Self Development or Escape?

I once saw a story on Law & Order, Special Victim Unit which showed a teacher with a split personality. She was an inspiration to her students, but led a double life at night; she slept around and enjoyed being abused sexually. It turned out that she was sexually abused when she was a child, so apparently every night she was reliving these nightmares. At day though, she put her heart and soul into her teaching job to compensate for all the guilt she felt deep inside.

Here is my question to you: How do we know whether our strive for spiritual development is nothing but a compensation for the ugliness we either see or hide within ourselves? Don't get me wrong, I do consider myself a decent person based on what I do (most of the times). But have you ever listened to the voice inside your head? It is pretty ugly stuff that you hear in there sometimes. Could it be that we strive spiritually because we are fed up with who we perceive - or fear - to be?

Stories on Law and Order rarely end well and our teacher was eventually crushed by her split personality. Let's hope we can end our cycling into nowhere. Perhaps today is as good a day as any to stop striving and just stand there and have a look at what's inside instead. What do you think?