- Giving your personal power away to other people, your subconscious mind, your negative ego, your five senses, your physical body, your emotional body, your mental body, your child consciousness, a guru, the Ascended Masters or God.
- Loving others but not loving yourself.
- Not recognizing your negative ego as the source of all your problems.
- Focusing on god but not properly integrating and parenting the child within you.
- Not eating properly and not getting enough physical exercise, which results in physical illness and limits all other levels.
- Being deeply into the spiritual life but not recognizing the psychological level, which also needs to be understood and mastered.
- Material desire.
- The trap and glamour or power, and holding power over others once you become successful.
- Becoming too ungrounded, which then has a harmful effect on one’s physical body.
- Trying to escape earth instead of creating heaven on earth.
- Seeing appearances instead of seeing the true reality behind all appearances.
- Trying to become instead of realizing that you already are the Eternal Self, as is everyone else.
- Not realizing that you are the cause of everything.
- Serving others totally before you have become self-actualized.
- Thinking that there is such a thing as “righteous anger” (anger is a big trap).
- Becoming an extremist and not being moderate in all things.
- Thinking you have to be ascetic to be spiritual.
- Becoming too serious and not having enough joy, happiness, and fun in your life.
- Not being disciplined and unceasingly continuing your spiritual practices.
- Stopping your spiritual practice and studies when you get involved in a relationship.
- Putting a relationship before self and God (this is a major trap).
- Letting your child consciousness run your life.
- Being too critical and hard on yourself.
- Getting caught up in the glamour and illusion of psychic powers.
- Owning your power but not learning to surrender to God simultaneously, or surrendering to God but not learning to own your power simultaneously.
- Losing your personal power when you get physically tired and exhausted.
- Expecting God and the Ascended Masters to solve all your problems.
- Allowing yourself to go on automatic pilot and losing your vigilance.
- Giving your power to channeled entities.
- Reading too much and not meditating enough.
- Letting your sexuality run you instead of mastering it.
- Over-identifying with your mental or emotional body, and not achieving balance.
- Thinking you need to be a voice channel or see or experience all kinds of psychic phenomena to be spiritual or ascend.
- Forcing the raising of the Kundalini.
- Forcing the opening of the chakras.
- Thinking the spiritual path you have found is the “best”.
- Judging people because of what initiation level they may be at.
- Sharing your ‘advanced’ initiation level with other people.
- Telling people about the ‘good spiritual work’ you are doing, instead of just being humble.
- Thinking that negative emotions are something you have to have.
- Isolating yourself from people and thinking that is spiritual.
- Thinking that the earth is a terrible place.
- Giving your power to astrology and the influence to the stars.
- Being too attached to things.
- Being too unattached to life, not striving for involved detachment.
- Being too preoccupied with self and not being concerned enough about being of service to others.
- Getting stuck in the numerous limited theories of traditional psychology, which are only a single piece of the whole human puzzle.
- Being too much the mystic or too much the occultist and not striving to integrate the two sides.
- Giving up amidst great adversity (this is one of the biggest traps of all – you must never give up).
- Believing that the suffering you are going through on whatever level will not pass.
- Focusing too much on what initiation level you are at or when you are going to ascend instead of the work that needs to be done.
- Getting caught up in spiritual powers and then achievement of siddhas instead of recognizing that love is the most important spiritual power of all.
- Badmouthing other spiritual or metaphysical groups, and not unifying and networking with other groups even though they may be not in total alignment with all your beliefs.
- Getting caught up in the dogma of traditional religion.
- Thinking you need an intermediary between you and God.
- Using your spiritual beliefs to create separatism or elitism or undue specialness
- Becoming too fanatical in your beliefs.
- Believing you can achieve enlightenment through drugs or some kind of pill (this is the highest sense of illusion).
- Believing that other people don’t have to work as hard at their spiritual path as you do.
- Putting your relationship with your kinds before your self and God.
- Getting caught up in all the attractions of the fascinating material world in which we live.
- Becoming too caught up in loving one person instead of spreading your love out to encompass all people in an unconditional sense.
- Getting caught up in duality instead of achieving even-mindedness, inner peace, and equanimity at all times.
- Being a father or son, or a mother or daughter, in your relationships instead of being an adult.
- Thinking you need to suffer in life.
- Being a martyr on your spiritual path.
- Needing to control others.
- Having spiritual ambition.
- Needing to be liked, loved, or approved of.
- Needing to be the teacher.
- Being hypersensitive or being too shielded.
- Taking responsibility for other people.
- Being the savior.
- Serving for selfish reasons and thinking you are being spiritual.
- Thinking you are more advanced spiritually than you really are, or thinking you are less advanced than you really are.
- Blindly seeking fame.
- Placing undue importance on finding your twin flame and soul mate and not realizing your soul and monad are, in truth, who you are really looking for
- Thinking you need a romantic relationship to be happy.
- Needing to be at center stage, or always choosing to be a wallflower.
- Working too hard and becoming driven and running yourself down physically, or playing too much and not being about the Father’s business.
- Going to psychics and channels for guidance and not trusting your own intuition.
- Working with teachers on this plane or on the Inner Place who are not Ascended Masters and so are limited in the understanding and conception of reality.
- Making the spiritual path an interest rather than an all-consuming fire.
- Wasting too much time watching TV, reading trashy novels, seeing violent movies.
- Wasting enormous amounts of time & energy because of lack of organization and proper time management.
- Thinking that arguing with another is serving you or that person.
- Trying to win or be ‘right’ instead of striving for love.
- Putting too much emphasis on intuition, intellect, feeling, and instinct instead of realizing that they all need to be balanced and integrated in their proper proportions.
- Devoting yourself to a guru who makes you smaller instead to the Eternal Self, which you are.
- Trying to be open all the time, instead of knowing how to open and close your field as the need arises.
- Not knowing how to say no to other people, your child consciousness, or the negative ego when the need arises.
- Thinking violence or attacks on others in any form will get you what you want or serves God or the Ascended Masters for your problems.
- Blaming God, or being angry at God or the Ascended Masters for your problems.
- Thinking that if your prayers aren’t answered in the way you expect, God and the ascended masters aren’t answering your prayers.
- Comparing yourself with other people instead of comparing self with self.
- Thinking that being poor is being spiritual.
- Comparing and competing with others over one’s initiation level and ascension.
- Allowing yourself to be a victim of other people and of your physical body, emotional body, mental body, desires, five sense, or negative ego.
- Studying too much and not demonstrating in the real world.
- Thinking your moodiness is true reality of God.
- Thinking your worth comes from doing and achieving things.
- Thinking you don’t need to protect yourself spiritually, psychologically, and physically.
- Thinking that glamor, maya, illusion, negative ego, fear and separation are real.
- Consuming sugar, artificial stimulants, coffee, and soft drinks for physical energy.
- Trying to do everything yourself and not calling on God for help, or constantly calling on God for help and not helping oneself.
- Loving people a little less because they are treating you badly, or seeing a negative ego example; not differentiating the person from the behavior.
- Losing faith in the living reality of your Soul, your Monad, God, and the Ascended Masters; they have the ability to help you if you will persevere and do your part.
- Thinking that other people can achieve ascension, but you can’t, or at least not in this lifetime.
- Trying to achieve ascension to escape one’s problems.
- Thinking that earth is a prison instead of recognizing it as one of God’s seven heavens.
Source: The content has been taken from Dr. Joshua David Stone’s book on Soul Psychology.
Book Link: Soul Psychology by Dr. Stone