Conversations with ego: Doing the "ego-squirm"

e: Mike, your not gettin’ any traffic with all this metaphysical blather about relationships. They’re droppin’ like flies! People don’t want to hear about how they need others to awaken. They want to do it themselves, because they don’t trust one another. The only way this blog is gonna get real is if ya tell people what they want to hear.

M: Well, maybe what they want to hear is not what they need to hear.

e: Oh great! What’re you… the fookin’ Messiah?!

M: That’s what “you” want to hear. I suppose the chief project of this blog is an attempt to extract myself from you and see what comes up. Relationships with other people have been incredibly helpful in that process. I really get to see what your made of, which may help me engage with something deeper than you.

e: Trust me, Mike, nothing comes up from that “process” that you can use IN the world. And you are most certainly IN the world, no doubt about it. Forget about this silly idea that there’s something other than me that makes up “you.” I’m it brother! There ain’t nothin’ else for you to rely on.

M: I'm not so sure I fully believe that.

e: “Believe”?? Ha! Who’d you think determines what you "believe"??? Who do you think came up with the notion of transcending 'me' in the first place? You think you’re so damn smart, but it’s really me that gives you all your bright ideas. I’m in every thought you think, every post you write…in every word you type. You can’t exist without me!

M: That’s what “you” think.

e: I’m YOU!! Get that through your thick head.

M: But what if there is a part of “me” that you’re simply not aware of, and cannot ever be aware of? What if, by extracting myself from “you,’ I can correspond with something that ”you” have nothing to do with?

e: Oh that’s good, bro! Write that shit down. The new agers love that gahbage. See? Now we’re workin’ as a team. Ha!

M: But you think it’s bullshit, while I believe it’s true.

e: Dude, if it was true, you’d experience it. But you don’t. You experience what I tell ya to experience. There ain’t nothin’ you’re ever gonna experience without me. Without me, how would you know what is true or false?

M: Once again, that’s your belief and just because you believe it, doesn’t make it true.
 
e: Truth is what I say it is! Besides, try experiencing something without me. Go ahead and try. It’s impossible. The moment “you” experience something without me is the moment “you” cease to exist.

M: Well, I’m not so sure I exist anyway. At least not the “I” that needs “you.”

e: Oh, that’s a good one! Unfortunately, I know your games and it won’t work on me. There ain’t no other “I,” so forget ’bout it.

M: Says “you.”

e: Are you serious about this?!

M: Ah ha! You’d love that, wouldn’t “you”? Then you can takeover and control the show. Sorry, but no. I’m not at all serious. In fact, the first step in extracting from you is NOT taking “you” seriously.

e: Wait! Okay fine…there’s a part of you that is without me. Hey! I’ll even help ya find it.

M: Thanks, but no thanks. I think I’ll do this without you this time. In fact, I think I’ll look to other people to help me and I have plenty of relationships to choose from.

e: But they’re as fooked up as you are! How can they help?

M: They’re not “you.”

e: But Mike, there must be an easier way, because that’s gonna be downright uncomfortable for both of us.

M:I dunno... I’m beginning to enjoy seeing you squirm


Artwork by Yue Minjun - "Holding Head"

The Dance of Intimate Awakening

Deep Spirit intimacy is an infinite dance that all desire experiencing and it is this desire that demands we seek out another. To dance infinitely in relationship is to be free to change the steps at anytime and not burdened by each others relative rendition of “love.”

We never stop dancing and no one dances alone. Although you may change partners, or even change the steps of the dance, the dance never ends. No matter what steps you dance, the dance belongs to both, because no one dances alone (although some think they do).

The finite dance expects outcomes and rewards in determining how the dance will proceed. You demand the “loved' one conform to your criteria of love for the expected outcome to be experienced and they expect you meet their criteria.

An infinite dance, with the purpose of awakening together, makes no such demands and in that refusal to control, awakening between two is facilitated as ONE.

You would like to change the steps of your dance? You would like less conflict and more “love”? No Problem. Simply change the steps together. Change the steps alone and the finite dance of conflict continues.
Change can be difficult when each individual ‘ego-self- demands its dance be the only dance. Many “loving” relationships spend years battling over who is to lead.

Love has no limits but those you impose in the belief that love must conform to certain conditions in order to BE love. You impose those conditions upon the other and demand they be accepted. If they are not, then you claim that your needs are NOT being met. When the relationship eventually ends, you simply go off in search of another (partner) to meet your needs (dance to your steps). Rarely, will you examine the truth of what you “need” and you will continue to expect the other to dance to your steps as proof of their love.

When you surrender your old song and dance routines and let Deep Spirit lead you, the infinite dance will guide you both to an intimate awakening.

For finite dancers, the outcome is more important than the dance itself. Love becomes a burden to bear, rather than an infinite dance of mutual awakening. Eventually, partners come to believe that they dance alone and so conflict ensues as each demands the other conform to the ‘correct’ steps. Rarely will you both stop to examine the dance that you have created together. Yet, only by looking at the steps you have created together, will those steps ever be changed. These are the patterns of egocentric “love” that obstruct Deep Spirit and the dance of intimate awakening.

To dance together is to choreograph patterns that often evolve on an unconscious level. We become attuned to each others steps, making the dance predictable, as we easily fall into step with one another in dancing out our repetitive conflicts. As if following footprints painted on the floor, the dance is burned into the subconscious mind and we relate always from the same steps.

To change the steps is to change the dance.

Discover the mutual patterns and learn the steps that you each dance to. Your expectations of how the dance should occur are the means of learning how you define 'love', because it is your definition that determines the steps you require. From two dances a whole new dance evolves, that will either make you weary of the burden or take you to unimagined new heights.

The ego-self lives by patterns. The ego discerns patterns through which to predict the future. It believes that through the power of prediction it can limit fear and, therefore, always be prepared for what it expects. This creates the same old song and dance routines that you both live by, with the same outcomes you have come to expect. Love has become a burden that causes you to seek to be free of “love.”

Make no mistake, any “love” that you now seek to be free of, was never love to begin with.

If you don’t discover the patterns of the dance, you will each dance the same steps in every intimate relationship you engage with and this conforms to the egocentric need for patterns, which the ego believes increases comfort by relieving fear, but only increases suffering by demanding repetition.

We all long for the the dance of intimate awakening, when the two become one in releasing control of each other. This is the dance of non-duality when two join as one. If you feel you dance alone then together you must seek to change the steps, because you can never stop dancing and no one dances alone.

Let your steps awaken you both to a relationship with no limits.

Normalizing Insanity

The ego-self must try to negate the practicality of truth in order to prove it insane. You would never consider “driving a car,” “watching TV,” “paying bills” and “going to work” as insanity. In fact, you believe these activities are quite practical and necessary.

Make no mistake, your world has taught you what you require be learned and, in the ego’s need for insanity, this is what will be taught and considered extremely ‘practical.’

Truth is clearly insane to the mind that relies on insanity being normal and this is why you function in the world as if truth were absent. The ego fears that your functioning in the world would be impaired by the truth. You might just STOP everything and then, how would the ego know it exists if it weren’t functioning as it was taught to?

On the contrary, through acknowledging insanity, fear dissolves and functioning is enhanced. Don’t be afraid of insanity, because it’s NOT real and can have NO effect. However, you need to see it for what it is, otherwise, you will continue to believe you suffer from what cannot effect you.

The infinite player participates in the games of the world, knowing full well that they are absurd and this is why infinite players are not victimized by the rules. However, finite players believe the rules are very ‘practical’ and are careful NOT to deviate from insanity.

What you ‘do’ is of little concern to truth. Yet, the fact that it IS of concern to you must be evaluated. Is there ONE purpose behind all your actions and is that purpose consistent with every action you take? Or do you merely live through a confusing cacophony of contradictory and chaotic meanings and purposes?

If you allow the world to determine your purpose, then you adhere to many contradictory meanings, in which your purpose is inconsistent, chaotic and insane. Examine closely the actions you undertake on a daily basis. The tedious and mundane roles you perform every waking moment. Have you even considered what your purpose is? Or do you compulsively repeat what you were taught (and think you live an “authentic” life).

When an absence of fear is your only purpose, every function you fulfill will be miraculously transformed. Yet, such miraculous perception seems impossible to those who have learned fear and find insanity normal and have even come to find it quite comfortable. 

Yet, the ego’s capacity to learn is evident in how it has learned to normalize insanity and this is because you have taught yourself by demanding the world teach you. In denying the world this function, you fear that you are rejecting the world, which means the world will reject you. This is impossible because you fail to understand that rejection by the world is nothing more than a rejection of your ‘self.’

Infinite players reject nothing. Yet, paradoxically, neither do they accept. Any path that teaches one or the other leads nowhere but back to the start. If you start IN the world, you can only end up back where you started.

The first step is to fully realize that the world has nothing to teach. The world is a product of the ego and neither can teach you anything you need. However, there is a part of you influenced by neither an ego nor a world. That part sees the need for the right teacher. From that part, YOU will teach your SELF.

The world you SEE discourages you and, at times, even drives you to utter despair. You see it as cause of your suffering, but still require it to ease your pain. Yet, when the ego suddenly gets a glimpse of the real cause of despair, it seeks to prove it impossible by demanding continued despair in seeking relief from the perceived cause. This is how insanity is normalized. This is how intelligent people believe in war.

The world is cause of NOTHING. You gave meaning to the meaningless and you are First Cause of the ‘world’ you experience. God did NOT make your world. You did. It is your expectation to experience suffering that causes suffering and not the world. Your world has the power to cause nothing but what you give it power to cause and this includes your death.

Yet, that which is made to seem “real,” but is NOT true, exists only because you experience it “real” and then superimpose “truth” upon what’s NOT there. It has no other existence separate from what you wish. But be careful, your wishes run very deep indeed, and some you have no awareness of….yet.

Just look outside your head and SEE for yourself what you have wished for…


Artwork by Paul Torres - “Notrica 32nd Street Market”

Don't Fear the "Heat"

The ego-self fears conflict, because conflict is an indication of an obstruction to an egos desire to self-actualize.

To self-actualize an ego must control external conditions and this means controlling other egos for which the ego-self has chosen as means to actualize itself (children, parents, marital partners, lovers, etc, etc, etc).

Because an ego-self is nothing more than a package of concepts used to identify an “I,” self-actualization through the world’s standards of self-actualizing is how an ego reinforces “I” against a world of other egos also actualizing as a means of experiencing existence.

Therefore, it’s easy to see how control is crucial to an ego that must control itself in relation to others, but also must seek to control others in relation to itself. Applying control results in conflict because while you attempt to control the other 'ego-object,' they in turn seek to control you.

Even relationships which claim to be “loving” have an invisible underlying control dynamic played out within the relationship. Unfortunately, when you experience a complete loss of control and thus, despair of ever having control, you will lament that your “needs” are NOT being met and seek to have your needs met elsewhere or in some other way.

In western developed nations needs are no longer comprised of survival or procreation issues, but of more abstract self-actualizing needs such as increased self-fulfillment, improved self-esteem, "love," etc, etc, etc. This is why in developed countries, divorce rates are steadily increasing as the ego seeks, and subsequently fails, to have these abstractions met. This is chiefly the result of controlling others in order to have needs met by those you have chosen as vehicles to egocentric self-actualization. When these needs are not met conflict arises as egos attempt various control measures to compel obediance. This often results in long-term 'domestic hell' as love partners become adversaries in competition for individual, egocentric self-actualizing.

Hence, excessive and chronic conflict becomes the measure of failed self-actualizing and leads to egocentric despair. Because of this feeling of despair, the ego will often choose to replace conflict with avoidance and alienation. Now you may no longer experience conflict, but instead experience nothing at all, as you both become abject strangers to one another.

There is only one way to reverse this process of alienation and that is to no longer fear conflict or use conflict as a measure of obstructed self-actualization. Actually, conflict can become the vehicle to better understanding the exact nature of your 'needs' and if they are really ‘necessary’ or should be discarded as no longer useful to self-actualizing and fulfillment. Yet, such excruciating honesty is alien to the ego-self, which seeks to keep you submissive to the delusions it has convinced you are actually of your making.

Of course, like any other life game, conflict requires rules and the first rule is to no longer consider conflict as “fighting.” Fights seek only to control, while conflict can result in deeper understanding, which dissolves conflict and reduces the potential for “fights.” People fight to win, however, they can engage in conflict in order to increase honesty and achieve a depth of understanding that is a rare commodity in today's intensely egocentric world.

Often the heat of conflict becomes the only means for honesty to magically appear, because only when the inner truth is forced to the surface will you finally understand your SELF. Such cosmically piercing honesty often miraculously changes everything. To mitigate your alienation, all you ever needed to achieve was understanding, but because the individual ego is such a secretive, self-protective concept, the truth can take a very long time to be disclosed. Conflict often shortens time by forcing honesty to the forefront.

However, there is no doubt that conflict can wound and, if not fully engaged in the process, can cause scars that fail to heal. Premature disengagement from depth of engagement causes wounds to fester because the truth was not permitted to rise to the top. This is the type of conflict that is mere “fighting” for control and seeks not understanding, but to win the battle and claim the prize (greater control through guilt). Individuals “fight” to hide the truth, but engage in conflict to bring the truth out. Conflict creates heat and heat can result in honesty.

Don’t fear the heat. If you can’t stand the heat, don’t get out of the kitchen, but seek to make use of the heat to cook up a depth of engagement that results in increased understanding and an honest expression of the truth. Your pursuit of "awakening" must inevitably fail if your path involves disengagement from your world, since disengagement from the world is disengagement from that which gave the world meaning.

YOU.


Artwork by Jeroen Van Valkenberg - "The Golden Bough"

Real or Illusion? (it makes NO “difference”)

You have so many things to take care of in your life. In fact, you often feel overwhelmed by too many problems and worries. But if you resist truth, existence must always seem overwhelming as you remain victim to one ‘problem"’ after another.

Truth cares little for what you ‘do’ and, because of that, is always IN everything you do and when you are certain of this, what you do will reflect that fact and be true for YOU as well.

But you’ve got a kids, work, bills, etc, etc. How can you ever expect to be aware of truth when life pulls you in so many directions?

Yet, why seek to make truth absent to specific circumstances? All your resistance come from the need to differentiate between levels of truth. The ego struggles to judge what is true as opposed to what is NOT true, beautiful as opposed to ugly, innocent as opposed to guilty, etc, etc, etc. Differences between the starving child of Ethiopia and the billionaire in Manhattan must be perceived by the ego in order to assert itself into its experience of a ‘world.’

Yet, truth has no levels and NO differences, because it includes NO opposing contrasts and attaches to NO specific circumstances or conditions. There is truth in everything you do, if only YOU didn't need to perceive ‘differences.’ Otherwise, you will only continue to seek out the differences and fail to realize the certainty of truth.

All experiences are true. Yet, because the ego requires truth be what it determines, it judges truth as absent in some circumstances, while present in others. Truth does not conform to egocentric expectations and therefore, is never absent when you choose, nor is it present by choice.

Thankfully, you have nothing to do with it.

However, many religions and philosophies teach you that the world is “illusion.” This obviously invites the individual egocentric ‘self’ to make determinations based on past experience (since the ego-self is entirely composed of past experience) in order to press itself INTO its experience of a “world.”

Yet, if every experience is true, your seeking differences demonstrates that you have determined otherwise and will subsequently continue to differentiate between true and false experiences. Truth is easy to understand and does not require learning. However, although your lack of understanding does NOT change Truth, YOU require it be learned and so, YOU have yet to understand it and this is why it makes no difference to the ego whether or not the world is all REAL or all ILLUSION.

Truth is certain. If it were not, it could not be true. Certainty places all the ego’s plans in jeopardy, because if ALL is certain, then everything the ego does makes NO difference TO that certainty. This invokes fear for an ego requiring the world remain uncertain, because the ego’s experience of itself is manufactured entirely from uncertainty. An ego convinced of certainty could NOT exist. Your world is a product of uncertainty, but because truth is certain, an uncertain world could NEVER exist.

Make no mistake, everything you DO is as certain as what is NOT done. Every action, every thought, every feeling, every mood that seems to spontaneously lift you up or press down upon you, is as certain as your reading these words in this very moment.


But you believe there is no certainty. You could die on your way home from work today. You can’t predict the future and that’s the only way you could be certain of anything.

An uncertain world can be seen through truth, which would naturally dissolve all uncertainty and doubt. Actually, YOU CAN predict the future and YOU HAVE. Yet, you have predicted it to be uncertain and so IT IS. Yet, how could any predictions, divorced from truth, be valid? What you expect from uncertainty is NOT True and what is NOT True could never be real.

You could experience yourself dying in a car accident. But this does not make it true except to perception that SEES differences through uncertainty. You believe in the products of uncertainty and this is what you experience because perception always FOLLOWS belief.

Yet, you protest, “Wait a minute! First you say all my experiences are true and then you say that my experiences from uncertainty are not true. Which is it?

You have NO experiences from uncertainty, although you believe you do. However, such belief does not make it true. You believe you can have experiences from uncertainty, but this is impossible, since uncertainty does NOT exist. Every experience you have is true, yet, only BECAUSE uncertainty does NOT exist.

Behind all your uncertainty and doubt is the certainty inherent to your experience of Being and fortunately for “you,” nothing is free of that and, therefore, everything IS free. Engage your world from certainty and naturally reformulate your perception completely free of all fear.

It is your uncertainty that demands that you control conditions arising from ‘chance.’ Engage your world from certainty and be free of the need to control the very conditions you impose. Everything is certain and you need control nothing.

You believe “free-will” allows you more control and more choices. This misinterpretation of free-will has led to centuries of suffering. Only when control is no longer needed is your WILL free. Yet, as long as you feel you must control the conditions that arise from uncertainty and doubt, you will always believe your are victim to the world. This is simply not true and I recommend you conduct your life as if it were false.


Artwork by Eli Tiunine - "Shizophrenie"

Thank God, “Nothing” Can Save You

It seems the entire world is plunging ever deeper into chaos. Lies and deception have become the norm, while egos collude for self-preservation. Many are suffering and, unfortunately, that will most likely increase as chaos becomes more complex and completely unintelligible.

With all our “advanced” knowledge, all our technological innovation, all our seemingly infinite libraries of ‘valuable’ information…

…suffering increases exponentially and wars continue without pause.

Yet, the ego-self always expects some degree of suffering each and every day. In fact, you have made yourself quite tolerant of suffering and even define your “happiness” as nothing more than a reduction of suffering. Because suffering is accepted as an absolute and indisputable “fact” of existence, you believe your only option is to effectively manage your suffering. This is because in your world suffering has a range of magnitude, from the least to the maximal.

The problem with this range is that, even though the ego has never experienced ‘death,’ it believes that death is the maximum level of suffering it could ever experience. Yet, ironically, the ego also considers death as an end to suffering. Such confusion means that there are times when the ego believes death is desirable and times when it must be avoided at all costs.

Obviously, dissolving death would collapse your range of suffering and this is why Christ, and many others, sought to prove that there is NO death. However, inherent in that belief is the negation of suffering since, how can that which cannot die… suffer. The ego relishes new fangled theories and ideas about death, or the “after-life,” but it will never give up its suffering. 

However, you would certainly suffer if you lost your job and your house and you believe that death would have nothing to do with that fact.

On the contrary, your belief in death is always why you suffer. Death is feared more than anything the egocentric mind can comprehend and all suffering is rated by your proximity to that eventual and immediate end of ‘self.’ However, since the ego always defines itself in direct association with parts of its experience of a ‘world,’ losing parts (job, house, etc) has a tendency to reflect loss of the whole. It cannot conceptualize anything as whole and this is why the ego cannot conceptualize death and therefore, must live in fear of it. Strip away valuable parts of an egocentric self and this would engender the fear of losing the whole. This is why the rich man often commits suicide after losing his fortune, because the ego equates parts of its existence with the whole of its existence.

If you continue to equate and ally your "self" with parts of your world, you will continue to suffer, since truth is whole and unavailable in part. You are not a part of creation, but the whole of it. It could not BE without you, nor you without it. However, an ego fixated on parts could never experience this (at least, never for very long and still remain egocentric and ‘in’ the world).

The ego-self could never accept the idea that there is no “world” because that would deny and negate the parts it has accepted in defining what IT IS. The world is nothing more than ‘props’ in support of the ego’s existing as ‘real.’ Remove the props and the ego-self must suffer. However, if there is NO ego-self then the props are not ‘there’ either and what you ‘know’ (since “knowledge” is nothing more than ‘knowing’ details about the props) is nothing. If everything you ‘know’ is a product of the world, then the world is also nothing.

However, to further your learning, the ‘nothing’ you insist on ‘knowing’ must be used effectively in order to know what is beyond nothing. Otherwise, you will continue to rely on what you know and, thus, learn nothing and this would result in continued reliance on your range of suffering, which obviously comes from what you know. When, in fact, all you suffer from is the strange belief that you do NOT know truth, but instead know alot about nothing.

If there is NO self, and the world was conjured up in support of the self’s existence, than the “world’ is equally nothing. Nevertheless, from nothing, everything is possible (but only when you come to believe it is truly nothing at all).

But, you exclaim: “That’s nonsense! How can I possibly believe that the world is nothing? So I should just forget about all the pain and injustice in the world and act as if it’s nothing?”

If you choose not to ‘forget,’ then you will apply meaning where none exists and the nothing that you give meaning to will consume your mind. Continued idolization and obedience to the parts of reality is based on past learning and, since nothing you have learned is ‘knowledge,’ suffering is all you know and is what you will continue to experience. The question is, when will you know the end of suffering?

Knowledge is power, but what you ‘know’ simply confirms and insures your suffering from meaning applied to a meaningless world. Paradoxically, your full and deep engagement with the world is equal to your dissociation from the parts that you have used to define your ‘self.’ The joy of truth has nothing to do with the parts that you believe make you “happy, ” since all they really seem to do is minimize your suffering, but never END IT.

There is meaning to be discovered, but you will not discover it based on what you know because what you know attests to nothing (contrary to the fact that you think you’re a pretty smart cookie). The “nonsense” is in your mind and this is superimposed upon experience to engage a senseless ‘world’ that has become very important to you. Nothing in your world makes sense and all your attempts to make it so merely delay truth and perpetuate your suffering.

However, you have had moments in which the meaningless of your 'world' was suddenly experienced with intensely vivid clarity. Yet, fear will always obstruct realizing this fact completely. Therefore, YOU rejected the experience completely and renewed your search for salvation in a meaningless ‘world’ that YOU make real. Truth is ALL OR NOTHING and there can be NO ‘range of truth.’ However, the suffering you experience, based on the fear you have learned, has a full range of magnitude, from least to most, and therefore cannot be true at all.

If you continue to consider your suffering from an egocentric viewpoint, you will become impatient with what can never be understood in such a way, because your “best thinking got you here.” Only a separate frame of reference could ask questions from fear and this means the answer will be unacceptable and, hence, rejected, because the answer would signify nothing at all. The ego seeks the knowledge that will lead to its salvation and will never accept nothing.

Merely recognize that what you ‘know’ is cause of your suffering and begin to detach and dissociate from all ‘knowledge.’ It’s NOT what you know that leads to “enlightenment, “awakening” or “salvation” because…

…only ‘nothing’ can save you.

Artwork by KD Matheson - "Liberation"

The Ego Hates the Ones You Love

You believe that parenting children must cause conflict since it means setting limits and teaching discipline. Notice how the world of egocentricity demands conflict even from love.

Yet, Love is NOT aware of conflict and if you ARE, then you are NOT aware of love and other goals are clearly more significant to you. If love were the precedent guiding your actions then conflict would be substantially diminished and perfect peace would reside “within” you.

However, in your world love is never the guidepost because the world was made from the conflict inherent from competitive division and, therefore, it is fervently expected. Wherever conflict is expected love is always absent.

Sometimes your egocentric concepts seem to lift you, while other times you suffer from what you believe.

Yet, beyond all the ego’s many concepts of love is a love that cannot be conceived of, or even exist, in partnership with conflict. You wish to believe that you love your children very much and there is a part of YOU that is aware of love, but YOU are unaware of that part.

The ego is aware of many different concepts of love, all demanding different conditions, and these you superimpose upon all your relationships, thereby, applying limits and boundaries against those you claim to love.

The world teaches that sometimes love must hate and, although you adamantly refuse to believe that you could ever hate those you love, your moments of anger are composed of the same ingredients that you reserve for those you most despise. In fact, ironically, often those you profess to love the most, can momentarily become the most despised.

You certainly don’t feel like you hate your children in your moments of anger, but only after the moment has passed, at which time the ego seeks for a rational explanation to dissolve your guilt. Make no mistake, your comforting rationalizations are no different from the thoughts that rationalize continued war.

You learned to experience many different levels and types of fear in your world and this demonstrates the proficiency of the ego in minimizing what is entirely the same in ALL situations. Love cannot possibly be present in anger and, although you will seek desperately for its return, in the moment you banished it you merely delay your greater goal. Frequent delay wastes time and makes the goal seem entirely unattainable. Goals evaluated as unattainable (love) will inevitably be substituted by more attainable goals and when love is absent, the many faces of fear easily fill the void.

Through reliance on fear your world was made meaningless, because a world perceived from a filter of fearful self-protection is patently absurd.

Nevertheless, you refuse to accept that your standards, of teaching your children how to effectively negotiate the world so that they can be “successful,” are meaningless. However, look closely at your past and recognize how your greatest successes are now interpreted as failures and your failures erroneously evaluated as success. These are the confused standards that cause your suffering and therefore, you expect others suffer through the same because as you teach, "life ain't easy and you have got to be tough to survive."

What you wish to know is truth, therefore, you must teach IT instead of your confused standards and this is because essentially the only one who must learn is YOU. Dig deep down below your conventional thoughts and the ego’s status-quo “wisdom” and learn what’s true and cannot be taught through the world’s standards.

Teaching “success” in a senseless world is always absurd, yet, you deny the absurdity by applying more nonsense, only you call it “common sense.”

Yet, you believe you cannot sit idly by and watch someone you love fail in life and become unhappy and miserable. In SEEING someone you love “fail in life,” you have applied standards that exclude love, but idolize what the world values and the world certainly values "success" over love. How much has been lost in the name of success?

Love does NOT see success or failure, but only Perfect Peace, regardless of actions or behaviors. Indeed, Perfect Peace sees a world where concepts like failure and success do not exist and therefore, all conflict is abolished completely and love is seen in perfect clarity.

What you SEE is in direct proportion to what you believe and, although this seems to have no bearing on the objects of perception, the world conforms directly to belief. Perception gives you “failure” and “success” in direct correspondence with your confused standards, but neither concept has any relation to Truth and so chaos reigns supreme. Look at your world. Can you honestly claim that chaos is NOT growing in crescendo? Are the standards and values of the world NOT becoming increasingly more relative and nonsensical?

Nothing can disturb the mind in Perfect Peace and, therefore, nothing could “exist” that does NOT exactly conform to those peaceful parameters and this includes all your relationships. The problem is NEVER outside your mind. But, if you continue to believe it resides “there,” then there is where it must be experienced as perpetually irresolvable and, therefore, compulsively repetitive. History must continue to repeat itself if we continue teach what we learned in the past, because this is ALL we can look for in the future.

Artwork by David R. Choquette - "untitled"

Avoiding “Dark Alleys”

You seek to avoid threat and your seeking merely places it “there” TO be found. This demands a fear induced vigilance which consumes the mind and exhausts the body, although you simply consider it a “normal” part of living.

Yet, it was from fear that the ego was formed and made to seem “normal.” Therefore, the frightened ego-self demands that you avoid ALL “dark alleys,” even though the ego has never seen the light.

The ego is a seemingly impenetrable system of defensive fortifications constructed entirely from fear. You need not be aware of the extent of this system (which is so intricately complex as to be unbelievable) just the fear from which it was built. Without fear it cannot stand. Without fear, the world would not be as you now SEE it… a labyrinth of “dark alleys” which you must avoid and from which it seems impossible to find the safety of home. This is what you find because this is what you expect to SEE and so, look for, which demands the need to protect your ‘self’ from what SEEING makes REAL.

Surrender your fear and defenses dissolve and you will SEE that there was never anything “there” requiring protection. There are no “dark alleys” and there never were. The world is not as it appears.

Yet, you believe that there are some people you must be cautious with, just NOT those you claim to “love.”

But, the world’s “Love” is  a contractual obligation that can be dissolved at anytime if the terms of sacrifice are not followed. This is cause for your greatest fear and guilt is always the chief weapon of attack. You believe in your past wounds and so your vigilance is paramount to protect against future attack. These are the “dark alleys” that you seek to avoid. They exist nowhere but in your mind, because you made them up, but they make up the world you experience.

You have so rigidly normalized your defenses that you are not even aware of exactly what you are defending against. But you’re not aware of oxygen either, yet this does not interrupt your breathing. The ego does not require awareness, just your denial and continued self-protection.

The egocentric mind is so tightly wound and constricted that just the slightest reprimand or disparaging look, could instantly thrust you down a “dark alley.” The world is blinded by guilt and this is what consistently motivates ALL attack. You have experienced attack with those you have chosen to “love” and, although the ego demands denial, your walls have been securely reinforced as a result. Yet, how can love be extended from behind walls?

To dissolve your defenses is to realize that there is nothing to fear and, in that miraculous moment, perfect peace will surround you. 

There's NO freedom until you do, because it is only fear that keeps you in chains. The world you experience is perceived in fear and your brief moments of “happiness” only reinforce the fear which is always there before the “happy” event and must always come after. There is NO rest for the fearful.

The ego’s fear is religiously consistent, while your brief moments of pleasure are fleeting wisps of smoke disappearing on the horizon. Nevertheless, you have yet to come from behind the walls of fear that YOU made to protect from NOTHING. There is nothing there to harm you. Let down your defenses and experience freedom beyond measure.

You were not Created from fear, which means that there can be NO fear in you, other than what you demand. Conjure it up it no longer, as it serves NO purpose.

You have no idea what it would be like to be totally without fear. To not worry, get angry or depressed. To be free of your defenses and at peace in every moment seems virtually impossible. But to be “in the moment” is nothing more than to extinguish fear. All remnants and any residue must be wiped entirely clean.

There is little that can be said to relieve your doubt, except that you must give up ALL maps, because nothing in the world can offer directions to an experience that is FREE of all fear. The world is lost in fear and if you are “there,” you are lost with it. Yet, if only one SEES entirely without fear, all must SEE.

Does this mean that “you” should no longer wear seat belts or look both ways before crossing the street? Does this mean you should no longer avoid “dark alleys”?

There are NO exceptions. However, in a world made from fear, exceptions are necessary. The mind that makes fear real, must protect the body from death, because fear also made the body. But if you are a mind and NOT a body, what is there to fear? If all “experience” is of the mind, how can fear rule the mind if it can be easily banished forever with just a single thought? The body was made from fear and if fear is gone, so too must ALL its associations recede from view.

You live solely in the infinite mind of Being and that cannot be altered by any game you choose to play in denial of this FACT. Fear is the denial that changes NOTHING, because it makes NOTHING real. Your world was made to deny this simple truth. Believe it NO longer.

Artwork by Laurie Lipton - "Last Night I Dreamed of Murdering Mommy" 

 

Living Through Deprivation, Loss, Lack and NEED Fulfillment

Loss is defined by sacrifice, and you must ask how you can lose when there is nothing you NEED.

There is nothing in your 'world' that can sustain you and valuing it for that purpose only perpetuates your feeling of loss because this is what the world has taught you. Valuing anything as necessary to completion, reinforces your belief in your incompletion... in perpetuity.

All egos are incomplete and must remain so for the duration. If you are an ego-self you will experience deprivation in some form or another.

You have always felt that something was missing. You have lived with an emptiness that your struggles to fill have only served to further deepen. Every “loving” relationship, every moment of pleasure, every object coveted, has left you still feeling incomplete. Your relationships drain and disillusion you, your moments of pleasure fade and all objects lose their value.

You are desensitized to the very reality you make real, simply because nothing can complete that which is already completed. Your search is over before it began, because you have no "needs" and, thus, there is nothing to search for.
However, you do sense something there, beyond your 'perception,' that you believe must sustain and complete you. Yet, you will never seek further than your learned expectations allow and so you will continue to perpetuate your deprivation. As time passes, your expectations become less desirable only because you expect less, yet still hope for more. You will eventually exhaust the search simply because in the end, death is your only prize and this is the most valuable prize you ever learned to expect, since you do not doubt death will one day be yours, while everything else turns to dust. Eventually, you will realize that in your "world," death is the only "need" you're guaranteed to fulfill.

It would indeed be sad if even one aspect of this predicament were true. However, every belief you hold in your mind is patently false and that includes your concept of death. Nothing you see or hear and every thought, based solely on what the body needs or seeks to avoid, is delusional.
The only completion required is the complete disposal of all you have learned that teaches you are incomplete. You are beginning to have faith that there may be something more than what you have learned and this brings truth that much closer. Yet, truth does not require sacrifice, only acknowledgment of its total completion.

Unfortunately, you believe that you can NOT let go of every belief, since how would you be able to interact with others, make money and feed your family. If you let go every belief that you have based on the past how could you continue to function? What would you base your brief episodic "happiness" on? You fear such sacrifices and therefore, your sacrifices in the world merely serve to avoid the ultimate sacrifice of giving up the world.

Fear is your teacher and demands you teach what IT knows, therefore you have no idea of your "function." Look at you world. You teach what you were taught from a world invested in fear. Every thought in your mind teaches what you believe MUST be true.

In relation to the things that you “must” do, there is no reason to discontinue your “doing.” Yet, through a change in perception your "doing" will be transformed, because completion does not REQUIRE doing anything. If you examine your current beliefs, you will see that what you DO must entail some degree of suffering. This is what you WILL experience in everything you DO, as long as you do it to achieve anything of VALUE that you have determined as VALUABLE to your completion.

You have no idea of the reason why you DO anything, although you DO allow the world to determine your purpose and this is why you suffer. The world cannot teach what it does not know, so why allow it this function?

Consistent inquiring into your "purpose" may assist you in processing goals for your future since currently, you do believe in a future. However, the goal must be determined from that part of you that has no investment in the world you believe is real.

Do you set your goals by the voice for truth or are your goals determined by the voices of the world, which loudly proclaims that you are deprived and have NEEDS that must be fulfilled. Each day you must ask “whose goal do I choose?” Inevitably, you must choose, and what you experience determines what you HAVE chosen.

Do you really believe you know what you need? Do you believe you were created incomplete and thereby have needs that must be filled? Look no further then your suffering, or lack thereof, as it proves what you believe.

There is one goal and one function that has been established by your Being. In time, all your goals will attest to your completion, since you will teach it and, therefore, you will perceive it everywhere you look.

Look for it now.

Artwork by Vlada Mirkovich - 'The Man Who Lived in His Dreams"

The Ego is a Surface Dweller Fearful of Depth

Minds are not shared and if they are, it remains surface correspondence and the world communicates little on the surface, which is why lack of understanding causes us to compulsively repeat patterns of war and destruction.

Surface sharing is about the body and this is why sex is considered sacrosanct as the ultimate in sharing (which shares very little, because even abject strangers can share bodies). The ego does not believe any deeper closeness can be achieved.

The ego is unconcerned with the mind, even though the ego-self is nothing more than a belief of the mind. The ego-self even attempts to deny the mind exists by asserting itself as the mind and this is why the mind seems so deeply obsessed with itself by living through a body.

Intimate sharing of the mind can only be cause for fear, since the ego is consistently in doubt of its own existence. Intimate engagement, or the Deep Spirit sharing of 'self,' is threatening to an ego that is consistently preoccupied with self-preservation through concealment. To lose oneself in another is a threat to the belief of self-contained individuality through which the ego defines itself.

As an idea, the ego has no discernible properties and no physical form. Therefore, it must make the body and all the body’s actions profoundly relevant or “sacred.” Two of the most sacred acts the ego idolizes are sex and death, both subordinate the mind by obsessing on bodily existence and the fear of non-existence.

The ego is an idea that must live vicariously through the body and, ironically, because of this it hates the body. Therefore, the egos only real focus is controlling the body and its need for the body to engage in effective actions that increase self-actualization, reinforcing its rather obscure and abstract existence.

But the body can only skim the surface because it is bounded by finite parameters which deteriorate over time (age). Through senility, minds fixated on bodies must follow the body in its deterioration. Only minds can engage in depth because consciousness has no boundaries but what the ego has imposed. The ego-self senses the mind’s lack of limits and works diligently to maintain mental focus on bodily functions, actions and behaviors.As a finite idea, the ego-self can only know boundaries and limits. Yet, it senses the mind’s unbounded potential and rigidly restricts its extension. Hence, you suffer from your own self-imposed rules.

Exploring the mind’s infinite depths demands other minds. Mind cannot explore itself, but it can explore other minds and allow other minds to reveal it to itself. Actually, this mutual engagement was how you came to know your ‘self’ in the first place and how you participated in aiding others in their own self-awareness. But this was only on the surface, as the ego always restricts depth in the name of self-preservation. Allow another too deeply into your ‘self’ and fear will eventually require the need to impose restrictions.

You have yet to embark on this rather miraculous process of discovery. You are still too deeply transfixed on bodies, yours and theirs. But, make no mistake, as you engage in the mutual exploration of mind, the body will recede in awareness and you will suddenly begin to see all bodies differently, since they will lose value in contrast to the mutual extension of minds.

Consciousness is the final frontier. However, it will not be explored through the scientific method, but through the method of Deep Spirit ‘intimacy.’ True intimacy is the sharing of minds and has nothing to do with bodies. In the depth of intimate engagement, bodies tend to recede from view. What is NO longer perceived, simply does NOT exist and may never have existed to begin with…

…and what a surprise that will be!

Artwork by Naoto Hattori - "untitled" 

Egocentric Childhood Self-Preservation Training

The ego is a repetitive experience and because of that, it's literally insane. Its insanity is nothing more than a repeat performance, each time expecting a different result, but always getting more of the same.

Unfortunately, this pattern is the norm in your most significant "love" relationships and it's why they fail to sustain you and those you have chosen to “love.”

The essential function of an ego-self ("you") is self-preservation, which requires repeating the same patterns of self-preservation in all your most significant relationships. These patterns are inherited from the past.

Egocentric Self-Preservation Training (ESPT) began in early childhood, in which other dysfunctional egos (essentially all egos are dysfunctional) demanded that your ego learn self-protective strategies to effectively engage the world. Yet, what you really learned was methods to buffer their dysfunctional teaching methods, which were camouflaged as necessary through their belief that you needed certain skills and strategies to survive in the world.

However, undeveloped egos (children) employ rather sloppy methods of self-preservation to mitigate the dysfunctional teachings of developed egos (parents). In other words, while your parents were teaching you how to effectively negotiate a difficult world, you were struggling to learn how to protect your 'self' from THEM.

Therefore, not only do we learn how to protect the self from the world, but we also learn to protect the self from those who claim to "love" us by teaching us 'real-world' survival skills. This is what you take with you into adult relationships and this is why relationships often fail to sustain you.

You will also employ and teach dysfunctional strategies of self-preservation and will continue to employ these same strategies in every significant “love” relationship you engage with. There really is no way out of this, simply because the ego is "you" and the moment you cease to identify with an egocentric “you” is the moment you cease to exist (and who wants to do that!)

Yet, the fact that you do not cease to exist is predicated on one profoundly important egocentric function and that is your compulsive need to repeat the past. Your compulsive need to preserve the past is evident in your performing the same dysfunctional relationship behaviors you have always performed, because this is what you learned. You do what you know, until you know differently.

What makes all this insanity truly remarkable is that while your ego is compulsively repeating these same patterns, those you "love" are dutifully repeating their learned responses. Of course, all this makes for great television drama, but fails to aid you in having “needs” met in “loving” relationships.

This is because what you were taught you 'needed' is the very thing that impairs love, which is what you need more than anything taught.

But not to worry, because eventually you will simply exit this relationship and engage in another “love” relationship, always with the hope that this time your egocentric needs will be met. But... lo and behold… there you go again, compulsively repeating the same dysfunctional behaviors you repeated in the last relationship and the one before that and the one before that and.....

Yet, make no mistake there is always one thing you will proclaim each time you exit another “love” relationship or pronounce a relationship as hopeless… they are to blame. The ego must always be vigilant toward everything but itself, because to fully SEE itself might require changes be made and egos don’t like change, at least not changes to the core belief system it learned and that has served to preserve and protect it all these years.

You can try to make corrections on the surface, but this is like polishing off the rough edges of a fake diamond, but who cares if the diamond is polished when, in fact... it's fake!

The information you learned about "love" is useless, so why engage with others in ways that only serve to disengage and continues to reinforce useless information. You're going to have to surrender what you think you need and engage with the other in discovering what will sustain both of you. But this is very hard to do for an ego-self that has based its conduct in the world on what it thinks is good for it.

This is because "you" don't know what's good for you, but you can make your 'self' ready to learn.

Artwork by Heather Nevay - "Mother and Child"