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.

Awakening From The Dream of Dreaming You're Awakening

Can you really awaken from the "dream"? What will you find? Who will you be? Nirvana, pure bliss, absolute truth, heaven, universal consciousness, pure awareness, yourself, God?

Or will you merely awaken to another dream? Much like the last dream, but still, a different dream in which you again dream of "awakening" from the dream? Only to "awaken" to another dream of "awakening" and then another and another?

If truth is infinite is there a point at which the dreaming stops and finally becomes "real"?

Why seek to transcend the illusion, when there is nothing "real"? Note that your term "illusion" is entirely dependent on its contrasting opposite, the "real." Maybe “real” is a concept your ego conjured up so that you wouldn’t have to take responsibility for the "illusion"? Gee, isn't that convenient.

You seek to transcend the illusion, rather than change it, simply because it's not "real" and is an "illusion." Whew! Lucky for you. Just imagine if all that death and destruction were real! Then who would you be? Obviously, you would then have no choice but to seek to change the "hell" you made and if you experience "hell," then no doubt you made it. If it's all illusion, then make no mistake, it's your "illusion."

What about your loved ones? What about your children, are they illusion? Why would you love what is NOT "real"? Or maybe your "love," too, is illusion?

If it all just "arises," do you ever wonder why it arises specifically as YOU seem to experience it? Why do some seem to experience great wealth, abundance and happiness? Obviously, to be conscious OF something is to make it "real," isn’t that what quantum physics now tells us?

Maybe parts of the illusion are real, since how would your ego-self finally come to the conclusion that the world is illusory, if there was not something real IN the "illusion" that informs it of this fact? What part of the illusion informs you that it's all illusion? What are you using to illuminate the contrast between your illusion and the something else you call "real"? If it weren't for the "illusion" you would not be chasing the "real." Therefore, are you not grateful to your "illusion"? But would your gratitude make it "real"?

“Real” and “illusion” is one experience that you split in two. Illusion is as much a part of truth as anything else, otherwise why would you be 'aware' of it. Stop throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Illusion is real and real is illusion. Wrap your mind around that and stop trying to judge between the two. You can’t split truth in two. The whole is not available to the parts, but all the parts are included in the whole. Attach to one part, in contrast to another, and miss the whole entirely.

What’s the matter, don’t you like it 'here'? Then stop your spiritual whining and fix it. But then, why engage an "illusion," right? The perfect copout!

"The world is an illusion" teaches an invalid conclusion based on a faulty premise. The premise being that there is something other than “illusion” that is not "illusion." So rather than remain fixated on your spiritual brainwashing, by continuing to repeat the tired old slogan, "the world is an illusion," try closely examining your concept of ‘real.’

The ancient teachings that point to the "real" come directly from your experience of being IN a world and are part of that whole. However, the teachings seek to negate part of your experience as illusion.

But the illusion is what is teaching you it’s an illusion.

Non-dualism seeks to separate off parts based on the dualistic premise that there are some experiences that are NOT 'part' of the illusion. If it’s not illusory then, of course, this means there is a part of your experience that is "real" (or more "real") than what you now experience. Unfortunately, you just haven’t had the "real" experience yet. Too bad for you.

So what part is "real"? Well, the rules state that the ultimate reality cannot be talked about, since words only relate to the "illusion" and are symbols of symbols. Therefore, you must follow the path of austerity and realize "the real” and this realization is referred to as “awakening” or “enlightenment.” Yet, this premise has resulted in your negating one experience, while seeking out another and the villain in that negation is not the real “you,” but your ego-self.

Thus, the illusion seeks a way out of the illusion.

The claim is that, without the ego-self creating all these illusory experiences, you would be free to experience the real "you" instead. Note how the illusory “you” must now search for the "real" you, which you have not yet been acquainted with (experienced). But don’t worry, says the illusory “you,” we will find the real "you" someday, if "you" sacrifice and struggle hard and long enough in your spiritual practices. HA, what a maroon!

The ego informs you that your “Being” will finally become the ‘experiencer’ of reality, while the ego will essentially cease to exist. Yet, does an ego-self not have Being? Maybe "Being” is nothing more than experience, experiencing itself as ego? Without an ego-self, who or what will experience anything?

Ally yourself exclusively with any part and you deny the whole and this includes "real" vs "illusion." There is no separation to experience and if you choose a part of your experience of ‘world,’ as teaching you that there is no world, then you have divided experience. Experience is what you ARE. It's ALL in your experience. It comes from “you” as a whole and “you” split it in two by negating a part as unworthy of your "awareness." To "Be of one voice" is to be of one experience. The only awakening you need to experience is understanding your ego-dynamics and, not for the purpose of rejection or exclusion of the ego-self, but simply to "know thyself" (Socrates).

Know your experience of ‘self’ and experience surprise in what “you” really are, which does not exclude anything, but includes all of it. The game is infinite because truth is infinite, which means "awakening" never ends. Therefore, this means that there is NO "awakening" and dreaming never ends.

It's all a dream and the dream is real.

Sweet dreams. Hahaa!
mikeS

Infinite vs. Finite Playing of Spiritual Games

I want to review the concept of the finite vs infinite game, since some folks get really pissed off when I question their accepted rules.

So let's consider one of the numerous spiritual rules available in the conventional world, such as "you must transcend the ego to directly experience the bliss of pure being" or "The world is an illusion" (cut and pasted from a "spiritual" website).

Okay. great stuff, huh? I know...you've read this stuff a million times, right?

But here's the rub. The infinite player will accept that rule, but only to continue play. The best way to continue play is to play with the rules. Yet, the finite player will insist that you play by the rules.

The problem, as I see it, is that finite players attach to the rules (sometimes unconsciously) as an end to play and, therefore, they will get downright ornery when someone wants the game to continue through questioning the rules. This is because they (or some "master" before them) have ordained the rules as sacrosanct and beyond question and crucial to an outcome, such as "experiencing the bliss of pure being" or "awakening" to an illusory world. However, often the outcome is that the finite player simply be seen and accepted as "spiritually pure" (but this is always rigorously denied) and by restating the ancient axioms and proverbs they believe their purity is evident.

If you play the game by the rules, your "purity" must be true. So it is written, so must it be.

The finite player will covertly insist that there is something you must 'get' that you now lack. Fortunately for you, they 'have' what you lack and thus, the teacher-student hierarchy is constructed for which you must play by their rules to 'get' what they have convinced you that you must have, but lack.

The generally accepted assertion that you must be egoless to experience pure being, is fine by me. In fact, it might even be true! (although I sincerely doubt it, but that's just me playing with rules). And certainly the world is an "illusion" (but define "real"?)

Yet, the infinite player will engage with others to build on the rules and add to them, construct and deconstruct, twist and bend, turn them inside-out and outside-in, etc, etc, etc.

Whatever! It doesn't matter (except to the finite player) because the only goal for the infinite player is to enlist and engage with more players who want to play with the rules and even create more rules to play with, requiring more players, etc, etc, on and on, ad infinitum.

Of course, I too, create rules and expect that everyone will play with any rules that I impose as well. I look forward to it! This game has gone on for centuries and most likely will go one for centuries more (unless we finally put out the lights thereby starting a new game).

And the more players in the game, the more exciting and engaging the game becomes. However, you can play by yourself. But what fun is there in that.

The spiritual games, like any other games, require players. Unfortunately, for most of the games of the world, there can only be so many "world champions" or MVP's. Or, for that matter, yogis or gurus or "master teachers."

However, if you look closely at the world, you will see millions who aspire to be awarded those coveted trophies and this aspiration drives them to participate in the competition.

So, in conclusion, I just wanna say that I truly enjoy playing with you guys and I apologize in advance to those of you who I most likely will piss off when I question your rules. Because I will question all of your rules (and no doubt you will subtly retaliate by questioning mine).

Let the games begin!

In The Game Of "Spirituality," Play By The Rules, Fools!

All games have rules. "Spirituality" is a game that also has rules. Even choosing not to call it a “game,” makes that a rule. We all follow rules and we believe that there are some rules that we must never deviate from.

What are the rules of your spiritual game? 

Can we play “with” your rules or must we play "by" your rules? Do you insist that your rules are “the truth” and, therefore, not to be questioned? Can your rules be changed or must we rigidly adhere to the letter at all times?

Do your rules make other rules “wrong”? If my rules are different from yours, do you feel it incumbent upon you to “correct" my mistakes?

Beliefs are rules and rules shape your perception. Do your rules help you to see or do they blind you to what is there? Do your rules make you happy or is your happiness based on following the rules? If you refuse to follow the rules, will you still be happy?

Are you the teacher of “the rules”? Do you feel compelled to teach your rules? If I resist learning your rules, what will you think of me? Are you then compelled to contrast my "ignorance" against your "wisdom"? Is that wise or is that ‘righteous’? When I question your rules, will this diminish me in your mind? Will you look down upon me, demanding I replace my rules with yours? If my rules are different from yours, can we still love each other?

Or do the rules make all the difference between love and hate?

Can I bend your rules or will that change your “truth” and make it false? Will you fight to insist that your rules be followed against all others? Will you say “no, not that, but this”? Do you insist that the rules are not yours but "god’s" rules? Or, do you insist that they are the rules of “Oneness”? Do your rules insist that there is no “self”?

Do you follow the rules of Christianity or the rules of Islam? Do you follow the rules of Hinduism or Buddhism? Do you follow the rules of Non-Duality? Maybe you follow the rules of science?

Does your “god” have rules through which your playing the game is judged?

The ego-self will cleverly use everything at its disposal, even denial of itself, to impose its rules. But there must always be rules and “you” cannot exist without the “rules of play” and many call the rules “truth.” Even to assert that you follow NO RULES, is to assert a rule to follow. 

Maybe it’s not the games that you suffer through, but the rules you feel compelled to follow?

Are your rules “sacred”? Do you follow special rules passed down for centuries? Do you revere the teachers of those rules? Must you follow the rules because someone ‘smarter’ than you determined the rules? Does this make your ignorance a rule? Or, because you follow their rules, you now no longer claim ignorance? Have they told you that if you follow the rules they teach, you too, can be 'smart' like them?

What are your rules? Do you even know the rules you play by? Can you list the rules you play by or do you blindly conduct your life with no awareness of the rules you follow?

Or… do you just “know,” without a doubt, that your rules are the "truth"?

Just asking...
mikeS

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.

"There Must Be Some Way Out Of Here"

It’s interesting that many have chosen to escape from their experience of the world by seeking to dissolve that experience through neo-Advaitsist concepts.

I'm sure we can all agree that the experience of living is often very painful, so the ego-self has devised a complicated, but ingenious, method of escape through concepts that point to non-conceptuality and non-identity. The non-dualistic platitudes of "oneness" are poetically expressed in a herculean effort to resolve the paradox of the one and the many and this is performed simply by fallaciously denying the many.

You cannot transcend the 'transcender' and even if you do, the interpretation of transcendence proves the interpreter still believes it 'self' as “real.” In the game of non-duality the outcome, or goal, is a self which conceptualizes itself as null and void.

Forget the world, forget others, forget you and only through identifying with your newly discovered narrative of non-identification will you escape the hell of living. If the 'self' is a made up concept, so is the concept of 'no-self' that the 'self' makes. Even Ken Wilber, the "integralist" protege of Adi Da Samraj, advocates exapnding the self before erasing.

Ahh…but if such concepts give you comfort, who am I to protest.

Now you can detach from suffering and pain because, well... “you” don’t exist. Such is the sad dissociation of non-dualism. But there is a lightness in their step because this theoretical foundation, that their ego-self has adopted, gives them hope (although "hope" is obviously denied and merely 'arises'). Now the ego-self can claim joy in no longer being an ego-self, but of course, as 'no-self,' joy must be denied as well.

Yet, the ego is not a very good liar, especially when developing itself through deconstruction.

Non-dualism is a method of spiritual bypassing resulting in disengagement, dissociation and denial. The emotions are blunted by concepts that define dissociation. Nevertheless, upon close inspection we find that they are NOT dissociated by any means and their rigid attachment to a dogmatic ideology is clearly apparent for all to see.

However, many contend that detaching from identity results in a greater identity in your engagement with the world. But, make no mistake there is always an 'engager,' whether that be "real" or an imaginary construct, is beside the point, since how do we define "real."

To be real or not to be real, that is the question.

But "who" is it that speaks of non-identity? Have you no self, no history, no story to represent the speaker? Then how are we to engage? Obviously we cannot, since the dissociated can only engage in their non-associations, which is no engagement at all.

In the manifest world such dissociation and derealization is deemed "sociopathic," but for the teacher of the non-dual it is taught to be truth.

Of course, the moment words are used, the ego sneaks out, regardless of the effort to non-identify with the “arising” self and oh, how they must teach and the pride in that role is apparent. But "who" is it that teaches and "who" learns "what"? What credibility reinforces "your" message? So it is, after all, a paradox that their “pointers” only confuse. But they rigidly stick to the script, passed down for centuries, that “points” to the moon, but is not the moon and, of course, although they point, there is no one pointing.

Employing concepts to ingenuously dissolve concepts, they are an elite group of intellectuals!

But how do you know you’re not an ego-self? Who or what makes such an interpretation? It "arises," is all they can say and because the revered and austere ancient "masters" have said it, how can it not be true. Their austere philosophy is legitimized by the past and, make no mistake, once words describe 'experience' you are philosophizing. This is how egos revere the past in the realization that ego-self can never detach itself from a past, even if the past they adopt claims that there is no past and that they have transcended time.

Concepts piled atop concepts, the non-dual attached 'self' is often the most conceptual in its rigid formulaic philosophical perspective. Why seek to identify as non-dual if not from a fear of experiencing the dual? But they believe they have found the exit door to truth. In non-duality we can make a pretty pink picture of hell by no longer calling it "hell" simply because it all merely "arises" and can have no effect.

But a rose by any other name still "arises" a rose.

Non-dual is nothing. It does not engage, nor does it disengage. It is not the "arising" of experiences that engages you, but your relationship to what arises and this they attempt to dissolve. Between the doing and the doer, the thinker and the thought, the experience and the experiencer, is the ground of being and there you ARE in the relating, down in the existential trenches...and this is good.

The ego-self is an intellectual dynamo and, because it has never been at home in its experience of “being-in-the-world,” it constructs magnificently complex theoretical prognostications in an attempt to increase its comfort. These serious theories (and they take their theories very seriously) serve to increase its comfort by attempting to remove it entirely from its experience of a world, while claiming that such dissociation intensifies experience. But for "who"? Everyone? Nope, just the practitioner of the non-dual. Silly human!

The problem with this conceptual dissection is that in order to remove the ‘self’ from it’s experience of a world, the ‘self’ must be equally eradicated, because the ‘self’ cannot perform in the infinite drama without a supporting cast (which includes the body, world and others).

But what is an ego-self but a process of continuously changing performances interpreted in ways to insure it “exists.” This structural constructivism is infinite and has no finite outcome while, clearly, "non-duality" is an outcome. Have you achieved your non-duality today!

The non-dualist is extremely goal oriented.

Therefore, if the ego-self wishes to escape its nasty, uncomfortable world, it must escape itself as well. It does this by attempting to collapse itself as a concept of the mind. In fact, to do this it must conceptually annihilate the mind entirely (bad mind, bad! Sit, stay!)

With no mind there can be no ego-self to make interpretations of its own experiences. Now experiences simply “arise” in awareness, but the ego-self must deny ownership of these experiences, simply because now it doesn’t exist to itself, since "who is it that experiences." However, prior to this theoretical incorporation, the ego-self ‘allowed’ itself to experience itself as existing, it just doesn’t 'allow' it anymore.

Yet, notice how “to allow” is a verb signifying action. But "who" is acting? Such is the active dis-action of the non-dualist on a quest for the coveted title of guru in denial that this is the goal. But it must be, since the only practical value the non-dualist can provide a weary world is being a non-dual teacher. I'm sure the suffering masses are thankful for that!

Thus, in one fell swoop the ego-self annihilates its own conceptual history, because without a past to identify with, the ego-self must vanish. Yippee! There is no "I" and "I" am finally free! But "who" interprets freedom?

Now it will respond to experiences simply through the emancipation proclamation “WHO is it that experiences.” This simple claim, repeated ad nauseam, works to convince itself that it is not “real,” even against any and all experiences to the contrary. Yet, make no mistake, what you attempt to deny is automatically reinforced and magnified exponentially and this is an undeniable law of being. Being is experienced through your relationship in extension, whether what you extend is 'self' or 'no-self.'

The non-dual self, or no-self, becomes a mighty self-contained world unto itself.

Yet, the ego-self realizes that this could be construed (by others, because the non-identified "self" still somehow seems to 'identify' others who must be taught the truth) as an attempt to escape the world, so it ingeniously decides that rather than escape the world, which would only reinforce separation, it becomes ‘one’ with the world.

"Oneness" is the idol of this dogma, but this does not negate it as "dogma.'

The problem they deny is that ego boundaries cannot be turned on and off at will and, make no mistake, in order for us to have a relationship there must be boundaries between your ‘self’ and mine for us to realize that boundaries can be infinitely payed with and thereby ignored. But the non-dualist needs boundaries too, for if there were no boundaries to differentiate between us, who would be student and who teacher? Note how, for non-dualism, the roles of teacher-student seem never to dissolve.

Hmmm....it seems that be non-dualist there must be dualism for which to apply oneself against in contrasting opposition and the non-dualist lives through that contrast.

Therefore, the only real relationship the non-dual ideology insures will continue, is that there must be a teacher and a student. That relationship must endure, while all others are subsumed into nothingness.

I’ve met many non-dualists who have become completely disengaged from the world in an attempt to extract some sense of egoic comfort out of their experience of a world. They live in a self-imposed solitary confinement that borders on solipsistic self-absorption. Obviously, their relationships are strained since who wants to hear “who is it that is angry?” all the time, even when, undeniably their whole persona is physically quivering in rage. Yet, in the “arising” of emotion, it is dissociated from as part of a ‘self’ that simply does not exist.

However, clearly for the non-dualist the ‘self’ does exist, no matter their claims to the contrary, because I’ve never met folks more rigidly committed to a dogma.

Well... maybe the Christians are a bit more dogmatic. But at least they don't deny they are the innocent ones entrusted with the task of judging and persecuting the guilty.

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.

Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.

(Dylan & Hendrix)

mikeS