Near Enemies of the Truth: Avoid the Pitfalls of the Spiritual Life and Become Radically Free

by Christopher D. Wallis

Tantric philosopher and Oxford scholar Christopher Wallis calls out the seemingly helpful spiritual teachings dominating our current culture and demonstrates how these near truths stand in the way of a more radically free and meaningful life―and ultimately, a deeper spiritual awakening. 

Have you ever been told, “You create your own reality”? Have you been encouraged to “be your best self” or “follow your bliss”? Nowadays these slogans are everywhere, but what if they’re doing more harm than good? After over thirty years as a scholar-practitioner of meditation and Tantric philosophy, acclaimed author Christopher Wallis (also known as Hareesh) explores the most widespread distortions of spiritual teachings present in our world today. Rooted in the Asian wisdom traditions, Wallis’s book uncovers why these oft-heard platitudes are “near enemies” to the truth, often detour us off the spiritual path, and can even cause unnecessary suffering.

In asking us to question what we’ve accepted as “truth,” Wallis reveals how teachings like “become the best version of yourself” may have helped us at one stage in our journey but can ultimately lead us away from self-acceptance and compassion and cause us to prioritize an imagined ideal over true intimacy with reality. Understanding the near enemies is vital for any spiritual seeker who is ready to create a deeper, more fulfilling practice and will help you:

- Distinguish between truth and belief
- Communicate more authentically with loved ones
- Set healthier boundaries
- Be in greater harmony with reality
- Practice radical self-acceptance

Near Enemies of the Truth offers itself as a guide to the pitfalls of the spiritual life. However, it doesn’t focus on the negative. In each chapter, after pointing out how a spiritual teaching can be construed in a non-beneficial way, Wallis focuses on the deeper truth and ancient wisdom underlying that teaching, which is often obscured by its popular bumper-sticker version. Each chapter contains a supportive insight for your spiritual process and/or for your everyday life, including guided meditations and reflections. 

Written in a gentle and encouraging tone, this book offers a wealth of insight and guidance for anyone who finds themselves struggling, reaching a spiritual plateau, or simply seeking a more meaningful way forward. This timely companion will help you think differently and see through the smokescreens to what is true. 

Genres: Spirituality, Self Help, Philosophy, Meditation, Religion, Nonfiction

280 pages, Hardcover

Published September 19, 2023

About the author

Christopher Wallis, also known as Hareesh, is a Sanskritist and scholar-practitioner of Classical Tantra with thirty years of experience. He was initiated by a traditional Indian guru at the age of sixteen, and received education at yoga āshrams, both in India and the West.

Subsequently, he engaged in fourteen years of formal education in Sanskrit, South Asian Studies, and classical Indian religions.

Hareesh teaches classical Tantric philosophy and Tantric practices, meditation, Sanskrit, and mantra-science to an engaged online community of practitioners. He is the Founder of tantrailluminated.org, an online learning portal where all his courses and teachings are available. He also offers workshops, retreats and classes in person in Portugal and around the world.

He combines his own practice of more than 25 years with a rigorous inquiry into the original Sanskrit sources to accurately translate and bring to modern practitioners this ancient nondual wisdom. The practices aim to facilitate both spiritual awakening and enhanced well-being for people in all walks of life. His community of students frequently praise his deep love for the tradition and the clarity of thought and expression.

Reviews

[Morgan Blackledge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good.

But not quite as good as Christopher D. Wallis’s ASTOUNDING other books.

- Tantra Illuminated
- The Recognition Sutras

This book is more of an introductory text.

And ostensibly intended for a broad audience.

As mentioned.

It’s VERY GOOD.

But his other books absolutely blew me away.

And I read them in order.

As such, it’s hard for me not to compare them.

Given that.

Most books would suffer in comparison.

Make of that what you will.

4/5 ⭐️

[Rachel Barone · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the over-crowded spiritual marketplace filled with messages of the power of positive thinking, the importance of following your bliss, and other new age platitudes The Near Enemies of the Truth provides a compassionate, actionable antidote. Hareesh’s wisdom helps readers cut through the noise and empowers them to come into a greater relationship with truth. If you receive the content with curiosity and an open heart, this book is the doorway to liberation and radical freedom. I can't recommend it highly enough.

[Olga Weiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone committed to their spiritual journey, this book is a must-read.
This book unravels spiritual clichés and bypasses, guiding readers with clarity through the labyrinth of spiritual half-truths. In the crowded space of spiritual teachings, it stands out for its courage to confront the sweet-sounding but deceptive platitudes that might hinder true freedom. The author's insights cut through the noise with surgical precision, revealing the 'near enemies'—those thoughts and beliefs that mimic profound truths yet lead us away from a genuine understanding of the true nature of reality. It is an essential read for anyone who seeks not just to wander the spiritual path but to navigate it with eyes wide open, avoiding the pitfalls that have subtly entrapped so many.

[Tatum Moser · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't realize how badly I needed this book. So many of us have absorbed and assimilated the popular spiritual memes and cliches in circulation without ever stopping to figure out what they mean and how they might do more harm than good for our growth and development. What I love the most is how he breaks down the veiled ways in which these cliches actually promote self-hatred and how necessary it is for us to understand their origins and where modern misinterpretations have taken a wrong turn. Honestly, I'd put this in my top 5 life-changing books. It would be helpful to anyone on the quest for self-acceptance.

[Micaela Mae · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book brought a lot of clarity to insights I have had on the spiritual path and pointed out hang-ups that I was unaware of or knowingly clinging to. Wallis breaks down many of the near enemies within their historical and social context, which provides a greater understanding of where they came from and why they are a pitfall. Wallis is straightforward in his delivery which supports how each teaching can be applied in daily life.

[Wouter Zwemmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hartstikke goed boek dat een paar platitudes uit de spirituele gemeenschap ontmantelt. De schrijver vind ik betrouwbaar. Hij is langdurig wetenschapper in oude Indiaase tantrische tradities én een langdurig ‘practitioner’ van meditatie en andere spirituele beoefening, uitgebreid geschoold in India in gemeenschappen met dagelijks praktiseren. Spiritueel tantra spreekt mij aan. Het is écht iets anders dan wat zweverige hippie-workshopjes doen, drugs gebruiken en aan langzame seks doen, wat de totaal uitgeklede - excusez de woordgrap - westerse cherrypick-aanpak is die ook wel ‘neotantra’ wordt genoemd. Klassiek tantra is een non-dualistische manier om het leven te begrijpen en te beleven. Klassiek tantra nodigt uit om de werkelijkheid op elk moment te aanvaarden zoals die is, inclusief de krachten van verandering in de werkelijkheid. Kortom je aanvaardt de werkelijkheid die binnenkort alweer een beetje anders zal zijn, en dat aanvaard je ook. Je laat het verzet los. Zoals je in meditatie het verzet tegen je gedachten en de spanningen in je lijf loslaat. Klassiek tantra ziet alles, dus ook mensen, als expressie van hoe het universum zichzelf wil uitdrukken. (Dit is mogelijk problematisch omdat het suggereert dat de werkelijkheid een intelligentie bevat. Dit vraagstuk laten we hier even liggen). Volgens tantra zijn we niet zondig, hoeven we niet een leven lang te ploeteren met gevoelens van schuld en boete om een plekje in een hemel te verdienen, want we zijn in onszelf al compleet en zoals bedoeld. Veel van de spirituele praktijk is gericht op het vinden van je innerlijke blokkades tot de directe en volledige ervaring van de werkelijkheid en van jezelf: oud zeer, opvoeding, socialisaties… Hoe bewuster je leeft, hoe meer je in het moment zelf kunt voelen, voelen dat een blokkade of een ander automatisch patroon afgaat en dat zonder zelfveroordeling laten voor wat het is, en verdieping vinden in al het gevoel dat er is omdat je het kunt toelaten. Seks hoort daar gewoon bij, om van te genieten zonder taboes. Seks is niet het doel, maar seksuele energie straalt uit naar andere sensuele levensgebieden om van te kunnen genieten: lekker eten, van mooie muziek genieten, knuffelen,… Non-dualistisch betekent dus ook het aanvaarden van je brein én je lichaam met alles, de pijntjes en de geneugten; vermoeidheid én levenskracht. Vanuit deze bevrijdende filosofie ontkracht dit boek een paar notoire platitudes zoals ‘wees de beste versie van jezelf’, ‘alles gebeurt met een reden’, ‘volg je gevoel’, de ‘law of attraction’, enzovoort. Een ‘near enemy’ of the truth is een gedachte(gang) die zo lijkt op eentje die wél de werkelijkheid vertegenwoordigt, dat de platitude bijna waar lijkt maar het niet is. Aan het eind van het boek ruimt de schrijver nog een paar misverstanden op door positief te schrijven over spirituele thema’s zoals compassie, verlichting en overgave. Voor iedereen die zich ergens op een spiritueel pad bevindt een verrijking, dit boek. En voor mensen die spiritualiteit maar vaag gezweef vinden, want hen kan de nuchtere toon misschien verleiden om verder te lezen, ook na dit boek. Dat is nodig, met zoveel lelijkheid en onbegrip onder mensen (waar ik mezelf onder schaar) zijn boeken als dit keihard nodig, daar wordt de wereld een beetje zachter en liever van. Menselijker. Natuurlijker…

[Teo · Rating 4 out of 5]

2026.04.20–2026.04.26

The audiobook has a very good and thoughtful narration by the author.

Contents

Wallis CD (2023) (11:08) Near Enemies of the Truth - Avoid the Pitfalls of the Spiritual Life and Become Radically Free

Introduction
• What Are Near Enemies of the Truth?
• Why I Wrote This Book
• Where I’m Coming From

Part I: Navigating Riptides

Near Enemy #1: Follow Your Bliss

Near Enemy #2: Speak Your Truth
• Truth or Interpretation?
• One needs to exercise great discernment to make truly inarguable statements.
• Inarguable Truths
• “I” Statements
• Contemplative Exercise: What Is the Truth of My Experience?

Near Enemy #3: Be Your Best Self
• Contrary to what many assume, spiritual awakening does not come with a built-in moral code . . . nor does it automatically bring about psychological maturity.
• A Clever Disguise
• All attempts at growth motivated by disguised self-hatred ultimately fail and often cause unintended harm.
• The ego would rather be right than happy.
• Your Intrinsic Value
• If you’ve done the kind of basic psychological work that makes you easier to get along with, you likely have more friends . . . but it doesn’t make you an intrinsically better person.

Near Enemy #4: Be in the Moment
• Avoiding thoughts of the past easily becomes a form of spiritual bypassing in which we avoid taking responsibility for our actions and making amends.
• You Can’t Be Anywhere but Here
• Contemplative Exercise: Opening to Natural Harmony

Near Enemy #5: Listen to Your Heart
• Verbal Memes
• What Is Your Story?
• Feelings Versus Facts
• Contemplative Exercise: Feeling the Pull of Innate Intuition
• Sensing the Pattern

Near Enemy #6: Love Yourself
• The Self-Image Machine
• Cultural Constructs
• True Self Love
• Contemplative Exercise: Your Innate Value

Near Enemy #7: Everything Happens for a Reason
• Believing that the universe sends you messages can get you stuck in a childish or adolescent mindset.

Near Enemy #8: Everything Happens for the Best
• Authentic Gratitude
• Everything can happen for the best—if you’re willing to do your work.
• Spirituality or Religion?
• Contemplative Exercise: Finding the Blessing

Near Enemy #9: Find Your Soul’s Purpose
• Your Soul Is Already Perfect
• A dance is not rendered meaningful only by its final movements, and a human life is not rendered meaningful only by accomplishment.
• Contemplative Exercise: Sensing Natural Presence

Near Enemy #10: You Create Your Own Reality
• The Spiritual Ego
• Law of attraction believers are forced by the logic of their own belief to blame themselves for everything unpleasant that happens in their life.

Near Enemy #11: You Can Choose How to Respond
• Consider Your Conditioning
• Consider this: Can you choose whether to believe that 5 + 5 = 10?
• Is Free Will an Illusion?
• What we call mistakes or wrong choices should simply be called learning.
• Contemplative Exercise: Reposing in Awareness-Presence

Near Enemy #12: Negative Energy (and Negative Emotions)
• Magical thinking remains rife in our society, often exemplified by people who deny that they believe in magic.
• Setting Boundaries
• Labeling a person (or even a place) as having “negative energy” is a way of avoiding responsibility for your own inner state.
• Emotions cannot be intrinsically negative or positive, even though we usually experience them as pleasant or unpleasant.
• Digesting Emotions
• Don’t Buy the Story
• You can’t be hurt by words or emotions without your active participation.
• Intimate Relationships
• “Negative” emotions between people are always an opportunity for greater connection or intimacy.
• Emotional Capacity
• Contemplative Exercise: Being with “Negative” Emotions

Near Enemy #13: Energy Healing
• Symptomatic Relief
• Emotional Digestion
• Intrinsic Wholeness
• A self-appointed “energy healer” operating in a totally unregulated industry cannot substitute for a therapist.

Near Enemy #14: I Am My Own Guru
• You can’t draw a map to a place you’ve never been.
• Vetting Your Teachers
• Going Against the Grain

Near Enemy #15: All Paths Lead to the Same Goal
• The Goal of Liberation
• Various Views of Selfhood
• Becoming Godlike and Attaining Personal Power
• Awakening
• View, Practice, and Fruit
• The understanding you bring to spiritual practice can undermine or greatly enhance the impact of that practice.
• Contemplative Exercise: Clarify Your Aspiration

Near Enemies #16 & 17: The Universe is Giving Me a Sign and Go With the Flow
• Signs and Synchronicities
• Contemplative Exercise: The Currents of Life

Part II: Finding Deeper Currents

Reality
• A Spiritual Cul-de Sac
• It can be a mind-blowing realization to discover that you are not your story about yourself.
• Cognitive Bias
• When we tell stories, we’re all spin doctors.
• All our news sources have become partisan, and therefore they are all bad-faith actors.
• True and False
• Gaslighting

Enlightenment
• Spiritual awakening constitutes a spectrum with an indefinite number of points along it.
• First version/phase: Waking up out of the socially constructed self.
• Second version/phase: Waking up out of unconscious conceptual overlay.
• Third version/phase: Waking up out of the dream of separation.
• Fourth version/phase: Waking up out of the belief in (and sense of) “objective reality.”
• Fifth version/phase: Waking up to the absolute ground of being.
• Awakening is a paradigm shift that utterly obliterates all your stories about reality.

Ego
• Self-Images
• All should statements are cultural constructs.
• Becoming Free of Ego
• Self-images always cause suffering.
• Approval Seeking
• There is Only One “Self”
• Contemplative Exercise: Where Is the Self?

Nonduality
• The Power of Belief
• Mind-Created Divisions

Surrender
• Nothing Is Wrong
• Acting on the basis of love is inherently nourishing.
• Hatred = Resistance
• Radical Self-Acceptance
• To be in true surrender to reality, we must become at ease with the great unknowing.
• Contemplative Exercise: Melting Resistance into Openness

Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author

[Aleah Briarly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible! I loved how this book was structured and how it broke down these different concepts and misunderstandings. It was fascinating to have a new perspective on phrases I grew up with and I appreciated the call out of people misappropriating these spiritual landscapes. My parents were definitely guilty of doing that, so it was interesting to see those mentalities challenged because my parents were definitely hurting me within their own rhetoric and it made it feel extra confusing and inaccessible to access these explorations myself.

I wasn't a fan of some of the examples used to make some points, I actually feel like it detracted from what he was trying to say at different points, but I understood the idea and felt like that was quite compelling.

While I don't feel "awakened" per say, I do feel like I learned a lot and am maybe quite a bit closer to finally challenging some rigid mentalities I have.

[Gaia Persico · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are on a spiritual path, you need to read this! I would have to write an essay to list all the reasons why, but hopefully it will suffice to say that Christopher Wallis both lovingly and truthfully dismantles many misconceptions circulating in our contemporary yoga philosophy world, so that you can see through them with clarity and precision.
These platitudes have been regurgitated through social media to the point of losing their original well intended meaning and, as they are insidiously close to the truth, if we are not paying attention they may even lead astray further away from the path.
I hope you may embrace the challenge of having some of your beliefs turned upside down and replace them with practices that are actually beneficial instead. Hope you will love this life-changing book as much as I have!

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book harbours such important messages ("watch out for these clichés that you will encounter") but it was truly agonizing to listen to the guy mansplain everything, as if he were an enlightened being himself. I'm pretty sure he's got a Sanskrit word for that too. I don't know if the written version has footnotes to back claims up but they should have been there at multiple times. I could tell that the order of the chapters was differently in a previous stage and this had not been edited to suit a complete narrative where each chapter builds on what came before, or where there is adequate signposting to which chapter has definitions for terms. Very frustrating because, once again, the concept is great, but the delivery is wanting.

[Marijke McCandless · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should be required reading for all spiritual aspirants! I love Christopher Wallis’ impeccable use of language. With scholarly precision infused with love and presence, Christopher helps us unravel many of the popular spiritual ideas we hear that may be keeping us from resting at ease in our own being. He carefully breaks down the fallacies built into certain ideas in a way that makes perfect sense. This is calming to the mind. With the mind at ease, he persists then in pointing in a subtly new direction to investigate a hidden truth we might have missed. I appreciate not only the depth of his knowledge but also the clarity of his words and purity of his heart, along with a sincere dedication to help us all end suffering.

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

These teachings have radically changed my life in many fruitful and beneficial ways.
I initially read Tantra Illuminated many years ago and then listened to The Recognition Sutras by the same author. I have studied all this material many times, sinking in further and unfolding into the divine nature of our true essence, which all these teachings orient the reader to—highly recommended!

[Bre Cobbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a gentle examination of many "spiritual approaches" and how they can stall an aspirant on the path to liberation. Mr.Wallis does not pull punches here yet also offers elaboration on how the concept can be elaborated on for possible expansion in thinking. Its kind and concise and offers opportunity for practice and contemplation geared toward personal growth.

[Marco Datuin · Rating 3 out of 5]

i liked the ethos and purpose behind the book but found the language and vocabulary hard for me to read fluidly, mixed in with the already abstractness of the matter. still a fascinating and interesting read

[Tom]

has some generally good framing, the first few chapters are strong, then in the middle there are some chapter that are addressing pitfalls that are more spiritual/woo and don't feel as relevant for me

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

book i should’ve read when i was 20

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise, brilliant, effective. A must-have for the skeptically-minded entering the fuzzy field of spirituality practices.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read that adds nuance to many of the pithy aphorisms I hear all the time in spiritual contexts. Can sometimes feel a little bit shrouded in mystery but way better than other books

[Erick Corona · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book very useful to avoid the traps of spiritual life, with Tantric flavor.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rock solid. A great modern add on to cutting through spiritual materialism