The number one thing to avoid is perfection. This is where Eastern teachings have gone so wrong because they emphasize the total perfection of the enlightened being. Then everybody tries to be perfect before becoming enlightened, but you literally can’t do that.
First of all, I would argue that all of these enlightened beings aren’t all that great anyways. But second of all, just by definition, you cannot be perfect before enlightenment. So trying to achieve any kind of perfection is literally you dividing the world into good and bad, imperfect and perfect, and then trying to be the thing of your choice.
It would be great to be perfect, wouldn’t it? Always happy, never make a mistake. And these days we’ve added the twist of manifestation. When you’re perfect you’ll have everything you want. Sitting there tanning on the beach with your laptop, making millions… adoring fans… going viral!
Truly, there is nothing more annoying than a person who’s trying to be perfect, except a person who actually thinks they’re perfect. Get rid of that idea. It’s like, come on, we got enough to deal with in the world with regular people, much less dealing with this idea of perfection.
Perfection is not going to get you anywhere except for annoying everybody around you. And sadly, sadly, the more you try to be perfect, the more you can’t avoid seeing how imperfect you actually are. It’s a very sad thing to try to be this perfect. Things are going to go wrong, it’s just going to happen. You’re going to make mistakes, it’s just going to happen.
The natural human being is not this state of perfection. So get this out of the idea of your spiritual search. There’s even the saying, that we learn from our mistakes. It’s ancient wisdom knowledge. We’re given all challenges. In this giant mess of life you’re going to make mistakes. And there’s no end to it. We do learn from our mistakes, but not in a stair-step kind of a progression towards perfection. There will always be another mistake that you can then learn from.
If you’re trying to get to perfection, it’s going to be a very, very sad long journey. You’ll be dead before you get there. So, avoid perfection, any sort of striving toward perfection.
Sidebar: Don’t be an ass. At least try to be a fairly decent person, but not perfection.