Risking everything for one more personal thing, humanity forfeits its sense of wholeness, alienating itself from its environment. It creates a lifetime of difficulty and sorrow by persisting in the pursuit of one more desirable thing. In less dramatic fashion, Buddhism presents us the same insight. As Buddhism explains, humans need spiritual practice if they are to recognize their self-created delusions and avoid suffering. Spiritual practice is the practice of honesty, not only as a moral and ethical behavior toward others, but more important, the practice of being honest with our self.
Most people have a hard time with true spiritual practice.
And the ego does not like to change its habitual pattern. It is hard to overcome delusion when we retell our story to our self over and over. The practical result is that our mind is rarely in the reality of the present moment. We don't know where we are, although we insist we do. It can be helpful to think about, read about, write about, talk about, and have strong feelings about the way we fool our self.