to nature, isolation, simple, quiet,
high people - all can be ways of shielding oneself from irritation,
all can be expressions of the Lord of Form.  Or perhaps religion may
provide us with a rationalization for creating a secure nest, a
simple but comfortable home, for acquiring an amiable mate, and a
stable, easy job.

The Lord of Speech is involved in spiritual practice as
well.  In following a spiritual path we may substitute a new
religious ideology for our former beliefs, but continue to use it in
the old neurotic way.  Regardless of how sublime our ideas may be,
if we take them too seriously and use them to maintain our ego, we
are still being ruled by the Lord of Speech.

Most of us, if we examine our actions, would probably agree
that we are ruled by one or more of the Three Lords.  "But," we
might ask, "so what?  This is simply a description of the human
condition.  Yes, we know that our technology cannot shield us from
war, crime, illness, economic insecurity, laborious work, old age
and death; nor can our ideologies shield us from doubt, uncertainty,
confusion and disorientation; nor can our therapies protect us from
the dissolution of the high states of consciousness that we may
temporarily achieve and the disillusionment and anguish that
follow.  But what else are we to do?  The Three Lords seem too
powerful to overthrow, and we don't know what to replace them with."

The Buddha, troubled by these questions, examined the
process by which the Three Lords rule.  He questioned why our minds
follow them and whether there is another way.  He discovered that
the Three Lords seduce us by creating a fundamental myth: that we
are solid beings.  But ultimately the myth is false, a huge hoax, a
gigantic fraud, and it is the root of our suffering.  In order to
make this discover he had to break through very elaborate defenses
erected by the Three Lords to prevent their subjects from
discovering the fundamental deception which is the source of their
power.  We cannot in any way free ourselves from the domination of
the Three Lords unless we too cut through, layer by layer, the
elaborate defenses of these Lords.

The Lords' defenses are created out of the material of our
minds.  This material of mind is used by the Lords in such a way as
to maintain the basic myth of solidity.  In order to see for
ourselves how this process works we must examine our own
experience.  "But how," we might ask, "are we to conduct the
examination?  What method or tool are we to use?"  The method that
the Buddha discovered is meditation.  He discovered that struggling
to find answers did not work.  It was only when there were gaps in
his struggle that insights came to him.  He began to realize that
there was a sane, awake quality within him which manifested itself
only in the absence of struggle.  So the practice of meditation
involves "letting be."

There have been a number of misconceptions regarding
meditation.  Some people regard it as a trancelike state of mind. 
Others think of it in terms of training, in the sense of mental
gymnastics.  But meditation is neither of these, although it does
involve dealing with neurotic states of mind.  The neurotic state of
mind is not difficult or impossible to deal with.  It has energy,
speed and a certain pattern.  The practice of meditation involves
letting be - trying to go with the patter, trying to go with the
energy and the speed.  In this way we learn how to deal with these
factors, how to relate with them, not in the sense of causing them
to mature in the way we would like, but in the sense of knowing them
for what they are and working with their pattern.

There is a story regarding the Buddha which recounts how he
once gave teaching to a famous sitar player who wanted to study
meditation.  The musician asked, "Should I control my mind or should
I completely let go?"  The Buddha answered, "Since you are a great
musician, tell me how you would tune the strings of your instrument.
"  The musician said, "I would make them not too tight and not too
loose."  "Likewise," said the Buddha,  "in you meditation practice
you should not impose anything too forcefully on your mind, nor
should you let it wander."  That is the teaching of letting the mind
be in a very open way, of feeling the flow of energy without trying
to subdue it and without letting it get out of control, of going
with the energy pattern of the mind.  This is meditation practice.

Such practice is necessary generally because our thinking
pattern, our conceptualized way of conducting our life in the world,
is either too manipulative, imposing itself upon the world, or else
runs completely wild and uncontrolled.  Therefore, our meditation
practice must begin with ego's outermost layer, the discursive
thoughts which continually run through our minds, our mental gossip.
The Lords use discursive thought as their first line of defense, as
the pawns in their effort to deceive us.  The more we generate
thoughts, the busier we are mentally and the more convinced we are
of our existence.  So the Lords are constantly trying to activate
these thoughts, trying to create a constant overlapping of thoughts
so that nothing can be seen beyond them.  In true meditation there
is no ambition to stir up thoughts, nor is there an ambition to
suppress them.  They are just allowed to occur spontaneously and
become an expression of basic sanity.  They become the expression of
the precision and the clarity of the awakened state of mind.

If the strategy of continually creating overlapping thoughts
is penetrated, then the Lords stir up emotions to distract us.  The
exciting, colorful, dramatic quality of the emotions captures our
attention as if we were watching an absorbing film show.  In the
practice of meditation we neither encourage emotions nor repress
them.  By seeing them clearly, by allowing them to be as they are,
we no longer permit them to serve as a means of entertaining or
distracting us.  Thus they become the inexhaustible energy which
fulfills egoless action.

In the absence of thoughts and emotions the Lords bring up a
still more powerful weapon, concepts.  Labeling phenomena creates a
feeling of a solid definite world of "things."  Such a solid world
reassures us that we are a solid, continuous thing as well.  The
world exists, therefore I, the perceiver of the world, exist. 
Meditation involves seeing the transparency of concepts, so that
labeling no longer serves as a way of solidifying our world and our
image of self.  Labeling becomes simply the act of discrimination. 
The Lords have still further defense mechanisms, but it would be too
complicated to discuss them in this context.

By the examination of his own thoughts, emotions, concepts
and the other activities of mind, the Buddha discovered that there
is no need to struggle to prove our existence, that we need not be
subject to the rule of the Three Lords of Materialism.  There is no
need to struggle to be free; the absence of struggle is in itself
freedom.  This egoless state is the attainment of Buddhahood.  The
process of transforming the material of mind from expressions of
ego's ambition in to expressions of basic sanity and enlightenment
through the practice of meditation - this might be said to be the Spiritual Materialism

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism Chogyam Trungpa Shambhala 2002 1570629579