Love From Lack Demands Attack

The ego-self believes very intensely in “love” and understands that lack of love will result in a failure to adequately self-actualize (exist as “real”). The ego must then seek and find that which it lacks, and MUST have, in order to experience itself as "real."

But because the ego’s concept of “love” is not really love (just a concept of love) it must always experience lack. A lack of love results in guilt for failing to ‘have’ what the ego-self has determined necessary for actualizing itself and fully experiencing its existence. This experience of lack or absence is the cause of your guilt and it is this guilt you protect yourself from by attacking those who you believe are cause of your lack .

When an ego-self chooses another through which to experience “love,” any experience of lack or absence is symbolic of betrayal. Therefore the ego-self simply projects its experience of lack onto the other as cause.

Although the ego-self has absolutely NO correspondence with Deep Spirit, it does sense something much more powerful than itself. This causes it to construct concepts of love that have very little resemblance to a Deep Spirit love, but give it a delusional sense of control and power over that which it can never know. Since the ego can never really ‘know’ love, it works especially hard at finding its concept of love in a world of six billion competing concepts of love.

Therefore, although the ego believes strongly in its concept of “love,” it realizes that its concept of love is still always lacking, because it does not conform to this deeper truth that the ego senses but can never know.

Since the ego cannot correspond with Deep Spirit, this sense of lack causes guilt, because the experience of love must always be inadequate, which obstructs self-actualization. The ego can suffer through many states of mind, but guilt it must avoid at all costs, since to fully examine guilt would be to realize the very basis of the ego’s existence, which is empirically baseless with no actuality whatsoever.

In order to discard guilt, "you" simply makes someone else the reason for your lack of love. This is done by attacking them, thereby, magnifying a lack IN you by making someone OUTSIDE you guilty for your INNER lack. If the lack IN you is superimposed upon another, you will fail to fully engage with your guilt and instead see it as outside yourself and firmly lodged in another and you will engage in attacking them for depriving YOU of what you need to self-actualize.

An ego is defined as that which seeks to fill a lack. A non-lacking ego-self could not exist as an ego-self, since it would have no lack to identify WITH. To love from lack demands attack, because the ego will never accept that it is cause of its own experiences. You cannot love from a lack of love, because such an experience will only reinforce the lack which produced it.

To love from Deep Spirit is to no longer to rely on reinforcing lack through concepts of love. Deep Spirit is free of relative concepts, because it's true. Recognize that all your attacks are from an experience of lack IN you and have NOTHING to do with another.

You believe attack aids you in denying guilt by blaming the "world" for what is lacking IN you. Eventually, as you begin to play infinitely and allow concepts to recede in significance, lack must also recede and love need  no longer conform to a concept, but evolve as something more than you could have ever conceptualized.

This is because truth (or love) is not a concept and lacks nothing.


Artwork by Scott G Brooks - "Allegory of Love #26"

Going Neither Backward nor Forward

The ego believes that the guilty must suffer and this is reflected in the world it experiences. Guilt is the glue that seems to firmly hold together your existence. Punishment is the chief theme of your egocentric existence and the world is chock full of "offenses" and "violations" requiring the guilty be punished.

The ego’s guilt simply confirms that you MUST always be less than what YOU ARE and for that, you must consistently punish your 'self' by struggling and sacrificing to be MORE than the LESS you believe you ARE. This is why you are always your own worst enemy, since no one could ever punish you as comprehensively as “you.” As you know, sometimes you really are a royal butthead and you cannot deny this.

Therefore, the ego’s self-actualization (or what you refer to as "self-development," Ha!) through guilt only continues to diminish you. Yet, what would “you” be without guilt? The dynamic is simple. It demands you be guilty and hate yourself for what you are NOT NOW. Make no mistake, if you did not experience guilt, the ego could not exist, because guilt keeps the ego firmly fixated on the past so it can fabricate its ‘story’ of a future "you." Without a past, the ego could not inject itself into a future and without a conceptualized future why else would “you” exist (asks the ego)?

The egocentric world teaches that guilt is impure and you must suffer and sacrifice in order to achieve purity, not now, but IN THE FUTURE. But to make it ‘there,’ you must never forget your past, because “who” would get there without a past to identify with? Religious ideologies (churches) have been constructed almost entirely from the concept of guilt and sin, requiring you seek to “atone” for your past. But, make no mistake, "atonement" is an ego’s greatest fear, since without guilt to weave together its delusions, it would simply dissolve into nothingness.

Then “who” would you be?

Nevertheless, contrary to the ego’s need for your guilt, it also requires your innocence.  The ego is a “master of spin” and can rationalize and justify even the most horrendous knowledge to avoid guilt. The ego demands you be guilty, but only to reinforce its self-actualizing IN the world. Therefore, the ego will easily fabricate its experiences in order to achieve a fragile tension between guilt and innocence, so that you are never completely guilty nor completely innocent (an ego can only exist through incompletion seeking completion). In this way “you” can be PART of everything, but the WHOLE of nothing, demanding “you” seek to be ever more in the future.

You could never be completely innocent, since this would be perfection and the ego-self could NOT exist in complete perfection. Yet, you could never experience complete guilt either, since you might seek to destroy your ‘self’ (note how suicide is becoming a chief cause of death for U.S. combat soldiers).  Therefore, the ego solves this problem by superimposing guilt into its fabricated experience of an ‘outer’ world. Guilt is normal and there are always others more guilty than you (as well as those more innocent). One thing is certain to the ego, guilt is a part of you BECAUSE it is a part of your world. For the ego-self, “you” are the weakest link, because you are only a PART of the world and the WHOLE of nothing.

Guilt is always the chief aspect of the past, which means it can never be absent in your future and, therefore, never absent from “you.” You may argue for some degree of innocence. Yet, you do believe you are incomplete and, even though you seek for completion, this demands you suffer, since the incomplete must always be guilty of something, simply by nature of what you think you ARE.

“Self-development” is the ego’s attempt to keep you invested in the past by promising a future that is absent the suffering known to the past. But you must never forget what you are guilty OF, in the hope that it will NOT be repeated in the future. Now guilt is what you ARE, since the future has yet to be known and without guilt how will you know your ‘self’ when you arrive?

For the guilty who seek a better future free of self-punishment, that future must never arrive because...

... how can you ever be free of that which you CHOOSE to bring with you?

The infinite player has NO interest in the future and this mitigates ALL investment in the past. The infinite player realizes that it is NOT the past that need be surrendered… but the FUTURE. It is the future that demands you reference a past and guilt is always there, waiting to be remembered.

To play life’s games INFINITELY denies the future and thus, reformulates the past to extinguish guilt. To play infinitely is to be unconcerned with future outcomes based on past performance. Infinite play discovers NOW by simply denying the effects of the past because the future is NO longer contingent on it. Think about all the outcomes you desired for your future and how this often changed with the wind, only to be replaced by new goals and objectives when the old ones were seen as no longer viable.

The future is what you suffer from, NOT the past.

The infinite player has no future, since what plays infinitely is beyond time constraints and is most assuredly NOW. With NO future to press your ‘self’ into, the chains of the past have no meaning and life becomes a connecting string of surprising moments weaved into one infinite fabric. There is NO guilt in NOW, because there is no past nor future and without that, “who” or “what” is guilty? Who or what has ‘sinned’? Who or what has succeeded or failed or must be concerned with karma or is not awakened to truth?

Your identifying with a future makes all this necessary.

Surrender the future and the guilt of the past can only fade like a morning fog. Yet when the fog lifts be prepared for surprise, because there is little doubt you will see the world differently when you NO longer see guilt.

Besides, does it really matter what the future holds?

Maybe to "you"...


Artwork by Piercarlo Carella - "Evolution - A ticket to nowhere"

Filling-in-the-Blanks: Your Egocentric Need to Invent "Truth"

You have conflict and disharmony in your relationships for two chief reasons. The first is because you believe it's the others fault and that you’re innocent. The second is that you have no idea why you have conflict, but this won’t stop you from inventing ideas and using these mental inventions to righteously correct others.

The ego-self concept, or that package of beliefs you believe in as “you,” does not do well with the unknown. There must be a reason for everything and if “you” don’t know the reason, your ego will make one up, at least it will invent a reason it feels is valid.

And it will be wrong 100% of the time.

Unfortunately, although we are blessed with genius, and believe ourselves supremely intelligent beings, our egos lack the ability to adequately cohabit and live together harmoniously. Thus, we have ignored our nature substituting insanity instead. This results in a great deal of problems for cohabitating strangers. 

When you are alienated from those you profess to “love," you will experience the unknown simply because you are stranger to one another. Alienation, or lack of understanding, breeds ignorance and, therefore, what you fail to understand are those you thought you knew. Yet, depending on how long your alienation has continued, understanding may be difficult to attain because the conflict episodes have so polluted the mind that breathing in the freshness of each other may seem virtually impossible.

Therefore, since the ego fears what it cannot define, you will ‘fill-in-the-blanks’ with what you think is the truth and act based on that self-constructed fabrication. Neither of you will seek to understand by simply engaging to learn the correct information that leads to a depth of understanding. Rather, you will continue to fill-in-the-blanks, denying truth and continuing to battle each other based on that ignorance.

Unfortunately, when you fill-in-the-blanks in your relationships, you will be dead wrong. But here’s the confounding part. Even though you’re wrong, you will not seek for correction and instead simply engage in continued conflict based on what you believe is the problem. This is because, once the ego makes a judgment it will fight to maintain it, because the ego-self is righteous. If this goes on too long, even receiving the correct information may not sway your egocentric conception of truth from its righteous path of correction. No matter what the other says, contrary to your determination, you are convinced that your determination is correct.

Of course, egos do this in its dealings with the larger world all the time and it results in racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc, etc, etc. But, as they say, what happens in our little world is merely a reflection of our larger world.

Alienated individuals are strangers. Strangeness signifies the unknown and the ego will seek to define what it does not know so that it can vigilantly predict and anticipate actions and thereby become victorious in the game of CONTROL. If we lose intimate understanding and become alienated over time, we will fill in the blanks and be wrong, all the time. But you find this righteous path much simpler than simply engaging to understand one another. This means you will frequently be in conflict for judgments made in the past that, though they may be irrelevant to the present, stick to the mind like glue. Some individuals are so deeply mired in their past fill-in-the-blank determinations that they have created Frankenstein monsters of each other, both barely resembling who they thought they once knew.

It is this faulty understanding of the other that you will attack but, make no mistake, you created it.

Surprisingly, all that need occur, for reconciliation to begin, is for you to drop your egocentric righteousness which causes you to believe that you understand the problem. The ego loses the motivation to attack that which it comes to know and deeply understand. “Seek to understand and then be understood” is a wise aphorism, but is difficult for an ego that has relied on fill-in-the-blank determinations for many years. Responses from ignorance become conditioned knee-jerk attacks that breed contempt and can destroy what was begun in earnest as a loving union.

Shut your ego down and allow yourself to come from Deep Spirit in listening to others, because YOU are ignorant of who they are and, therefore, have lost yourself in that alienated separation and you will only find your 'self' through them.

“He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.” - Buddha

 Artwork by Bill Carman - "Tweedles"

To Save the World...Let Down Your Defenses

Protecting the ‘ego-self,’ (the mind’s rendition of how to conduct the body’s actions), is the chief limiting factor of any extension, or reaching out, between 'individuals.' Nevertheless, the psychological self does not exist in any ‘real’ or tangible sense, but you believe it is very much “you” and, in that sense, you certainly 'exist.'

You can’t physically touch your psychological ‘self’ and you can’t experience it without a body, but you do believe there is something ‘there’ you call “I” from which you believe in your 'existence.'

Essentially, the psychological ego-self is nothing more than a “skin-encapsulated package of beliefs” (Freud). This collection of beliefs continues to accumulate over time, yet, the core belief system designating 'what' you are (body-mind) was formulated in early childhood (whereas, the specific "who" you are, comes later). These past beliefs serve to reinforce and actively assert “you” into a "world." However, other beliefs serve, through defensive measures, to impede the assertion of others against your beliefs. These two types of beliefs will aid or obstruct your body’s negotiating what can sometimes seem like a cold, cruel world.

If you had NOT accumulated beliefs about your body (the beliefs you refer to as your ‘self’) the ego might have difficulty differentiating your body from other bodies, since you would not have a concrete reference point for which to anchor the abstraction you refer to as an ego-self. Nevertheless, since you can reference your body and ‘self’ apart from other forms, you have come to see other bodies in two distinct ways. They either serve to enhance your ‘self-construct’ or impede it. Therefore, it is important to the ego-self that accurate judgments are made so as to judge differences and engage or disengage accordingly.

To judge friend or foe, requires that you know the ‘self’ that you interact with. However, since there are often so many that you interact with throughout your day, you have found it much easier to alienate your ‘self’ from others. This is done not just to protect your body (rarely is this necessary), but more importantly to protect your psychological self. Although you have many different protective strategies to insure your ‘self’ is protected, the most effective strategy is alienation and, in fact, you even find it helpful to use alienation with those you profess to “love and cherish.”

ALIENATION

Alienation is a protective strategy employed to offset the risk of attack to the psychological self by fortifications that increase distance between your 'self' and others. You frequently use this strategy with those you don’t know and often use it with those you do know (or think you 'know'), particularly if the ‘self’ has evaluated another as antagonistic in the past (precisely because an ego-self is a composite of the past).

Alienation is nothing more than a conscious and unconscious distancing of the self from others. It is a psychological protective withholding to significantly minimize disclosure of the ‘self.’ It blunts honesty and authenticity in order to avoid being openly exposed, or fully known, and you believe this insures the self against attack. It is often (but not only) manifested as “small talk” or surface engagements. It is the scripted “hello, how are you?” “Fine, thank you and how are you? “Fine thanks, nice day, huh?” Such engagements are perceived as safe and many believe that surface correspondence is necessary in a generally unsafe and often psychologically dangerous world.

In such a precarious world, openness is dangerous, because honest exposure increases vulnerability to psychological attack and must be avoided.

Yet, the real destructive aspect of alienation occurs, ironically, in those engagements we desire be our most intimate. Surface engagement, between those in which joining originated from an expectation of “love,” is an erosion of deep understanding and the eventual termination of intimacy. This often occurs when interactions only address surface issues based primarily on conventional functions and everyday activities.

Surface interactions provide little information other than that which complies with sense impressions interpreted through socially conditioned, conventional meanings.

When surface interactions become the norm, engagement becomes a charade in the distorted idea that this is the extent of our reaching out to one another. Intimacy suffers and eventually dissolves because loved ones have exhausted all opportunities for depth. Egocentric fear limits all engagement and grinds our interactions down to nothing more than conventional correspondence, in which we can always easily predict the outcome.

Surface inquiries do not aid you in understanding and deeply knowing others and does nothing to aid in saving your world. In fact, continued surface estrangement is destroying your world because strangers do not collaborate very well, since they have hidden agendas.

Our microcosmic surface engagements can only maintain our present course of mutually assured destruction of the macro-world. Until we dissolve our estrangement and alienation, our world will continue to erode in response. When we are strangers, the world seems strange, because the lack of human intimacy affects all aspects of our experience of existence.

When we are all strangers, the world no longer feels like home and we lose the desire to save it.

Engaged intimacy is a two-way street of mutual revelation. In seeking to deeply understand the experience of "you," I must deeply reveal my 'self' and not to do so only impedes your honesty. However, this is highly inconvenient to an ego that has relied on itself to provide meaning to its experiences of it 'self' and its 'world.'

Although mutual revelation (revealing) is the only way to bridge the canyon that alienation has constructed, such exposure makes you vulnerable to attack and since the ego-self is a composite of the past, you will base your openness on past precedent. In other words, the ego will restrict your vulnerability for the sake of self-preservation. Problem is, this is what is essentially killing us by destroying the ‘place’ we call home and until the past is surrendered the planet must suffer from it.

Until you no longer fear vulnerability, honesty will suffer and estrangement will prevail. It is ONLY honesty that will save your relationships, as well as our collective world (since our relationships make the world “real” by projecting 'meaning' onto experience). Yet, to engage in honesty you have to let go of fear and embrace your vulnerability. Your egoic self-concept will resist such vulnerability, because it was constructed entirely from fear and, thus, actually constructs the fear it seeks to avoid.

Essentially, you must be willing to be hurt in order to access the part of your mind that is invulnerable and cannot be harmed. By letting down your psychological defenses, you immediately correspond with the part of you that is rarely experienced due to the ego’s defensive fortifications.

However, the when you let down your defenses and allow for open honesty, you will soon experience a deep sense of relaxation and calm (understatement) rarely experienced previously. This “awakening” is merely a realization of the extreme effort that maintaining your defenses has required all these years.

Don’t be surprised when others remark on how “happy” you seem...

...because you have ‘them’ to thank for it.

 Artwork by Laurie Lipton - "Maskers"

Your Only Purpose: The Real "Hero's Journey"

So what are you 'here' for? What is the purpose of your existence?

This is a very basic question that should be easy to answer, since obviously you conduct your life based on some purpose or goal. What goal do you conduct your daily existence toward achieving? 

Most people rarely even consider this idea but, nonetheless, perform the tasks of living based on achieving some sense of personal satisfaction. Others tend to unconsciously glide through life, rarely considering any ultimate purpose or reason for being. We often do what we think we must, without considering why. 

Therefore, We often do what we are told

Most define purpose based on a conditioned egocentric perspective. That conditioned perspective is “ME” and the more you can magnify, and press “me” into your world, the more “you” believe you will experience a greater sense of 'self.' Yet, most tend to miss or skip over one important factor.

Without “them” you are nothing.

So let me get right to the point, your only purpose in the world is RELATIONSHIP. You are ‘here’ for that and that only. You have no other purpose and there is NO OTHER reason for your Being and that is "The Heroes Journey." Deep engagement with the others of your world actualizes the 'self' in ways the ego cannot anticipate or prepare for and this makes it beyond your egocentric calculations and schemes.

Believe it or not, your egoic endeavors to become "rich" are intricately connected to a belief that wealth will bring others to you. However, this aspect has been abnegated and denied by the ego-self in the pursuit of wealth for wealth’s sake. Make no mistake, wealthy people who recognize wealth as the means of extension and engagement with a world of others, are fulfilled people. They have discovered the meaning and purpose of existence and wealth makes no difference to that purpose (unfortunately, there are very few who realize this).

Seeking experiences of pleasure and enjoyment are useless unless shared. Could life be enjoyed if you were the only one enjoying it? Living 'life' together is what makes life worth living. 

The problem is that you have failed to recognize this basic purpose of life and your egoic self-construct (belief in a “you”) pursues a separate " happiness," autonomous from others. That purpose has relegated sharing and relationship to the bottom of the barrel. There is no need to seek depth in relating if relationship is of limited importance. Thus, we have finite relationships conditioned on individual egocentric rules that cause us to remain disengaged and empty.

However, we've got tons of 'stuff,' most of it useless in producing a sustainable "happiness" of any substance. We go off in search of our individual "enlightenment" oblivious to the fact that absolute truth has nothing to do with an 'individual.'

Is it any wonder you are so unhappy and unfulfilled? Is it any wonder you suffer through constant conflict with those around you? Is it any wonder you often find solitude or individual pursuits more satisfying than engagement with others? Is it any wonder you turn to alcohol, cigarettes and drugs/medications to "lubricate" (reduce fear) your engagement with the world?

Addictions are NOT anomalies or abnormalities... but COPING SKILLS, because all you seek to do is alleviate your FEAR of 'them.'

Is it any wonder the world in general seems hell bent on mutual destruction. It’s not because you don’t know how to relate to others, since that is as natural as breathing, it’s because you fear deeply relating, as that might jeopardize your own personal happiness, which you have evaluated based on so many other things besides relationship.

This is not to say that making money to live comfortably is NOT important or that having pleasurable solitary experiences should be denied. But these goals should be placed in the proper perspective. We feel stifled and disengaged from one another and find little pleasure in knowing each other and that's primarily because we no longer DO know each other. Did we ever?

Some work 60 to 80 hours a week and have the best of what money can buy. Yet, what they are missing makes it all seem trivial, because they have become complete strangers to each other.

But it's so much easier to 'love' things than people.

We have become "strangers in a strange world."

From the moment of birth you began inventing a ‘self’ based on relationship with others. You are “you” because of your interdependence on "them." These constructs are rich with possibility, simply because we make up “reality” and define it together, not in solitude or through models of individual success. The world is a 'dream,' but it is a collective dream and we make it "real."

To relate deeply to others, we must know each other deeply and that is your "heroes journey," because through it you may finally overcome your fear of engagement. Otherwise, we remain surface strangers and the world becomes a reflection of nothing more than ripples on the surface, since we fear the depths. To swim in the depths literally changes everything.

What about those you have chosen to love and cherish? Do you exist in a “continuum-of-knowing” in which you experience others, and they experience you, in a new way everyday? Or has everything become predictably tedious?

Your old enough now, to swim in the deep end of the pool. Love ("enlightenment") is discovered within the depths, because it exists nowhere else.This is the real "Hero's Journey," but few are fearless enough to take the first step.

Any fool can go off in search of their "non-dual" experience. But what good is that? Best you go back to your higher states of consciousness, your OM chant's and your meditation cushion. You're NOT ready yet.

But when your ready to fully engage the "Hero's Journey"...

they'll be waiting...

...because no one journeys alone...

Artwork by Mark Henson - "Spirit Flight"

The Invisible Mind

(post reprinted from Intimate Awakening which is no longer in operation)


Your problem is NOT that you have a body, but that the body has subordinated your mind. You believe the mind invisible and only the body can be SEEN and, therefore, what the body does is very significant to you. This is why the mind requires so little attention, except when attending to the needs of the body.

A mind engaged only with the pursuits of a body is called “ego.”

The ego insists that the mind be limited by the body (actions/behaviors/doing) and this gives the impression upon the mind that the body is more real than the mind. The mind has actually come to believe it is nothing more than a part of the body and since the body is bound by its limitations, the mind must be equally as limited.

If at any time bodily control is threatened, you immediately become vigilant to the mind in demanding control of the body. The ego believes that as long as the body is under control, the mind may think whatever it will and little to no control is required. This is because an uncontrolled body can be seen, while an uncontrolled mind is invisible to the naked eye. Failure to control the body leads to guilt and shame, while failure to control the mind is NOT of concern, except as it relates to the body.

That which the mind gives most attention to is always perceived as visible. You are actually relieved that the mind is invisible, because if others knew your mind you would be forced to control the mind more vigilantly than the body. In fact, this would radically alter ego dynamics by demanding that the mind be invested purely in control of itself and this would make the body invisible.

Who would care what the body did, or did not do, if the mind was unconcealed and fully disclosed? How could an “ego” conceal itself and live vicariously through a body if the mind were fully open to the world? 

The ego thrives upon concealment and omission and, through the body, the ego is a master of disguise. Therefore,  your “awakening” to truth is contingent on a fully revealed ego and to fully reveal the ego is to fully engage with others in order to be revealed with, and through, them. An ego that continues to insist on a private and invisible mind, is a self-protective ego fully engaged with the fear of exposure.

To proclaim your emancipation from the ego’s conditions is to deeply and fully engage a world of others without fear. Your private little experiences of "awakening" are nothing more than a covert egocentric manipulation to reinforce individual privacy and concealment. The ego thrives on experiences it can call its own and does NOT take kindly to the idea of sharing.

Look to everyone around you as vehicles to sharing of 'self.' Your purpose is to dissolve the limits of relationship, which are conditions the ego has imposed from fear. The ego’s need for privacy impedes your purpose.

The only way to free your mind…

...is to reveal it.

Artwork by Regino Gonzales - "Invisible Man"