Being a good spiritual practitioner can become what I call a compensatory identity
that covers up and defends against an underlying deficient identity, where we feel badly
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about ourselves, not good enough, or basically lacking. Then, although we may be
practicing diligently, our spiritual practice can be used in the service of denial and
defense. And when spiritual practice is used to bypass our real-life human issues, it
becomes compartmentalized in a separate zone of our life, and remains unintegrated
with our overall functioning.