Spiritual breakthrough comes when you finally realise just how boring you are. When you come to suspect that a life without you, your thoughts, feelings, memories, desires, fears, at its centre is not only possible but preferable. A self-centred life is one in which everything that happens is coloured by your ego, as though the ego cast an illuminating light which forces you to see things the way it wants you to see them. The only way to break through the self is to first find something far more interesting to devote your life to. Then the discipline and sacrifice inevitably involved in its practice enable you to slowly build and live a truer life.