spiritual-seeking

Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life__ secrets. It__ the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divided, dualistic, cramped view of things. __e are too ego-centered,_ Suzuki tells Cage. __he ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away.__dolescent love gives us the first chance to break the shell. Sexual love makes the ego lose itself in the object it loves. __hen the ego-shell is broken and the __ther_ is taken into its own body, we can say that the ego has denied itself or that the ego has taken its first steps towards the infinite._The religious consciousness is now fully awakened, and all the possible ways of escaping from the struggle or bringing it to an end are most earnestly sought in every direction. Books are read, lectures are attended, sermons are greedily taken in, and various religious exercises or disciplines are tried.__uzuki says that sexual love is a vehicle of liberation? A crack in the ego shell? A path to the infinite?At this point, if I were Cage, I would buy the book and take it home.

The Wanderer then leaves behind the spiritual seeker, with all the accumulated knowledge and lofty spiritual experience, and takes the first step on the Journey.