Doing Everything (while doing nothing at all)

Is there something you’d rather be doing? Does your belief in what is good for you, conflict with what you actually do? Are there things you do that you’d rather not be doing?

Do you think you know what’s good for you?

But what if you have NO idea what anything means and, therefore, you give everything you experience all the meaning it has for you.

This is difficult for an ego-self that needs to DO things that are not just meaningful, but meaningful based on the world’s standards of meaning.

Yet, to play infinitely is to realize the world’s standards are finite and need not be considered by the infinite player playing finite games.

To play a finite game infinitely makes the game itself infinite, because the distinction between player and game dissolves.

Imagine the utter despair of an ego that comes to the realization that there is NO meaning to anything it experiences and everything experienced IS experienced simply because the ego gave it meaning. If the ego did not apply meaning, nothing would mean anything and everything would mean nothing and nothing is not an experience that is open to egocentric interpretation.

An ego cannot experience nothing, simply because, although an ego IS nothing, it must experience something in order to experience itself. There must always be something for an ego-self to interpret. What would an ego experience if there were nothing to interpret?

If an ego-self came to the realization that it gave meaning to every experience (otherwise every experience would have NO meaning to BE interpreted), would an ego then care what it did? Would there be things that an ego would rather be doing? Would an ego, which realized its experiences were meaningless, experience conflict from believing it should be doing something other than what it was doing in any particular moment? What difference would it make what it did or didn’t do? Would it then be free to do whatever it wanted?

But if an ego were free from all its meanings, what could it possibly WANT to do?

Would an ego, realizing that it gave meaning to every experience, also realize that every THOUGHT it “thinks” is entirely constructed from the meanings it has applied TO every experience? Would the ego then realize that all meaning is experienced as thought and every thought it invents in order to HAVE experience, is as meaningless as the experiences that make up the thoughts it thinks? Would the ego then attribute NO truth to its own thoughts and, if an ego attributed absolutely NO truth to its thoughts, would it still believe it had experiences?

Would an ego that realized it gave everything it experienced all the meaning it had, then come to the realization that it does NOT really know what anything means? Would it then seek to extract out and delete all its meanings, so that it could finally realize what everything really means (if anything at all) instead of only understanding the meaning it gave to everything, so that everything could be experienced as expected?

Would an ego, in realizing that its experiences are meaningless because its thoughts are meaningless, still have a need to “exist” and if an ego could no longer “exist,” because its thoughts and experiences are meaningless, thereby making IT meaningless, what would it BE? What would it DO?

So… is there something you’d rather be doing, even if knowing that anything you do is as meaningful or as meaningless as anything else? Because it seems you have NO idea what is good for you and, if you have NO idea what is good for you, then you can just go ahead and do whatever it is your doing in the moment your doing it.

This is how an ego plays infinitely, simply by realizing that it invents (thinks) meaning and applies it to every experience so that every experience CAN BE experienced. This is all an ego needs to realize in order to play infinitely. Because in that realization, the ego-self understands that there is nothing it need do and everything it does is as meaningful as anything else because everything is a meaningless egocentric invention chock full of meaning.

If everything is meaningless, nothing need be avoided and ALL can be engaged meaningfully, simply because, along with the absence of meaning, comes an absence of fear. Infinite players play fearlessly because they collapse ALL the meaningless into ONE meaning. When you have no idea what you should be doing, everything you do is as good as anything else that could be done or WAS done in the past.

Infinite players do not seek out games for which to achieve fulfillment, but are fulfilled in any and all games, because they are open to the meaningful surprise that comes from playing all games without meaning.

If you know what I mean…

Artwork by Chris Peters - "Late Afternoon"

Egocentric Love Requires Control (let your children go)

Egos require self-actualization to mitigate the nagging doubt that they really do exist in a world where everything but a 'self' can be empirically sensed and measured as really ‘existing.’ 

By the world’s standards, a self-actualized ego is a “person” in complete control of its existence and employing the various methods of self-actualizing that the world offers (career, marriage/family, wealth, religion, etc, etc, etc).

One significant method of egocentric self-actualizing offered IN the world is the parenting of children. Through children, the ego actualizes itself simply by reinforcing the need for egocentric actualization in undeveloped egos (children). In demanding children self-actualize; we reinforce the value of our own ego actualizing by repeating a past that taught us the need TO actualize in order to be "happy" in the future. 

Children are taught to mold and sculpt the 'self' in ways that aid them in playing, and winning, the world’s finite games and the chief goal of all egocentric actualization is CONTROL.

The ego defines actualizing IN the world as an ability to control the world, based ON the world’s standards, as exhibited through its finite games. CONTROL is a self-actualizing value that is consistently reinforced in children, above all other values.

In fact, even teaching children 'love' demands they learn control.

We teach children the need for control, simply through our need that they be controlled and this is done through “discipline” or the application of controls. Children also learn the value of control by witnessing all our attempts at controlling each other in the name of ‘love' and they learn that control is a primary component of love.

The world teaches that the highest form of love is love for our children and the primary outcome (reward) for this love is that our children succeed in playing the world’s finite games. Children are disciplined to conform to the rules of those games so that when they become full-fledged adult players they will win the rewards associated with those games. Until children become adults they are marginalized as only potential players, but not yet full participants.

When we have been conditioned to believe in the necessity of winning finite games, we may find it difficult to play infinitely and suffer from any lack of control. Essentially, in conforming to the world's standards, loss of control equals suffering.

To win in finite games, we must insure that children adequately conform to the dictates of control, since every game has rules that must be followed through serious scripted roles. Erosion of spirit is rarely considered as a product of control, because the world teaches that 'spirit' is a product of the world and that playing to win the world’s games actually enhances “spirit" (although any enhancement is brief, if at all and so we seek out other games for which to enhance spirit through winning)

To learn control demands one be controlled, and the proper control of egocentric character is considered necessary for developing egos and must continue long after the ego has “matured.” Maturity is nothing more than a controlled ego-self effectively conforming to the rules of winning the world's finite games.

Nevertheless, an ego actualizing through children (parent), does not fail to miss the contradiction inherent in imposing control, or discipline, on children. Therefore, the ego merely compromises with that contradiction by proclaiming that control is actually a form of “love” and a necessity to developing egos which are being trained to play finite games. We believe that if children successfully conform to the world’s standards and win at the games they play, they will be self-actualized and “happy" (contrary to the fact that egos are often very "unhappy" in playing finite games, but they know of no other way to actualize themselves). 

This is because, as much as we provide lip-service to “love,” the ego-self realizes that real “happiness” has more to do with control and the primary means of controlling the world is to control others in the world, so that the world’s games can be won.

However, there is one chief problem with control. It completely negates and nullifies love, because love has nothing to do with control, since the only reason for applying control is to limit. 

Yet, egos believe children must be controlled in the name of love, for how else will they succeed IN the world and reinforce the ego's reason for being IN the world (to self-actualize through the rewards of finite games).

When children do not demonstrate successful control parents impose control, demonstrating a demand that children be controlled and that this demand supersede love. This is because if they do not demonstrate control they may fail to be successful (win finite games) and this does not bode well for egos seeking to actualize through children and may signify a loss in that game (parenting).

Control imposes conditions on love, thereby, limiting what it could be if not under control (and severe application of control can cause severe hate and fear). As we all recognize, the world is full of egos desperately seeking to self-actualize (be "happy"), while entirely bereft of love (but exhibiting complete control of everything around them). Most egos have little experience with what love could be, if not limited by control. These egos engage in relationships with little experience of love, but having acquired years of meticulous training in the numerous means of control and, thus, seek to impose control in relationships as the means of discovering love. To lose control, or appear out of control, is a very frightening thing for an ego-self and is indicative of losing as opposed to winning.

The ego-self obsessed with control fails to see that controlled love... is not love at all. But, the ego-self learned that those who professed to love it, also asserted consistent control and, in fact, control was imposed because of love.

In a world of frightened self-preserving egos, control is paramount to existence and to refuse to control, and be controlled, is to deny self-actualization and, hence, surrender the ego's reason for being. So we seek to control each other and teach control to children so that control becomes normalized as the means of fully experiencing egocentric self-actualization (existence).

We must wonder what the world would be like if there were less control. But as long as control is defined as love, subsequently, love must be absent IN the world. 

Artwork by Shawn Barber - "Rattled"

Infinite Players have NO need to Sacrifice

It can be difficult for egos to play infinitely, because egos are very sacrificial by nature. However, once the ego-self gets the hang of it, infinite play can be quite exhilarating and even transformative.

The ego actualizes itself through the world’s finite games and all the world’s games demand egocentric sacrifice in order to achieve a self-actualizing reward. Look closely at any game played, be it football, baseball, education, career, family, celebrity, retirement, love, religion, parenting, government, etc, etc, etc. Inherent to achieving a reward is an underlying expectation of sacrifice and "hard work." In fact, based on the nature and degree of your sacrifice, you have an expectation of achieving a reward and not to be rewarded as expected can very disappointing to an ego-self.

Even spiritual-religious games have, within the ideologies and practices, an unspoken demand that you must sacrifice or work hard to achieve your awakening, enlightenment, revelation, salvation, non-dual experience, etc, etc, etc.

However, infinite players do not experience sacrifice, simply because they play with NO expectation of a reward and play merely for the joy of playing. When you have no expectation of reward or desire for an outcome, you are no longer bound by the rules (but can still follow the rules if you so choose).

Sacrifice, by its very nature, demands reward, otherwise it would not be considered sacrificial and no one would seriously follow game rules. The ego-self learned early on that hard work and sacrifice result in rewards that, unfortunately, are not always as rewarding as first thought. This demands the ego press on with other sacrifices and associated rewards. This is often referred to as “living on a treadmill.”

The ego-self is outcome-focused and rarely engages in any action that does not include a reward or outcome beneficial to its self-actualization. No spiritual or religious endeavors would be pursued if a valued outcome, taught by those who claim to have achieved the reward, were not forthcoming.

Infinite players find reward in simply playing and realize that NO ideological dogma (rules) or societal belief systems, need impede play and this leaves rules open to change.

We have been playing the same games for centuries, however, every so often after many years, the rules to the games change. You can be sure that infinite players have much to do with these changes. However, this often results in delay of game, causing change to evolve very slowly, because finite players often vehemently resist change.

Obviously, it would be advantageous if more finite players could choose to play infinitely so that rules could change more rapidly without the need for wars and numerous forms of suffering.

An ego adapting to infinite play can experience rewards, but applies no preparation in expectation of a specific outcome other than simply engaging in play with others. When the reward is unknown, no expectation of an outcome interferes with the freedom inherent of playing infinitely. Yet, even when a specific finite reward is introduced, the infinite player’s lack of seriousness tends to nullify the outcome as in any way rewarding. This is frustrating to finite players, who are continually dumbfounded by the infinite player's obvious lack of serious intent, even though clearly the infinite player is engaged in most of the same life games as the finite player.

This does not mean that an ego playing infinitely is NOT rewarded. However, the reward does not demand following any specific rules and play is not restricted to any specialized playing field not of ones choosing. One need not attend a university, follow a particular career, have a loving family, meditate daily, study the scriptures, attend church, believe any particular ideology or follow any specific creed in order to play infinitely. Of course, an infinite player can participate in all these games, but does so freely without the burden of necessity to conform to preordained rules.

In fact, most infinite players establish rules along with other infinite players precisely because one of the only goals of an infinite player is to engage with as many players as possible. But this goal is never-ending or infinite. Any rules established by infinite players are established with the understanding that such rules are always open to change.

The game of “family” can be quite transformative to the players who play without the unnecessary burden of needing to conform to specific rules. Certainly rules are followed in a family. Yet, when all players are infinitely aligned, rules are NOT in anyway burdensome.

To be infinitely aligned means that rules never replace the desire for play. This is easier for an infinite player than a finite player because, when outcomes are no longer necessary, the mind is no longer constrained by burdensome preparation and returns to its natural state.

This natural state is often referred to as “love.”

When outcomes are unexpected, and no longer prepared for, sacrifices are no longer experienced as necessary to play and play becomes quite spontaneous, even miraculously so. Life becomes less suffered-through and players experience a state of freedom rarely accessed by individual egos intent on outcomes and rewards for which they must engage in a life of sacrifice, as opposed to play.

This is because, “those who must play, cannot play” (James Carse). Infinite players never play because they must, but only because they choose to play and this makes all the difference between the infinite and finite players.

Artwork by Adam Scott Miller - "Antenna"

The Ego is Serious Business (except when playing infinitely)

The difference between an infinite player and a finite player is that infinite players choose to play, with NO desire for an outcome and, thus, NO need to win. Finite players only play to win and, by taking the rules very seriously, they forget that playing is a choice.

The first rule of an infinite player is that rules are never ‘serious’ and rules not taken seriously are open to change. Infinite players need not take rules seriously simply because they only desire to continue playing, because they realize that the games never end.

An ego-self demands rules, because rules maintain structure and an ego-self is nothing but a highly structured system of beliefs (rules). Lack of seriousness puts the rules in jeopardy and rules that lose credibility detract from finite players who have won rewards (recognition) seriously playing by the rules.

Imagine what would happen of you chose to no longer take your ‘self’ seriously? Who would you be?

Finite players do not recognize infinite players, but infinite players never fail to recognize other infinite players, because “you will know them by their fruits.”

The ego is serious business and NOT to acknowledge an ego’s 'seriousness' is a serious insult to an ego. In fact, the ultimate in ego seriousness is called the “sacred.” Merely to question the “sacred” is deemed an attack and will be met with swift justice.

Egos (the “I” you take serious) are by nature finite, since all individual egos believe in death and death is a finite game. But finite egos can play infinitely.

Some readers of this blog feel duped (I should post the irate emails, LOL!). They read the title Peaceful Self: Spiritual Perspectives Along the Path to Enlightenment and think “Wow! This must be a serious spiritual blog.” But, alas, after reading the posts, they become convinced I’m a fraud, but not because I don’t write about “Spiritual Perspectives Along the Path to Enlightenment,” but because I fail to take those perspectives seriously.

Spirituality is a game like any other game we play in 'life,' but this does not stop egos from taking it all very seriously. Yet, the only reason they take it seriously is that an outcome or reward is expected. Without the carrot, the horse won’t pull the cart to market. Expectation demands serious adherence to the rules in order to acquire the reward. Even the non-duality games require a carrot, since who’d seek an experience of non-duality if there were no reward from that experience?

The ego-self is serious business, hence, what it believes must be taken seriously, otherwise, why believe anything at all. If ego beliefs (rules of play) were not taken seriously, this would place the ego itself into question as not worthy of serious belief and if the ego no longer took itself serious what would that mean for “you.” Ha!

There are many ways a finite ego-self can play infinitely. However, like a finite player, infinite players also have rules and the chief rule is that all rules can and must be changed (especially when it appears someone might win).Even though infinite players can, and do, win games, they fail to take winning seriously and this entirely negates the point of winning (and tends to piss off the serious players who live by the rules).

Infinite players are unconcerned with a game’s beginning or end, nor are they concerned with conforming to a games boundaries or limits. Infinite players seek to make rules or boundaries more fluid, by questioning the very reason for the rule in the first place (What do you mean“the Bible says it’s so”?).

Of course, infinite players follow rules, but not seriously and this lack of seriousness allows infinite players to play with rules and NOT by rules. Even the rules of death are perceived as fluid and yielding to change. Infinite players are not anarchists and follow rules when rules are agreed upon and not because those who make the rules demand agreement.

Infinite players can play the roles required of finite games, but are not constrained by roles and do not take them seriously. Doctors, lawyers, gurus and Indian chiefs all have scripts to follow. However, although infinite players are aware of scripts, they have no fear of the impromptu and spontaneous (which often changes the rules delineated in the script).

Infinite players do not seek outcomes, but "surprise" (or that which eliminates outcomes). Infinite players realize that to be open to surprise one must be vulnerable and to be vulnerable one cannot follow a script.

Infinite players do not seek transcendence, which asserts an outcome, but seek transformation, which has no end.

While finite players play seriously, infinite players play joyously and laugh often. Even a game as serious as death is cause for laughter. Finite players laugh at those who fail to follow the rules. However, because they do not take rules seriously, infinite players have no reason to laugh at others, but only with others. Their laughter is not a result of winning, but more a response to discovering a surprising new way to keep the game in play and bring on more players.

Infinite players do not ignore the past. Yet, neither do they need to play by rules determined in the past. Rather, infinite players play at “reinterpreting” the past so that conclusions arrived at in the past need not be repeated in the future and the future remains open as an unending “horizon” of possibility (often referred to as "freedom").

Infinite players do not seek to forcefully block the actions of other players, but engage in actions that facilitate authentic actions from other players. This keeps boundaries “fluid” and limits always in flux.

Infinite players are unconcerned with applying power externally, but are more concerned with coming from an interior place of strength. Strength facilitates possibility, while power closes down all possibility.

Infinite players avoid ownership of ideas and seek to use ideas to engage the Deep Spirit of others in order to reveal their own Deep Spirit center. It is from the “center” in each of us, that the center of ALL is realized.

Finite egos can play life’s games infinitely by following these simple rules. However, keep in mind that the first rule of playing infinitely is that rules must not be taken seriously so that they can be changed...

...and change often.


(many of the concepts presented here were distilled from James Carse's "Finite and Infinite Games." However, considering that he supports playing infinitely, I'm sure he won't mind) 


Artwork by Pauline Jones - "The Long Dream"

AWAKENING: A Product of Perfect Communication

Awakening is a transcendent communication that has nothing to do with God. 

Nor does it involve participation from any "Divine Consciousness," "Source Mind," "Universal Mind," or any other metaphoric concept connoting a supreme being or transcendental source.

The communication that we awaken to is perfect communication between ourselves, thereby, facilitating an experience we call God.

This is why awakening can never be an individual experience of truth. How could such an experience be available to 'individuals'? How could truth be transferable, or even identifiable, to parts (individuals) of the whole? Truth can be discovered together as a whole, when the choice to realize truth is not an individual preoccupation, but a joint enterprise of mutual exchange.

However, neither is truth available to minds communing in relationships conditioned by limits (parts interacting only on the surface from fear of depth) since perfect communication has no such limits and is not conditioned by parts. Perfect communication escapes the surface by exploring the depths of others in order to realize the depths of 'self.' Intimacy is our final frontier and until fearlessly explored by dissolving fear, we remain surface strangers, condemned to rely on our mutual ignorance, as opposed to combined genius.

Egocentric parts impose limits on the depth of mutual intimacy by presuming they know the truth outside relationship.

Because such “truth” is relative, communication between localized minds is limited. Limited communication conveys nothing at all (although the ego may interpret what is communicated as valuable to itself) and what is relatively valuable to an ego-self has NO value to communication and what has no value to communication communicates nothing and what communicates nothing remains ignorant.

“Thus, we see that communication between minds can occur because Consciousness is nonlocal, even though minds are separate and local. Nonlocal Consciousness connects minds together just as, in classical physics, classical fields connect objects together.

We know that individual minds (worlds) are highly correlated with each other because many of the same objects and events appear in different minds. Thus, both your body and mine may appear in my mind as well as in yours, but the images in my mind are different from those in yours, so the bodies are different. The way we know they are the same bodies is because of nonlocal communication between us."

"Nonlocal communication between minds is directly experienced as an interpersonal connection which transcends verbal communication. This is most clear whenever ego conflicts between minds are not so strong that they obscure the nonlocal connection. Such connections are clearest in many parental and filial relationships, sibling relationships, close personal relationships, support groups, therapy groups, and meditation groups." (Stanley Sobottka, University of Virginia, “Course in Consciousness” p103, see blog sidebar).

Communication is valuable when it engages in awakening to, and through, other minds. Such communication is perfect when minds communicate absent egocentric expectations, even though the decision to communicate originates from an agreement between two or more egos.

In the above quote Professor Sobottka accurately points out that non-egoic communication is more often available through the familiar significant relationships we all engage with in everyday 'reality.' However, often these relationships can become the most egocentrically obstructed relationships (consumed by fear and the need for self-protection) and it’s through these relationships that our ego-dynamics are exhibited in full fury. Yet, it is through these relationships that depth will be facilitated much more rapidly.

Nevertheless, individual mind control techniques or spiritual ideological practices are valuable when directed toward enhancing communication between individuals and not between some transcendent source or state. This means all practices and all spiritual paths should have this as the only goal, because it is from such “perfect communication” that individuals become catalyst to each others “awakening” to truth.

Most religio-spiritual ideologies and practices continue to advocate pursuit of communication with a transcendent source as the product of “perfect communication” and this is a major misinterpretation of the ancient texts. It may be true that perfect communication engages with a transcendent God-mind presence never before experienced, but an individual mind cannot of itself realize such an experience, simply because it believes it is an individual mind having an ‘individual’ experience. Only through a joining of minds can we access perfect communication between ourselves, thereby annihilating the self, which is a state of imperfect communication.

It makes little difference what ideology you choose to fully engage under, if full engagement is the focus. Even the non-dual religions are advantageous in supporting such engagement, even though most non-dual practitioners and advocates are hypnotized by the ideological concepts they seek to promote. They fail to see the goal of engagement as the point of all their ideological premises and become immured in, and occluded by, their non-dual concepts.

In fact, in full engagement with others, ideologies fall away as unnecessary, because they only result in distracting comparisons, which impede the experience of intimate depth with another who relies on a different ideology or dogma and this promotes exclusion as opposed to full engagement.

You are weary of relationships because you have come to believe they are limited in the ability to enhance you. Therefore, you go off in search of your individual "enlightenment" or "awakening," discarding relationships as having any capacity to provide you truth and so you refuse to recognize how you have applied limits and that all limits are yours. Perfect communication between ‘individuals’ dissolves individuality as an obstacle to awakening. A moment of perfect communication is NOW and has no past or future to impair its affects. Perfect communication applies to both the receiving and transmitting, as they become an exchange of ONE.

It takes only two minds to realize that a communion of all minds is the ONE reality, because it creates that reality. Individuality impedes the willingness to open channels of communication, long since closed off. This is a chief priority, because your individuality is your only obstacle …to God.

Artwork by A. Andrew Gonzalez - "Saltatus Aeternum"

The Mutual Actualization of Truth

The ego-self is a powerful mechanism of individual self-actualization.

Ironically, the sole reason for the ego-self 's existence is to continually maximize itself to prove it ‘exists’ and is as ‘real’ as everything else it senses and judges as existing. 

The more self-actualized, the more certain is existence to an ego-self. This is because without continued self-actualization the ego must doubt its existence, since an ego-self cannot conform to the same empirical standards it uses to prove (science) the existence of the world it experiences.

The world is physically measurable through sense impression, but an ego meets no such standards, since it takes up no space and it is the very mechanism that judges the existence of empirical reality through sensation. The ego cannot sense itself as existing without the physical body that seems to contain and limit it (and which it suffers from). Except for continued conceptual self-actualization, the ego has no means of proving it is real in the same way it has come to believe in the reality of its ‘world.’

Therefore, the ego must continually self-actualize (compete) by pressing itself into, and against, what it experiences, and then defines, as empirical or physical reality. As an embodied 'self' it must contrast against other bodies in order to know that it, the ego, is as real as what it experiences through sensation. This makes the body paramount to ego existence and, if the body were to disappear, the ego would then automatically judge itself as non-existent, since it would have nothing for which to measure self-actualization in an empirical world (and this tends to define 'death' for the ego-self).

To an ego-self there must always be conflict between bodies. This is the only way an ego can actualize and believe in itself as 'real.' This is because an ego-self is conceptual (based on nothing more than identifying with ‘ideas’ of what it is and is not). It has no physical properties other than the body it believes contains it. Yet, it does realize that the body is NOT IT, simply because a body can still exist without an ego, but an ego cannot exist without a body (in relation to conditions of comatose or unconsciousness). Therefore, the ego must always include the body as part of itself, because without a body it could not actualize and hence exist.

An ego is impervious to peace (absence of conflict) simply because peace is an absence of conflict between bodies and such an absence would negate the egos ability to continually actualize proof of its existence. As long as the ego-self (“you”) defines itself as an individual IT MUST experience conflict, because individuals must be defined by limits and boundaries in order to contrast and conflict with other individual bodies.

If you stub your toe, a bodily limit has been breached. However, have your toes stepped on by another and, although the pain (reminder of a breached bodily limit) may dissipate and dissolve, the breach to self may linger on. Thus, you must always be vigilant against breach of bodily limits but, more importantly, breaching the conditions and limits of the self is often more threatening, since it impairs self-actualization which negates existence. This is why the ego may seek out bodily risks as pleasurable (dangerous sports, auto-racing, sky-diving, etc) but will avoid psychological/emotional pain as holding a much greater risk to 'self.'

As long as you are aware of yourself as limited by (and to) a body, you must experience conflict between bodies. However, if a body breaches your limits, it is always the self of that body that is condemned and attacked, because without a 'self,' the body can do nothing at all.

There is no escape from this need for contrast and conflict and it is endemic to an embodied ego-self. 

The world teaches self-actualizing values that reinforce egocentric existence, setting the limits and boundaries to that existence. The ego looks to the world for instruction on self-actualizing and all you need do is decide to ignore those means of egoic self-actualization simply because they promote limits and conditions (which, of course, will be significantly uncomfortable to the ego-self conditioned by the world's values of self-actualization).

The chief method of overcoming egocentric actualization is to actualize with another. But an ego-self must be convinced that mutual actualization enhances itself and not just another.

When boundaries lose relevance and become unnecessary, egoic need for conflict between embodied selves becomes less antagonistic and threatening. Mutually engaged actualization dissolves conflicting interests and opens up communication channels, previously seen as too threatening. This promotes depth of understanding and a psychological intimacy that increasingly builds upon itself by further discarding limits and conditions.

Very simply, bodies no longer take priority when minds join in discovering truth. 

When two or more share a common interest in recognizing and discarding limits and boundaries, egocentric individuality can become unlimited, because increased trust and safety naturally overrides fear. As fear recedes, limits dissolve (since ALL limits are fear-based) and individuals engage in a mutual exploration of each other, through each other, thereby, increasing self-actualization of both, equally.

You will know and understand your ‘self’ through knowing and understanding another. There is NO other way to fully understand your ‘self’ than to fully understand another and be understood by another. This is what we long for and the ego recognizes that longing, but can only be confused by, since it clashes with all egocentric goals. Therefore, it interprets this longing for itself only.

This is why love is a victim of relativity in the ego's world and fails to sustain or even remain.

Nevertheless, such mutual actualization of truth has always been your deepest goal. This is the path to awakening together and discovering a truth available to all minds, but never to individual minds seeking alone. This is how it was supposed to be, until the ego collapsed love into fear and 'individuality' became the means of communicating with nothing, creating a world where nothing is communicated of any substance and, although everything seems to change, repetition rules the world.

Artwork by De Es Schwertberger - "Vision One"