I think egoism and Spirit are about as antithetical as it is possible for two concepts to be.

Egoism is not just self-love, it celebrates the self in its separateness from others.  If egoists act ethically, they say it is due to their self-respect and perhaps a rational sense of ‘self-interest’ rather than from a desire not to hurt others. 

My favorite definition of Spirit is the “ultimate context of meaning.”

When I hit my thumb with a hammer, my world concentrates there, and pain is all I feel.  My practical context of meaning is very small.

Then perhaps I see someone in a wheel chair.  Suddenly my world does not revolve around my aching thumb, though I still feel it.  This is especially true if the person is a friend who had been injured without my knowledge.  My heart grows as I become sensitive to another’s misfortune, and realize it is more important than my own.  I have entered a bigger context of meaning.

I can start with ego and grow into spiritual awareness – I suspect many of us do.  But we can do this only by enlarging that circle about which we care, human and other-then-human, until the original ego no longer sets the agenda, not because we disparage it, but because we embrace more as also worthy.  This does not mean self-sacrifice trumps my own happiness.  It means I act in a caring way for others as well as for myself.  My ‘self’ grows, and as it does my ‘self-interest’ is transformed.  No sacrifice need be involved, though it can be.

Egoism, which locates ultimate value in the isolated ego, is a poor starting place to grow in spiritual awareness because its first step is to draw sharp lines separating ones self from others.  Those lines give a false sense of self-sufficiency to egoists. 

I have long been struck by the absence of discussions of children in the novels and other writings of people who describe themselves as egoists.  Children are the ultimate reminder that we are inextricably enmeshed with others, and that self-fulfillment, joy, self-sacrifice, and love in practice can be so Intertwined as to be inseparable.

There is a genuine sense of our being separate from others, but our  separateness grows out of relationships because we encounter relationships, or demands for them, that we reject or have outgrown.  It is always a partial separateness.  We do not start out as separate, and then choose to enter into relationships.

I think there is much wisdom in a proverb from Africa: ‘I am because we are.’  I am because of my relations with others.  The better those relationships the better I am.

I do think one could get to spiritual experience from egoism by unpacking the ‘self’ that is an ego – and finding it is in fact not as isolated as once seemed to be the case.  I think it can be done because there is no place Spirit is not.  But egoism itself is simply a person’s misunderstanding of who they are.