WHY DO WE FEEL THE NEED TO BE BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE?

An exploration of where spirituality, the ego, and the savior complex meet and become one

Jul 25, 2025

I’m sitting here with a stomach full of rocks and anxiety crawling up my throat like it’s trying to escape through my mouth, and I can’t stop thinking about the time I made my sister’s panic attack about my enlightenment.

(Yes, that sounds like the beginning of a poem. Regretfully, it’s not, but you can read my poetry on my Instagram if you’d like. 😚)

You know the moment. Someone you love calls you, voice shaking, telling you about how they can’t breathe at work. How their chest feels tight. How they’re spiraling about whether they’re going to lose their job, their apartment, their mind. And instead of just… being with them in that moment, you start explaining breathwork techniques and suggesting they try microdosing and telling them how their nervous system is dysregulated AND how they really need to address their childhood trauma if they ever want to heal.

They go quiet for a moment and then say, “Can’t you just say that fucking sucks and give me a hug?”

And suddenly you can see yourself from the outside. You’re the person who’s turned every conversation into a masterclass on consciousness. The one who can’t let someone have a human experience without trying to fix it with superior spiritual knowledge.

You realize in a wave of emotion that you weren’t being helpful. You were being absolutely fucking insufferable. You used their pain as an opportunity to feel smart and evolved and important and weaponized their anxiety to draw attention your enlightenment.

That’s When Spiritual Medicine Becomes Poison.

We’ve all been there in one way or another. Maybe you’ve been the person desperately needing someone to simply witness your pain, only to get a lecture instead of a friend that sees you. Or, maybe you’ve been the one who couldn’t resist turning someone else’s breakdown into your breakthrough moment.

Either way, in this there’s something uncomfortable we have to face: how easily we can use spirituality the same way other people use money or status or degrees or fame.

As a way to feel better than everyone else.

And I LOATHE that.

Spirituality IS medicine. That’s indisputable. But, even medication prescribed for very real very necessary reasons can be lethal in excess.

The meditation that taught me how to sit with my thoughts without drowning in them. The journaling that helped me excavate trauma from places I didn’t even know it was hiding. The breathwork that showed me I could actually regulate my nervous system instead of living in a constant state of fight-or-flight.

All of it saved me in ways I’m still discovering.

Creating became medicine too. Writing as a way to make sense of the chaos in my head. Art as a way to give form to feelings that had no words. The routine of showing up to the page every morning, even when—especially when—I had nothing to say.

These practices pulled me out of the spiral I’d been stuck in for years. They gave me tools when I’d been fumbling around in the dark with my hands tied behind my back.

But somewhere along the way, I lost balance. I let the medicine that heal me turn into a hierarchy and convinced myself that I was more evolved than people who hadn’t done “the work.”

That’s When the Medicine Became Poison.

Let’s be abundantly clear. This wasn’t intentional. This wasn’t loud. This didn’t show up in nasty, mean, or public ways. These thoughts crept in slowly and unannounced until one day I looked at myself in the mirror and didn’t recognize the girl who was staring back at me. She was thinking about her place in the world in a way completely different than she had before.

And I hated it.

Most spiritual and religious traditions, whether they mean to or not, create elaborate ranking systems. Beginners at the bottom, the enlightened at the top. Sinners down here, saints up there. The unawakened masses that sink below versus the awakened few that rise above.

We learn about spiritual “levels” and “stages” and “degrees” of consciousness like we’re climbing some cosmic corporate ladder. We start collecting spiritual achievements like merit badges: “I’ve done ayahuasca,” “I practice tantra,” “I’ve been to Burning Man,” “I know what my Human Design chart says about me and if you don’t then you clearly don’t know anything about your life.”

Is It Just Me, or Does That Sound Like Cleverly Costumed Superiority?

When you’re busy feeling more evolved than everyone else, you can’t be present with their humanity. When you’re using other people’s struggles as evidence of your own growth, you can’t offer real compassion. Especially when that use is subtle and unrecognized.

When you need to be the most conscious person in the room, you can’t actually BE conscious. Because consciousness is about being present with what is, not about proving how much you’ve transcended what was.

What if the Point of the Ego Is To Coexist, Not Transcend?

What if trying to be better than our humanness is exactly what keeps us stuck in our humanness? What if consciousness isn’t a ladder we climb but a circle we expand? What if there’s no “above” or “below” when it comes to human experience? What if there are just different points on the same circumference, all equally valid, all expanding the circle outward?

I thought about my sister, panicking at home, and how her fear wasn’t evidence that she was less evolved than me. That she was broken. It was evidence that she was human. Just like my need to fix her was evidence that I was human too.

Consciousness As a Verb, Not a Noun.

We’ve been taught to think of consciousness like a diploma you earn. Like enlightenment is some permanent state you achieve and then get to flash around at dinner parties.

But what if consciousness isn’t something you have? What if it’s something you do? Watch someone who’s genuinely present. They’re not performing their awareness. They’re actively choosing it, moment by moment.