The Fucked-Up Symptoms of Your Existential Separation Anxiety

Even though you struggle to keep it to yourself, you have often noted how fucked-up you are. And have you ever noticed how everyone you know turns out to be just as fucked-up, in one way or another, as "you"? Your wife/husband, mother, father, sister, brother, Aunt Ginnie, Uncle Sal, your dumb neighbor Harry, your coworker Jan, your boss Mr. Higgins, your son’s girlfriend and her mother and her mother's mother, society, the world, the cosmos, on and on, ad infinitum, everyone of ‘em…

…all royally fucked-up. 

In fact, just when you meet someone you think might have a handle on his/her “existence”…badabing…nope, fucked up too. Sorry for the crude and crass language here (which just demonstrates how fucked-up I AM) but let’s face it boys and girls, egocentric reality supports nothing more than this assessment easily applied on an ongoing basis.

You can run (which you do everyday, in a million different ways) but you can’t hide.

So why are you trying so hard NOT to be fucked up? Do you really think you can ever be anything BUT fucked-up? Are all your spiritual practices and attempts at purity merely a way to hide “you” from your own fucked-up symptoms? Has it ever really worked for any appreciable length of time? After 20 yrs of your rigidly performed spiritual endeavors, are you really any less fucked up than you were day one? When will you finally be cured?

Fucked-up is nothing more than a symptom of abandonment resulting in a lifelong feeling of “separation anxiety.” It is the universal sense of abandonment that we all experience, but fail to share, because we hide from it. In other words, the ego-self you insist on being “you,” can only sustain its “you-ness” by rigorously keeping itself apart from all the other egos trying to be “them.” It’s not that you were abandoned, it’s just that as an ego-self, you abandoned them and so, they appear to have abandoned YOU. Hahaa!

Separation anxiety is endemic to your very existence and as long as “you” believe you "exist," separation anxiety must be your underlying foundational experience. You have NO choice in this simply because YOU choose it, day after day after day…until eventually you achieve your ultimate goal of complete and total separation or…

..death (what other reason for it?).

Obviously, this leads to a whole spectrum of symptoms, which can be easily categorized as Existential Separation Anxiety. Of course, some people are REALLY fucked up, so much so that they need drugs to hide from their symptoms so they can function in a society where everybody’s fucked up and suffering from the same separation anxiety. Other people need to be locked up, because their fucked-up symptoms are so deadly that they only interfere in your continuing attempts at pretending to NOT be fucked-up. In the post-modern world, you can be fucked-up but only to a point. Beyond that, you need help to keep the world from abandoning you (which is nothing more than you abandoning it).

Ah…but not you! You’ve become expert at hiding your symptoms and don’t need drugs to keep it all under wraps (You meditate it away, LOL!). In fact, you've become so expert at hiding your symptoms that sometimes you actually think that you might NOT be fucked-up at all.

This is actually the worse kind of fucked-up you can be because, unfortunately for "you," those closest to you know that all your spiritual hocus pocus is bullshit. No matter how adept you become at hiding (and some are truly expert indeed), they actually know how fucked-up you really are and, at times, you literally hate them for it (and so, easily abandon them, thereby, further reinforcing your own symptoms). In fact, of all the people in the world, for which you present yourself as symptom free, it’s those who know you the most that you often FEAR the most, simply because they actually know what you really ARE….which is fucked-up.

Well…fuck them, right!?!?

However, there is a part of you that’s NOT fucked-up and that has never abandoned or separated from you. That part knows nothing of the world and the world’s rules of self-development and games of successful symptom relief. That part does not “perceive” and has no use for eyes that “see” (how fucked-up you are). 

This Deeper Spirit has no awareness of your egocentricity and, because of that, the ego ALWAYS feels rejected and abandoned. All your dogged attempts to achieve positive self-esteem and live a productive, "happy" lifestyle in a material world are essentially futile and destined to fail, simply because of this fact alone. The ego can never be anything more than individually fucked-up and feeling abandoned by a part of you that it senses is greater than IT (and, hence, NOT fucked up at all), but that it can never unite with in any way whatsoever. So you may feel your less fucked up than your dumb neighbor Harry, but you’re actually equally fucked up and abandoned.

Your egocentricity virtually assures it.

Contrary to popular belief, egocentric abandonment is a universal experience not exclusive to any particular personality with any specific traumatic life experience. Everybody experiences it on one level or another and experiences it ALL the time. The very nature of an ego-self is to experience the separation anxiety of abandonment. So go ahead and fully accept your deep-seated sense of abandonment and ALL those fucked-up symptoms. Embrace your fucked-up life and engage it fully. As long as you are egocentric, it can never be anything more than fucked-up. So play infinitely in your fucked-up-ness and change the rules form time to time in order to experience all the different modes and means of being fucked-up.

Have fun, Yo!

Separation anxiety can never be cured as long as egocentricity is what defines “you." But the irony of your very existence is that you are only egocentric, BECAUSE you define your “self” as separate and abandoned.


Unfortunately, most of you will read this fucked-up essay and quickly abandon me as being too fucked-up.

But that’s how this game is played…LOL!


Artwork by Karl Perrson - "Self-Portrait"

What Do I Do When Lightning Strikes Me…

The air seems different lately or maybe it’s the light. Something has changed. The ego senses it. But a deeper part of you has known all along and it waits patiently. It has always known what you needed. But you don’t know that…yet.


The ego, however, is busy connecting dots, sniffing out trails, dusting for prints.

Then…the lightening strikes.

Long phone calls. Text messages passed between them, sometimes late into the night.

There’s no mistaking…

…the ego has been betrayed.

It feels like a swift and penetrating prize fighter punch to the gut. The chest is crushed, the throat constricts as your breathing becomes rapid, it’s hard to talk and…

…what’s that ringing in the ears?

As the blackness descends, you can’t breathe and the mind is racing ever more rapidly…

…over the cliff.

You were expecting economic collapse, a Great Depression, WWIII, explosive packages, errant missiles, electromagnetic pulses, even asteroids. But now Armageddon has finally arrived…and it’s ALL for you and you alone.

Did you not see it coming? How could you have missed the signs?

That doesn’t matter now. Now, the ego demands its pound of flesh, because guilt has ALWAYS required punishment…and you ARE the executioner.

The attack is swift and chaotic. The ego thrashes about like a hot wire in a hurricane.

“You fucking bitch….who is he…did you fuck him….oh God….how could you do this to me…why!”

But deep down under all your desperate fear is the voice that softly whispers…..

…“you know why.” 

But you refuse to listen and instead, the ego loudly stakes its claim…”But I loved you!”

The next day, after almost no sleep, you’re numb and exhausted. You go to work and marvel at how you could have possibly made it through this day so well. But, the drive home is ALL ego and it calls upon the demons of hell to come to your aid in demanding she be nailed to the cross and then burned at the stake. You see images of your own personal apocalypse and in your rage, it seems you’re only just one thought away… from actual murder.

That night, in a darkened room, completely immersed in your suffering….your mind goes to an even darker place.

Make no mistake…you are in HELL.

What else could this place be?

However, gradually, after many hours, you begin to get quiet. Very… very quiet. Again, there’s that other voice in your head. But this voice ignores your suffering. This voice denies you your pain. It whispers something much different than the ego… completely opposite, in fact.

This voice says…”do you really think you known what love is?” 

And very slowly, painfully slow… it comes to you… that, no…you really don’t….and you never did.

…and maybe that's been the problem all along.

But the ego, ever quick to nurture condemnation, screams at you… “but how can you blame yourself, she’s the one that broke the rules…

…she cheated!”

Then that voice again, unperturbed and very quiet…

“love does not require rules…only you do.”

And when you finally realize you have no clue how to go about it, you then become willing to learn and invite instruction…

…from that which knows.

What have I got to do to make you love me
What have I got to do to make you care
What do I do when lightning strikes me
And I wake to find that you're not there

What do I do to make you want me
What have I got to do to be heard
What do I say when it's all over
And sorry seems to be the hardest word

It's sad, so sad
It's a sad, sad situation
And it's getting more and more absurd
It's sad, so sad
Why can't we talk it over
Oh it seems to me
That sorry seems to be the hardest word

What do I do to make you love me
What have I got to do to be heard
What do I do when lightning strikes me
What have I got to do
What have I got to do
When sorry seems to be the hardest word 

(Elton John)                                      

                                                                                               

Circuitry of Consciousness: Alternating vs Direct Current (metaphor)

The self-construct (“you”) was NOT conceived apart from a world of other egos. Such a reciprocal exchange makes us exclusively “other-referencing” and even in our most isolated egocentric moments we are drawn to one another through the circuit that connects us.

The content of every individual mind is a story of birth and death and this is available to all minds. Everything in between is only meaningless filler, simply because it makes no difference to the story of birth and death.

However, it may be very meaningful to “you.”

Nevertheless, others define you as you define them and this is occurring moment to moment since you became aware of an individual ego-self ‘existence” (an existence in which other egos were necessary to your awareness of a ‘self’). This circuit of consciousness has no direct source, but is an “alternating current” infinitely connecting all minds.

However, the ego can misinterpret the circuit as “direct current.” The ego demands division from the circuit through which it constructed itself in order to experience itself as exclusive-to-itself. It misinterprets alternating current by asserting a direct line from itself to itself, assuming total authority of itself, by itself. This negates all but the most minimal of influence from, (or to) others, making it easy for the ego to maintain its narcissistic “existence” in contrast to other egos and this is why there is a tendency to keep our thoughts undisclosed and private.

Of course, this is delusional, since all current alternates between minds and experience is constructed based on that exchange. This is why all experiences must agree or else we could not communicate.

The egocentric self-construct must always interpret alternating current as direct, otherwise its belief in a localized self-consciousness would be dissolved and it would be privy to the content of other localized minds as they would be aware of the content of its consciousness. To believe that localized content is available to other localized minds, would be to end egocentric existence entirely and this is a very fearful idea to an ego glorified in its individual exclusivity.

But is there really exclusivity to your experiences? Although you certainly interpret your experiences as exclusive to “you,” is this actually the case or is it merely a grandiose egocentric delusion? Your thoughts are different from mine in relation to time, but are they different in relation to content?

Although the circuit of consciousness is infinite, we limit what can be experienced thereby setting limits to consciousness. We agree that we cannot “move mountains” and no individual has ever done so (except maybe through dynamite).

This explains the brief psychologically paranormal experiences often reported by individuals, such as precognition or past lives. What occurs in these atypical instances is that individuals attain brief contact with the circuit’s alternating current. Such experiences are beyond the usual realm of direct current and can be disorienting and sometimes shocking to the normalized and conventionally conditioned ego-self.

Hence, experiences of awakening are nothing more than brief disorienting experiences of alternating current, as opposed to direct current, resulting in all manner of abnormal, atypical, and seemingly miraculous, encounters. Nevertheless, this can only shock the normalized ego back into directly continuing to assert itself as direct source of itself. This is why experiences of “awakening” or “enlightenment” never last. An Individual will revert all experiences into direct current, thereby, interrupting the charge.

Direct current automatically imposes time constrictions making experiences finite, temporal and conventionally expected. However, alternating current, running between minds, has no restrictions, limits or conditions and so it is very unexpected. When individuals serendipitously and spontaneously find themselves briefly experiencing this alternating current, they are afforded momentary glimpses of other minds and really nothing more than this, since there is really only One Mind. This experience is not thought based, since our thoughts are oriented entirely on direct current. However, it is an experience of the circuit of which we are all connected. Therefore, contrary to egocentric individualism, we are entirely the same (metaphysically speaking, of course)

Welcome to the Grand illusion

Come on in and see what's happening

Pay the price, get your tickets for the show

The stage is set, the band starts playing

Suddenly your heart is pounding

Wishing secretly you were a star.

But don't be fooled by the radio

The TV or the magazines

They show you photographs of how your life should be

But they're just someone else's fantasy

So if you think your life is complete confusion

Because you never win the game

Just remember that it's a Grand illusion

And deep inside we're all the same.

We're all the same...

So if you think your life is complete confusion

Because your neighbors got it made

Just remember that it's a Grand illusion

And deep inside we're all the same.

We're all the same...

America spells competition, join us in our blind ambition

Get yourself a brand new motor car

Someday soon we'll stop to ponder what on Earth's this spell we're under

We made the grade and still we wonder who the hell we are

(Styx)

Closed Boxes in a Zombie World

Time constructs, while at the same time stripping away. Over time, we meticulously construct concepts of one another that strip away the possibility of awakening together.

You have constructed egoic concepts of those you profess to ‘love' and they conform like clockwork and from these concepts you believe you ‘know’ them.

How could they be any different than what you think they are?

Even when they seek to escape your conceptual boxes, you find a way to box them in by determining which box their attempted escape conforms to.

There is always a box available. The problem is that the same boxes used to contain others are also used to define your ‘self.' You cannot transcend your 'self' and still keep 'them' in boxes.

We are all victim to our conceptual boxes and this perpetuates self-containment and stifles freedom. In order to free your ‘self’ you must free others from your constructs. This is what was meant by “thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself.” By freeing them, you simultaneously free yourself.

The ‘world’ you experience is full of conceptual strangers, even those you do not ‘know,’ easily fit your boxes. You have determined that “happiness” is only available when the world conforms to your conception and you experience your world from that box.

All your concepts have been learned from the past so as to predict a future. This is why we compulsively repeat the past and why wars never end and peace is only a pipe dream.

Not to fit a box means it is unknown and the ego-self fears what it cannot predict. Sadly, this is why you have become predictable even to yourself, since fear of uncertainty has resulted in a neatly packaged self-concept that rarely sways from its original design (core beliefs).

The world is waiting for you to break free of your predictions and experience the infinite. How else can it be saved?

But, you believe that if you cannot ‘predict’ me, you cannot know me. Unfortunately, this is why you fail to know yourself and fear your own infinite capabilities. Once you find the right box for me (no matter how hard I might try to escape containment), my actions will confirm your judgments. If you cannot fit me into a box, something must be wrong with me.

But not to worry, there’s a box for that too.

Predicting my actions is paramount to our continued relationship, no matter how shallow and surface oriented we become. In this same way, "I" define “you” and the tangled webs we weave have been predicted long before we meet and are based solely on an egoic obsession with the past.

There is no intimacy in boxes.

Intimacy contained and stuffed into concepts obviously stifles Deep Spirit. Contained intimacy is NO intimacy, even though we may delude ourselves into thinking that “this is love.”

If your relationships are stifled, then find your boxes and open them. This not only frees your mind, but also the ones you have chosen to love. Love cannot be contained or limited and is impossible without intimacy, or the deep understanding that dissolves our strangeness and closes the gap between us.

The world is an infinite spectrum of experiences demanding to be shared.

If you box me into your concepts you suffer through your own self-containment and this not only disengages you from others, but from your world as well. Your world needs to experience the freedom of awakening through and with another, because your experience of a ‘world’ is entirely contingent on the experiences of others. “You" could not experience existence without "them." But you fear them and they fear you and therefore, all experiences are finite and limited.

Change is joyfully invigorating to an "existence" that realizes itself as infinite. But then, why do we seek to contain it in finite boxes? When will we choose to open our boxes and experience the infinite fields?

Your ego-self was constructed to anticipate events through inaccurate predictions so that preparations could be made (constructing boxes) to insure self-preservation. This capacity serves you well in preparing for things that might cause actual harm and we have learned effective means of insuring physical safety.

Yet, a problem occurs when insuring safety becomes an imperative for the egoic self-concept. Now you must predict my actions and behaviors to protect your own self-concept. Self-preservation demands fear and stifles intimacy. But, I must do the same, because in the past we have made mistakes in judgment resulting in attack. Although you extend an illusion of forgiveness, memory is impacted and you have now boxed me in for the sake of future self-preservation. And so continues the gradual erosion that affects all relationships and maintains a world of strangers bored with the mundane and tedious experience of ‘living’ from boxes.

In our mutual boxes, we have isolated ourselves and this is the ‘zombie world’ we experience; boxed in, frightened and disengaged. The world is an experience within you, don’t box it in by containing others. To free your mind you must extract from your experience the predictions you superimpose upon others, because living from boxes cannot set you free.

Open your conceptual boxes and prepare for the 'Surprise' that deep intimacy brings. It is a surprise that illuminates a shared world and is the only way we can save it.

Dissolving the Conditions of Fear

The most incredible joy you will ever experience is in relationship with others.

But you doubt that this is true.

The ‘self’ can invent all manner of experiences for which to extract an exclusive, individual sense of satisfaction and pleasure for itself. But let’s make no mistake, any solitary satisfactions are ephemeral and based in fear.

The ‘self’ was constructed through interaction and engagement with others, although you think of it exclusively as ‘you’ and, therefore, have found it easy to deny this cooperative exchange.

"I don't really fear other people," you say, "I just don't trust them very much."

Ah... and so begins your self-reliance, as if you conceived your 'self' out of thin air and thus, need not rely on anyone but yourself to transcend that which "you" made. Unfortunately, this is delusional. "They" made "you" as you made them, and neither faction will give up so easily.

Nobody leaves alone.

The ‘self-concept’ is a creature of the world and cannot exist without that correspondence. Your belief system has been constructed in direct correlation with those who share in constructing the experiences of a 'world.' Quite simply, the self looks to others as reference for its own 'self-construct,' because we share in everything (by the way, who taught you that you could "transcend" the 'self'?).

Yet, the ego-self must deny this in fear for its very 'existence.'

So get ahead, hunker down on your cushion for a long meditation in seeking self-transcendence. Is that your goal? Maybe "we" will let you transcend your 'self' (but I doubt it). Ha!

Do you really think "you" can leave without "us"?

One of the chief ingredients of every self-concept, and that which we all share equally, is fear. Relationships conditioned by fear eventually wither and die (and thus, we're constantly seeking the means of 'resurrecting' our "love" from the dead). Fear stunts growth and impedes evolving consciousness, because it demands conditions, or limits, be imposed.

An enlightened perspective is absent all fear and naturally extends from unconditioned consciousness. Fear demands conditions be fortified against fear and those conditions are what we superimpose upon our relationships (and then wonder why our relationships suck).

Deep Spirit engagement is stifled by conditions, but rarely do we engage the world, others and ourselves without conditions. Failure to engage others from Deep Spirit, causes our experiences to become desensitized, blunted and apathetic. This is why so many become numb, and immune to joy in the "declining years", as the ego’s conditions have walled off Deep Spirit engagement almost entirely, allowing only the fear of death to predominate.

Nevertheless, even engaging with others from Deep Spirit will automatically predispose one to egoic fear.

There have been times in your life when you have engaged with others from this deep well of unconditioned awareness. However, most likely the engagement was brief, as the ego quickly clamped down on the mind, imposing conditions, thereby, squelching the intense freedom within the experience. This is called 'being in the moment' and, contrary to your guru, you cannot avail it alone.

The authentic guru can facilitate an end to conditions, but if he/she cannot unconditionally reciprocate in the exchange, neither will touch the joy of unlimited freedom.

The ego-self fears Deep Spirit engagement, simply because such engagement requires absolutely nothing from an ego-self. It comes from a natural space of consciousness that identifies with no concepts and is intricately unified with others and the world.

There are very few moments in your life in which identification with your ego-self is nonexistent. However, in corresponding with Deep Spirit, dissociation from the ego is experienced and the experience is utterly intoxicating. Nevertheless, in order to engage with Deep Spirit, another 'self' is required because it cannot be accessed alone (sorry...).

Although brief, such an experience is rarely forgotten, although it can remain dormant for many years and, for some, may never again see the light of day. The brevity of the experience is associated with a fear of self-annihilation or the loss of self. Becoming unified with your experience of another, directly threatens your egoic identity and the ego-self will forcefully resist by quickly inserting conditions upon the exchange. Conditions are always the result of fear. Conditions assert an autonomous ‘self’ in opposition to other selves, all competing for control and dominance.

Very simply, two or more can agree to engage without condition and, thus, relate without fear. Such a mutual goal demands peace be the underlying foundation. The conditions of fear must always create conflict and, whether between nations or loved ones, conflict will eventually result in war.

You can come from a different place in all your relationships if you so choose. However, you must choose, otherwise the ego will always choose for you, because the ego always comes from the past.

To relate without condition is not a difficult as it would seem. Recognize that all conflict is born from conditions determined by your individual egoic fear. Simply admit this to each other and allow Deep Spirit to rise up and gradually dissolve egoic conditions.

Deep Spirit engagement is known for its excruciating honesty, since all reasons for hiding, or concealment, is dissolved, along with the fear that commands concealment. Deep Spirit, when fully realized, has no conditions whatsoever and is an experience of "perfect peace."

Between two or more 'individuals' no other experience comes close to the freedom of letting go of your conditions, or "perfect peace," in mutual engagement. It is the most natural joy one could ever encounter and many have described this ineffable feeling with the label of “enlightenment,” while others believe it a correspondence with God.

Conceptual Imprisonment

Love cannot be conceptually understood and this is why it's not available. However, it can be experienced by engaging to understand it. Unfortunately, you engage from prediction and, therefore, suffer disappointment, because it can never be what you predict.

Attempting to extend outward from a concept is to demonstrate misunderstanding. To experience a concept is, of course, no experience at all. This is equally true for "non-dual awakening." If you think you've experienced “it,” then clearly you haven’t.

Love is an awakening that is unpredictable and cannot be prepared for, since you have no idea what it is. To predict and prepare is to set conditions upon an experience for which you have no understanding. When you think you know, you only imprison another within your concepts, thereby, imprisoning yourself. To define what you need from your own “knowledge” is to deny the truth.

Yet, when you engage without knowing or defining, you allow an openness for surprise.

Surprise is natural, while concepts are completely made up. Love, like enlightenment, must come as a complete surprise. Otherwise, you can be certain you have come prepared for the experience you expect based on what you predicted and, make no mistake, you will have it as expected. Yet, it's funny how what is expected seems to lose value over time, which means your preparations have been useless.

This applies as equally to "non-dual awakening" as it does to love, since both transcend time and are thus, timeless. Prepare for either, based on past learning, and you will experience neither. However, your ego will inform you that you have experienced the concept you were prepared to experience and you, obviously, will become a “believer." Are you a believer?

The world is full of "believers," but exhibits little in the way of truth. Love transcends the world, but if you awaken to it based on the world’s specifications, you have nothing other than what you had before. And who wants that?

To predict is to construct experience based on past learning. What is “loved” is the concept of another and not the other at all. In fact, essentially the other has ceased to exist by becoming a concept that you have constructed for which to fantasize an exchange of conceptual "love" based on your predictions of what it is. But concepts are always empty and there is nothing you can experience from a concept. Duh!

Yet, it’s funny how we look to concepts for our salvation, rather than to each other. But wasn't that the Buddha/Christ message? What happened?

Imprisoning another through a concept means that the other will exist only as a concept and "love" must be predicated upon conformance to that concept and for the ego, nothing else will do and anything less feels like betrayal. Therefore, if another fails to conform to your concepts, the ego can only see "love" as absent and will adjust accordingly.

This is why the ego seeks endlessly for love, but dies without it. To awaken to it, is to live and many realize this just prior to dying. In a moment they immediately understand what they were here for. Do you know what you're here for?

Love is “awakening” to truth and therefore, can come to you only through another because the truth of you is in them. It can’t be realized alone, through deep contemplation or years of meditation. It must be engaged with in the understanding that you cannot predict or prepare for it, whatsoever. Fail to see it in them and you will mistake the truth of yourself and choose your own imprisonment by limiting what you can awaken to in them. This is because "they" are indivisible from "you."

"and all my instincts, they return
and the grand facade, so soon will burn
without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside"

"in your eyes

the light the heat
in your eyes
I am complete

in your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
in your eyes
the resolution of all the fruitless searches
in your eyes
I see the light and the heat
in your eyes
oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light, the heat I see
in your eyes"

(Peter Gabriel)

Ego Goals vs Deep Spirit

Why would you think that you can know your ‘self,’ or even parts of the self, simply by self-observation or the use of introspective or meditative techniques? The observer is biased and will tend to completely miss, or even deny, aspects that cause discomfort.

However, others see what you cannot because it is through others that you have defined your ‘self.’ You do not define and give meaning to your 'self' alone or in isolation, but through engagement with a world of others and 'they' are your world.

In fact, the deeper our engagement with that 'world,' the more 'defined' we become.

The ego-self is entirely other-referencing and is always in the process of defining itself, or 'becoming,' through others and the world. This is particularly true of the relationships that we choose for which to deeply engage with another, because it is through these 'intimate partnerships' that we define our deepest layers of the 'self.' We engage with others to intimately share our 'self' so that the 'self' can evolve.

Yet, why is it that we so frequently fail to create and maintain intimacy in our most significant relationships? Why is it that so many relationships fail to engage the depth between them and either remain hopelessly stuck on the surface or disengage entirely?

Individualized ego goals often impede Deep Spirit intimacy, since they reinforce separation and division resulting in chronic conflict from frequent interpersonal competition. The ego idealizes the love of another, not for how it can reinforce the others self-development (your partner's), but for what it expects others will do to reinforce its own self-construct (you). The ego is a self-absorbed belief 'package' whose sole function is self-preservation through pressing itself into and against a world of conflicting opposites. It perceives others as naturally opposing its projects and goals. Nevertheless, the ego believes that completion of its goals and projects will eventually provide fulfillment by firmly asserting it into its experience of a 'world.' Therefore, it picks and chooses significant 'others’ to join with in carrying out its plans of self-actualization. These are the 'loving' relationships we attribute the most significance and expect will add to our individual self-fulfillment.

Yet, these significant relationships may be stifled and paralyzed by chronic conflict, simply because the embodied egos we choose to join with (in 'love') have self-actualizing goals of their own to give meaning and define their own individual self-defining. They expect you will comply with their plans, while you expect compliance with your own.

Chronic conflict with 'loved ones' is often the most severe, because your ego-self expects to negotiate a world of other egos it has NOT chosen to "love", all perceived as strangers, yet each applying meaning to their lives and often in opposition to you. However, in contrast, you expect that those you have chosen to join with 'in-love' will support your individual egoic self-actualization and when that is not forthcoming the ego experiences betrayal.

Although the ego expects opposition from the world, it will not easily tolerate opposition from those it chooses to collude with in building and actualizing itself.

The ego-self wants to experience the fullness of its existence based on what the world teaches you must have in order to be "happy." Conforming to the world is how the ego-self realizes its existence as significant and not merely a made up fantasy of the mind's imagination. It must build and develop itself for fear of being swallowed up and nullified by the world it experiences as outside and separate from it. Therefore, the ego adopts projects and goals that the world teaches will result in an actualized 'self' and, as the world teaches, an actualized self is a "happy" self.

Intimate relationships are considered important, but subsidiary and subordinate to individual egoic actualization.

The problem is that most of the projects we engage in to achieve this ever allusive "happiness" are projects that promote egoic self-absorption and reduce the importance of relationships as primary means to self-actualization. Intimate relationships are downsized and minimized as the means of self-realization.

We can collude with another in achieving ego goals, however, they too seek egoic self-actualization in agreement with the world's definition of a self-actualized 'individual.' These egoic pursuits, although not detrimental from an individual standpoint, are the antithesis of Deep Spirit intimacy in the creation and discovery of the love that joins individuals. When ego goals of self actualization dominate the mind, relationships must suffer and often may expire simply for lack of attention.

Egoic self-actualization that supersedes or takes priority over Deep Spirit intimacy, creates tension and conflict between loved ones who feel betrayed by one another. The 'chosen one' was not supposed to become a stranger in opposition but, instead, an ally in your self actualization and egoic search for "happiness." But the allegiance was lost and now, instead of sharing your 'self' in the desire to self-actualize through love, you withhold your 'self' and gradually begin to hold your partner in contempt as they also withhold from you.

Eventually the ego will experience increased anxiety in relation to the chronic stress of this constant withholding, or blunted extension, since our deepest inclination is to naturally extend to others. Anxiety will rise, particularly if the ego's demand for control in asserting itself against the other is consistently thwarted by the significant others own self-assertion. No matter how hard you try to control external circumstances, another ego is thwarting your efforts in their attempt at control. These are the daily "control dramas" that are played out in millions of "loving" relationships, so much so, that it is often 'normalized' as typical of all intimate relationships.

When separation-anxiety increases to a boiling point, the ego then avoids conflict altogether by slowly disengaging from the relationship. Now there are only bodies in proximity, providing only surface communication in the performance of routine, superficial domestic tasks, while the self is locked away in avoidance of depth. Adverse alienation sets in and we find we can no longer collaborate on even the smallest things. Eventually, the pattern becomes rigidly predictable, with no 'surprise' in the interactions, as engagement gradually becomes monotonous and mundane. Yet, we will not disengage from our individual self-actualizing pursuits and in fact, the ego intensifies its efforts in the direction of individualized self-actualization, since the relationship no longer holds out the promise of "happiness."

Eventually, the ego may cut itself off completely from what it sees as the source of its betrayal, resulting in physical separation and eventually the severing of all ties.The ego then seeks out another for which to collude in its individual plans of self-actualization. It has no desire to realize its role in the circular nature of the conflict and denies the fact that it's as guilty as the one it blames. Therefore, it will reconstruct the same patterns of conflict in every 'love' relationship it engages with in the future.

Yet, if it can come to realize its role in the pattern of betrayal, it can then gradually begin to alter its perspective enough to engage the other toward resolution. Resolution is always assured through increased understanding, because seeking to deeply understand another is to automatically correspond with Deep Spirit. When you correspond with Deep Spirit, the ego recedes in silence, thereby ending its incessant chatter originating from its need to control reality (others). Now both can listen deeply to one another, easily redirecting patterns to allow an intimate center through which communication can naturally occur.

It only takes one to extend from this Deep Spirit, because such extension has the miraculous tendency to evoke the same extension from others and this is because it is as natural as breathing. Yet, we have lost touch with this deep inner nature, because we have become hypnotized by what society teaches will lead to fulfillment and self-actualization, rather than the intimacy with another we know will energize and bring joy into our lives. Joy is only available when shared.

To extend from Deep Spirit is the path to dissolving alienation. This is because you are no longer strangers to one another and embark in the infinite process of intimate awakening together.

To remain strangers is to give up all hope of understanding and thus, all hope of love. To correspond from Deep Spirit 'within' is to find yourself through engaging to deeply understand another. It is the spiritual ground of all relationships and, although few ever reach that level, the path is available to everyone.

The Infinite Depth of Awakening Together

As Deep Spirit you are infinite in depth and there are times when you can feel the truth of this, in the sense that there is always something more or deeper that your just not getting at.

Residing at the surface denies this depth, but this is only because depth is fearful to a ‘self’ that has become quite accommodated to surface engagements. You have experiences of others coming into your life for one reason and that is to engage your depth. This is because you can’t go "within" alone.

If you wish to experience a non-dual "awakening," seek it with and through another.

The ego-self has very little need for depth, since it primarily relies on surface ‘perceptions’ in order to judge differences in its experience of reality. This aids it in anticipating and predicting bodily actions and purposes. Perception is exclusive to physical sensation (senses) and is quite often erroneous due to its shallow nature. This is why seeing is not always believing and our bodies can easily hide the truth. If you wish to realize a non-dual "oneness" you will need to experience it with and through another by plunging below the disorganized complexity of surface engagements.

This is evident even in our dualistic reality, as individuals relating with one another from depth are often surprisingly less egoically inclined in that engagement, since depth of interaction engenders intimacy or a deeper level of mutual understanding. However, even this is limited, since there has been no conscious choice to perceive each other differently and soon the ego resumes it shallow apprehensions. You will not attack what you engage with to understand, because what you come to deeply understand is always a reflection of "you." It is through others that the 'self' constructs and knows itself.

In this sense, intimacy is defined as a deeper understanding and it is a emergent relating with another mind, and thus the world. We cannot understand strangers (ego-self fears what it does not understand) and as long as strangers continue to engage in transferences of conceptualized "love," the world will exhibit that lack of depth and clearly it does.

The belief that a non-dual experience of unified oneness can be accessed through ideologies which advocate solitary practices is absurd, but clearly such ideology conforms to the world's conditions of truth, which are equally absurd. This alone should make them null and void, but not to an ego-self seeking to control its world through ideologies of "oneness" in an attempt to reconcile itself with an experience of a world it fears.

You cannot engage in self-intimacy alone, because you did not construct the 'self' alone. However, you can “find your 'self' through another, in fact, this is the only way “you” can be found and understood. The 'form' that such a relationship takes is insignificant and need not require any physical contact. However, the content of full engagement fuels correspondence with the infinite depth of Deep Spirit.

The intimacy of Deep Spirit is fearful to an ego and such depth of engagement is virtually unknown to the ego simply because the ego-self will always fear what it does not understand. This is because it cannot construct expectations for which to anticipate and predict behaviors and actions. Many individuals spend their lives avoiding any authentic depth of relating with others and the world. From fear, they choose to remain at the surface relying primarily on perception and its inaccurate tools of sensation. In this way, as long as appearances are perceived as satisfactory, as in conforming to egoic expectation, depth can be ignored and understanding never achieved.

The world reflects the magnitude of this ignorance and surface duality is the expected norm. This alone is why we fail to understand the world that we mutually create and lack of understanding can only lead to continued chaos, absurdity and self-destruction.

This is often evident with individuals whose lives are in severe disarray due to a life-long failure to access depth through others, thereby, impeding any depth of understanding for the individual 'self.' Always dwelling at the surface, they spend a great deal of time in self-development, productivity exercises, task management and organizing daily empirical objectives and society adamantly supports and advocates these endeavors as fruitful and worthwhile above any authentic interpersonal engagement. The more intellectual seek out austere and esoteric ideologies for which to accentuate the ego-self.

So many walking-wounded who have contracted into themselves for fear of engagement, failing to understand that healing is extension and, through extension, Being is realized.

Perform a cursory examination of all the "self-development" blogs and websites and it becomes clear that the ego's prime objective is to become expert at surface activities and engagements. We are expert practitioners of conforming to the world's value system. A value system that we created simply from fear of engaging with one another.

Issues of depth are frequently avoided through all manner of egoic defense mechanisms, not the least of which is anger and rage. The ego constructs experience based on expectation and expectations are restricted to surface beliefs to minimize the chance of encountering fear. Most surface beliefs involve self-defensive actions to protect the 'self' from psychological attack, but ego can only be attacked by those it does not know and if it remains on the surface it must sculpt its life through an abject ignorance of others. Thus, we have the modern world as we know it, completely immersed in fear and the resultant self-absorbed defense measures that can only obstruct engagement and, hence, understanding.

Your "awakening" or "enlightenment" involves a deep engagement with others and the world. Your “true nature" will not be realized through separate, solitary meditative exercises and this is an erroneous judgment egoically derived from poorly translated teachings of the ancient masters. However, the inner calm that these practices afford may further your seeking depth, but only because you have essentially sedated the ego’s fear by calming your mind.

Such a deep understanding of one another naturally dissolves our usual sense of self-protection and suspicion, since this depth significantly minimizes alienation and distrust. From such a depth of intimacy with another, you would then naturally transfer that to your own personal experience of the world (without any active ‘doing.’ In fact, the more you do the less depth possible, since the conditions of the world's need for 'action' impedes intimacy). The only way to “awaken” to an intimate engagement with your experience of 'world' is to intimately engage with your experience of others. That is your purpose, and theirs, because the world is made manifest through the relationship of the parts.

You have only one primary function in your experience of world and that is to seek depth in relating with that experience and the primary component of that experience, or that which causes you most fear and joy, is your engagement with others.You experience a world that is composed of others experiencing the same 'world'. This mutuality of experience is the substratum and foundation of your personal experience and intimate relating is where your “awakening” awaits you. The deeper you go, the more you “awaken.” Remain on the surface and your experience is dulled, barren and based on historical egoic expectation and prediction (the past).

Enlightenment is not self-detached or self-propelled, but deeply engaged with others in experiencing a Deep Spirit correspondence not available to individual minds alone. You have already chosen others through which to engage and awaken. They are your teachers, as you are theirs, and many more will come to you as needed. Trust in the need to deeply engage with those who surround you. Your choosing them was no coincidence. You must heal to be healed and teach to learn. This lends credence to the concept of “universal oneness.” However, a theory without a practice is useless to an ego-self that demands action. Therefore, to experience this “oneness” you must engage intimately with others and together you will reach those depths, for alone you merely remain hopelessly at the surface and your 'world' remains there with you.

This is the simple truth egoic minds continue to resist, opting instead for the path of the solitary seeker, which must leave others behind, simply because engagement is so utterly frightening. Yet this theme is the foundation of every religion and spirituality prior to the ego's need to demand they conform to individual egoic goals. However, keep in mind that the infinite depth of Deep Spirit intimacy has no end-point and no destination and is infinite by nature. But then, neither does spiritual "awakening" have an end point, although many modern so-called masters teach it as a destination or outcome.

There is no end to how far two or more can go when they join in that purpose.

Deep Spirit (part 2)

Continued from Deep Spirit (part 1)

Deep Spirit is an awakened intimacy experienced by two or more.

Bodies are not necessary to experience Deep Spirit, although upon encounter, bodies do tend to engage in close proximity, since a desire to be together becomes irresistable.

Sex does not result in, or lead to, the experience, but can be used in expressing Deep Spirit (as can most anything else). Unfortunately, sex that masquerades as "loving" impedes what can be experienced. In fact, Deep Spirit does not require bodies be joined together in any particular 'form.' Nevertheless, bodies that have already come together, conforming to the world’s definition of 'joined,' may have an advantage in experiencing Deep Spirit, simply because they are already engaged on some level. Of course, there are many ‘bodies’ that live together as alienated strangers (and many even claim to be deeply "spiritual"). Therefore, a Deep Spirit experience may not be available until there is the conscious choice to discover it together by identifying and dissolving delusions.

What is discovered will be from what is mutually created. There is no proprietary truth available through linear transmission. Only the truth that waits to be created through a circular engagement loop.

If you think you’ve experienced Deep Spirit, but no one else is joined in that experience with you, then most likely you are mistaken and merely conform to the world's conditions of "love."

Relationship is the conduit for all experience and you will experience what you expect and “expect what you invite.”

There are many ‘forms’ available for relating to one another in the world. Yet, Deep Spirit is NOT concerned with objectified or manifest 'forms,' as dictated through the world’s rituals and expectations. It is not a socially channeled intimacy and comes from a well much deeper than anything an external world has ever considered as available. There is no need for the forms of marriage, friendship, lovers, familial or any other relationship parameters, as dictated by the world. Nevertheless, since most of us conform to varying relationship types, these would certainly be an obvious starting point.

We cannot conceptually define Deep Spirit, however, communication can aid in removing the obstacles that impede the experience. In fact, mutual identification of obstacles is a necessary first step in the process. Until words are no longer necessary, healing is actualized through words.

There is no finite outcome from engaging in Deep Spirit together, only recognition of the process. This is simply because Deep Spirit is infinite and has no boundaries but those created to obstruct it. When it becomes miraculously available, there is no telling how far, or how deep, two or more can go “within” together. But you can only engage in the process with another and, to use an old cliché, “the more, the merrier.”

Fully engaging to correspond with Deep Spirit is our collective enlightenment.

Consciously joining with another to dissolve barriers for the purpose of encountering Deep Spirit, is highly useful. However, you cannot define what that experience will be or predict when it will be attained and doing so merely constructs more barriers and conditions. Your role is merely to stay in the process and give up all ideas and concepts you have determined as defining Deep Spirit. Once you attempt to define the experience, you inadvertently obstruct it.

Initially, there will be a general resistance to engaging with Deep Spirit since it cannot be encountered in solitude or from solitary actions or psychological practices. However, actions and practices enlisted to aid in corresponding with Deep Spirit can be employed, but only with the aim of more deeply engaging "others."

The "I" is eventually annulled for the "we."

We have become very selfish and arrogant in our sharing with others. This has resulted in the discarding of relationships, when the ego self-construct judges that they no longer meet our conceptualized needs. This makes extension, or the sharing of intimacy, utterly impossible due to the conditions we impose. Make no mistake Deep Spirit is intimacy, but deeper than any form of relating defined by the world. In that sense, it can be experienced in the world, but not of it.

Relationship is the ground of awakening, but also cause of the world.

A world in turmoil is a world caused by shallow, surface engagements and thus, loses the ground of awakening entirely. You will only know your ‘self’ through ‘others,’ as both have been mutually constructed, resulting in a subsequent “world” construct which is experienced collectively as separate.

A Deep Spirit experience is not disengaged but wholly and completely immersed in the experience of self and other and, through that experience, the quantum nature of the world changes. Through that immersion, the experience collapses the paradox of the one and the many in realization of the one with, and through, the many.

Deep Spirit (part 1)

There is something deeper than what you see on the surface of your relationships. The ones you have joined with in love are more than their behavior and even more than their thoughts and feelings.

You know this simply because you have always sensed there is something more within you and you are correct. But since you chose to experience this fact alone, you have yet to experience it.

If only we could see this ‘something more,’ this deeper aspect of the ‘self’ that has nothing to do with the body or even an outside world. The problem is that the world we live in has exiled this interior Deep Spirit experience, while appearances and forms have become much more important. "What you see is what you get" is the chief paradigm of modern engagement.

Our actions and behaviors take priority based on the world's (society's) teaching as to how we should act and what must be done. This is called social conditioning. However, it goes much deeper than mere socialization and this conditioned, scripted response to others has stifled our need to authentically relate to others from Deep Spirit. As time rolls on, we feel the distance growing and our interactions take on a displaced and scripted surface quality that leaves us feeling that life is devoid of meaning. This is because, make no mistake, your meaning comes from engagement with others. Meaning is available only in the space between two individuals, and this is why they came together in the first place. Yet, they must consciously choose to seek Deep Spirit together, since alone, it cannot be found.

If we engaged the world directly from this Deep Spirit experience, everything we say and do would be correct, because Deep Spirit informs from the level of Being and in that sense it is primordial and underlying all appearances. Unfortunately, the world is absent this Deep Spirit and, therefore, cannot teach it. There may have been a time when it could be learned from the world, but those days have long since passed and we now move farther and farther from this natural impulse to joyfully relate to the world in direct engagement with others. In the modern world, our lives become increasingly more bereft of meaning and we feel more lost and alone in an absurd world that makes no sense.

Deep Spirit makes sense and, upon mutual encounter, wipes away all confusion as to our purpose and function and causes us to see others and the world in a new light. In fact, it is this deeper aspect that indelibly connects us and unifies us. From Deep Spirit, you will know me and I, you, though we had been strangers before.

Unfortunately, you cannot encounter Deep Spirit alone or in solitude (although solitude can provide a preparation) nor can anyone else “seek within” and find this essence by him or herself. This is because it requires two or more through which to create the foundation, or 'grounding,' from which it can be directly experienced. It will start with two, because two is a condition that the world has not yet negated, although it has been reduced to mere appearance. We still seek to join with another, although even this natural predisposition is beginning to wane and dissolve.

Some have called it the “Tao,” “Awakening, “Enlightenment” or the “One.” Yet, if they experienced it alone then they were mistaken and merely relied on concepts instead of direct experience. There is nothing conceptual about Deep Spirit. It does not conform to words and need not be expressed. But it does require another through which to realize the experience. Together they will simply know, since the experience is unmistakable.

We could call it “love” and many have briefly touched this experience when bonding with another. Yet, the problem with this concept is that it is defined differently by every individual mind that considers it. In addition, experiencing love with another eventually conforms to the world’s rituals and expectations, thereby, losing contact with this deeper, more primordial, essence. This is why we call it "Deep Spirit" because it must be defined by two minds for it to be experienced by either one. It is not available to an individual apart from others and the world.

However, it is absolute and unconditional by nature and this makes it available to all of us.