The working of Maya also expresses itself by making the mind give to a thing an importance other than the importance it really has. This happens when rituals, ceremonies, and other external religious practices are considered to be ends in themselves. They have their own value as means to an end, as vehicles of life, as mediums of expression; but as soon as they assume claims in their own right, they are being given an importance other than that which belongs to them.
When they are considered important in themselves, they bind life instead of serving the purpose of expressing it. When the inessential is allowed to predominate over the essential by giving it wrong importance, one has the third principal form of ignorance concerning valuation. This again is the working of Maya.
-Extracted from Discourses, 7th Ed., p374
——-
“Maya, being both the medium for entrapping the soul into the maze of illusion and freeing the soul from the clutches of spiritual ignorance, has to be handled and not discarded, but handled without attachment to it.” – (www.lordmeher.org, p2265)