Fear

See, I don't always get why fear isn't at the center of the wheel of life. You could see Dharma practice as a movement between two directional pulls. The first is love; an opening up to life, and connection and feeling. The second is fear; withdrawing from life using ego defences into one's personal warped delusion. Buddhism is then regarded as a huge collection of resources to aid and give courage to the first direction. Then the criteria for weather we take on a practice or view is if it works in nudging this opening to life. Unfortunately, may Buddhist practices can be equally effective at maintining the closed and defended state.

It seems that there is not much hope of avoiding a period where we use Buddhist practices to avoid reality just as much as we would with 'non spiritual' tactics.