The Daily Chaotic Guilt of Egocentricity

The ego-self, or that which you call “I,” is a battleground of opposing beliefs, held together by the tiniest most imperceptible strand of guilt. In fact,”your”  life is an exhaustive struggle to make sense of your ‘self’ on a daily basis. Every morning you awake to the relentless job of arranging your beliefs to avoid crumbling into complete nonsense.

Are “you” a body or a mind? Good or bad, right or wrong? Hopeful or discouraged, aware or ignorant, happy or depressed?

From this unstable and inconsistent framework you perceive and make sense of your world. From this filter of chaos you make decisions that symbolize what you believe “you” are.

“You” believe one thing at one time, only to change course at other times and then back again. Often you believe you must DO what you DO NOT want to do, while NOT DOING what you want or DOING what you want when you know you shouldn’t, but NOT DOING what you should because you DON”T want to.

Sometimes you don’t even know what to ‘believe,’ but pick something because you believe one should believe something, like everyone else does, and that can change from moment to moment. You often believe you should lead, while other times you get pissed because your leader doesn’t lead the way you believe they should.

There are things you desire that you believe are “wrong” and things you reject that you believe are “right” (but only at certain times and depending on your mood). Your belief that one should work hard for a living competes with your dread of the daily mind-numbing grind and "you" resent that your "existence" requires this. You always want more money, but rage against the greed on Wall Street. You believe you should be there for your family, but hate when they get in the way of things you want for yourself, but then feel guilty for being selfish and hate them for that guilt. You believe you should have access to good healthcare, but sometimes smoke, drink to excess and eat crappy foods because you believe it feels good and sometimes you believe that “feeling good” is more important than anything. You believe you should be happy with what you have, but really wish you had your neighbor’s Hummer. You love your spouse, but wish he/she lost weight, then you’d really love him/her, except when he/she pisses you off, which you recognize is sometimes only his/her reaction to the stupid things you do, but find it easier to blame him/her and so continue to do so. You know you should not commit adultery, but would if your coworker wanted to, but hope he/she won’t, even though you’d be thrilled if he/she did want to, so hope he/she might, which you know probably won’t happen so you try not to think about it but sometimes can’t help it. You definitely do NOT believe in “murder,” but feel we should nuke the Iranians and then the North Koreans and if your neighbor’s dog sheits on your lawn again you claim you’d shoot his dog and him. You don’t believe in lying, except on your taxes and to your spouse (if you slept with your coworker). You tell yourself that you "love" your mother, but think she can be a real pain in the ass and still blame her for your “issues," which you blame for all the times you feel like a big sheit as opposed to the times you really love your 'self.'

Your egocentric self-concept struggles mightily on a daily basis to keep it all strung together and in some semblance of order. But sometimes this attempt at maintaining order crumbles and “you” do something completely irrational and absurd, only to experience the guilt of your “wrongness,” demanding you impose stricter order on your thinking (until the next time you blow it).

Human nature is essentially irrational and absurd because it is essentially egocentric and egocentricity is extremely difficult to maintain in any precise order or balance. But you work very hard at it nonetheless. You take care of your body, meditate regularly, try to be nice to people, eat healthy and manage your anger. Until the moment of irrationality when you toss it all to the four winds, telling yourself some rational sounding story to justify what you will later recognize as complete idiocy.

But not to worry, egocentric guilt grinds you right back down into your ‘self’ rather quickly and it is actually guilt that provides an illusion of order and the appearance of holding all the tenuous strands of your egocentric self-concept together. Without guilt you’d completely unravel into total absurdity and nothing would make any sense. 

Naturally, and as every “Christian” will tell you, with guilt must come punishment, otherwise, what use for guilt? Hence, the claim “nobody can hurt you like yourself” or “you are your own worst enemy” is completely true, but only because of your own personal egocentric guilt, which you need but feel guilty for needing.

Indeed, the guilt that troubles you the most is not the guilt for what you do or do not do or have done or have not done, but the guilt for what you have THOUGHT. This is the guilt that nobody sees, but that you often believe, if others could see, you would be known as the vile and evil creature that you often believe you are.

All this merely illustrates the suffering that is the nature of egocentricity and that, without it, one could not be an ego-self. You have invested your egocentricity with the modus operandi of experiencing an “existence” and from that prime objective your ego will do anything to achieve that objective, even if it means attacking YOU because of the guilt IT manufactures and makes "real."

Make no mistake, you gave it all its power and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

One day, however, you may wish to take that power back. You can do that easily if only you would recognize that you granted it in the first place.

Maybe "you" should stop trying to keep it all together and be okay with the chaos rather than feel guilty about it? This will tend to dissolve the guilt that acts as glue and provides an illusion of self-coherence. However, surrendering your need to arrange and order your chaotic egocentric self-concept might seem like a sacrifice, but only to the ego and not to YOU.

However, the ego-self you currently refer to as “you” will attack you viciously for not following instructions. It will berate and condemn you with all its might.

But I would just ignore all that or, at the least, fail to take it too seriously, because egocentric guilt is serious business ONLY to an ego-self.

Once the ego is ignored, it’ll most likely stop bothering you.

Egos need to feel special…

…otherwise, they tend to shrivel up and die.

Artwork by Barry Godber - "21st Century Schizoid Man"

Individual Truth is an Oxymoron

Do you believe you will transcend your egocentricity through means established by your egocentricity?

Do you really believe you can do it all on your lonesome? That “you” can seek out the right path and the perfect teacher? That “you” will one day claim truth for your…”self”? That “you” can and will achieve your own personal and individual “enlightenment”? That you can “awaken” to absolute truth as an individual?

Is this not the epitome of egocentric arrogance? Does this not completely and totally accentuate and symbolize separation and division? What unified oneness, what non-dual perspective, can an “individual” ever achieve?

The premise instantly negates the conclusion.

An “individual” claiming truth is an oxymoron.

The individual endeavor, to be rewarded for finding absolute truth just for “you,” smacks of total and complete hypocrisy.

But then…not to an ego…ha!

But what are “you” moving to and why? What is it you really wish to “transcend”? Why else would an ego-self choose to go it alone, if not for its deep distrust of THEM? And when you achieve your coveted “awakening,” how will THEY look to you? Closely examine every modern “enlightened master” and, contrary to the claim of “enlightenment,” the distrust is always there, based on seeing INEQUALITY.

Centuries of egocentric translation of the Great Wisdom Texts has channeled the truth to conform to egocentricity and now “you” accept it as incontrovertible FACT. But why shouldn’t you? Look at all the sheit you have to put up with, your entire life, from other people.

Make no mistake,  TRUTH alters ALL objects of consciousness and makes them completely… EQUAL… in every aspect imaginable.

An ego cannot transcend itself, just as a snake cannot eat its own tail.
Nevertheless, “you” continue to persevere in your egocentric desire for the individual rewards promised.

But who or what interpreted those promises? Who or what found them desirable in the first place? Who or what picked the vehicle and who or what set out on the chosen path? Who or what went in and who or what will come out?

Why…”you,” of course. An “individual” claiming truth. The egocentric YOU. Possibly a little calmer, a little wiser and maybe even a bit more arrogantly egocentric. But hey, you’re “awakened” and a little arrogance is part of the GAME.

So go ahead, close your eyes and ears in years of meditative tranquility and when you open them, if INEQUALITY stares you in the face…best you close your eyes again because TRUTH is not yet available to “you.”

“When the two shall become one”… has passed you by. Drat, foiled again!

Well, maybe it’s time for a change? Maybe your awakening lies with THEM? Maybe you really can’t do it alone? Maybe you need help?

“No!” exclaims the frightened ego, “they cannot be trusted. Look what they’ve done to you!”

It is NOT the world you seek to transcend… but THEM.

THEY are your world.

Your suffering is ENTIRELY bound up with the egos that populate your world. Although you like to think that you “love” them, primarily it is FEAR that determines your interactions and the limits of your “love.” Self-protecting, self-preserving, self-actualizing…FEAR. All your anxieties, all your depression, all your disappointments, worry, anger, guilt, etc, etc, etc is directly associated with THEM. Look closely at every problem that dogs you these days and recognize it's some “other” who impedes what you desire, what you demand.

You could have anything you wanted…

…if not for THEM.

You believe THEY are wrong and “transcendence” will make it better. You do not fear no-self, you fear other selves.

The government, the Illuminati, the police, your boss, your coworkers, your kids, your mother, your spouse, your neighbor, Aunt Ginny, Uncle Joe, angry people, inconsiderate people, greedy people…

…but not your dog! Fido is pure, just as nature is innocent. But the rest of THEM? Not to be trusted. THEY are clearly guilty.

There would be no need for transcendence if only THEY could be trusted. The world would be such a wonderful place if not for THEM. You could be “happy,” if not for THEM. Peace would be a reality, if not for THEM.

If that is true, then there can be little doubt that your “awakening” to truth lies entirely with THEM. Because the only FEAR you need overcome, to achieve the deep and abiding peace of TRUTH, is your fear of THEM.

The hardest path to follow is the one you fear the most. But the best path to follow is the one that faces fear head on.

THEY are your TRUTH and your SALVATION.

Fully engage THEM completely without FEAR…

…and awaken.

Artwork by Michael Hussar - "Stigmata"

The Collapse of Egocentric Time

Although the egocentric ‘self’ demands the measuring and charting of "time," it is only an experience. “You," or that conceptual abstraction you identify as "I," are consistently seeking to evolve, improve, develop and self-actualize within the parameters of time, in the belief that such evolution (mind/spirit) must take “time. This is a chronological, horizontally, linear perspective that demands “time” be involved in everything you do to self-actualize as an existing egocentric individual.

However, since time is only an experience, is there a way to collapse time?

 
“Education” is egocentrically contingent on time. But is there a way to collapse time and thus evolve rapidly through spurts of timelessness? Is time really needed for an evolving mind or does the mind rapidly accelerate evolution through experiences outside or absent time? Experiences that relieve the mind of experiencing time altogether?

You can certainly recollect experiences in which time seemed to drag on interminably. While you can also recall experiences when time seemed to speed up and hours felt like mere minutes. Hence, it does seem that experientially there is the potential to play with time since, although we measure time objectively for egocentric actualizing and development, subjectively it is pure experience and nothing more.

Is there a perspective the ego-self could adopt that tends to collapse the experience of time? Or does the ego-self need to markedly recede from the mind in order for time to be experienced as collapsed or absent?

Is the learning that comes from 'timelessness' more valuable to the mind then that which is learned IN time, through the victimization to time?

There does seem to be some evidence of the possibility that two egos might have the capacity to collapse the experience of time, make time recede, cause time to essentially…disappear.

Consider your past “love” experiences and the egocentric dissolution in moments of self-abandonment which occurred initially.  The full engagement of each ‘self’ as merged with, and deeply into another. Those brief moments when self-awareness seemed to recede as other-awareness impeded the self-protective and self-preserving capacities of egocentric individualism and “personal” self-actualization.

This is much too prevalent an experience to pass off as merely a type of infatuation psychosis completely contingent on bodily drives, desires and lusts (although the actions of two “lovers” clearly indicates such to outside observers). Although, for centuries, songs and books have been written paying homage to this brief episode of “romantic” self-dissolution, the same loss of self from non-obligatory relationships is apparent in many obligatory parent/child relationships (especially when the child has not yet fully developed an egocentric perspective to oppose and compete with other egos). Time-collapse experiences are evident in mother-child attachments in which one ego collapses time by merging with the undeveloped self of the child.

The ego-self learns nothing from such experiences, because the experience is purely timeless and the ego-self is an inherently time-bound abstraction, requiring time for which to self-actualize or “exist.” However, there is always a recollection of the experience of collapsed time, but that memory does not fit egocentric paradigms and is later interpreted as fantasy or delusional. Nevertheless, the desire to join and unify is a superconscious (beyond conscious thought) directive that even the machinations of the ego cannot resist, causing us ALL to long for it once again.

Because the ego-self is entirely victim to time, it would have little conscious inclination or desire to collapse what it requires in order to know it 'exists' and is indeed, a ‘self IN time. Hence, after an experience of collapsed time, the return to egocentricity is often quite aggressive, as the ego-self rises back up to honor its time-bound commitment to reality control, which includes the subconscious directive of controlling others. The ego-self must return to judge conditions optimal for its continued press into its world, since this has always been its prime directive.

Nevertheless, we forever long for this experience of egocentric regression and freedom from time. We pine for the “love” we once experienced in the egoless embrace in which time was experienced as absent. An experience in which the conditions egocentrically imposed, as means of controlling your personal reality, seem to miraculously disappear, if only for a brief time.

You may rigidly adhere to your spiritual practices for a lifetime and never experience the absence of egocentric time that such a collapse perpetuates.This is because it relies on engagement with another and that engagement must be left completely uncontrolled by egocentric needs. Millions leave long-term relationships in the belief that they have once again found “The One” for which to lose themselves and experience the collapse of egocentric time.

Alas, this is clearly antithetical to the ego-self’s primary commitment to reality control and many move serially from relationship to relationship in the hope of one day experiencing the collapse of time and the end of victimization to the experience of time.

Can we blame them that they are driven by a force beyond their egocentric comprehension and control?

 
Yet, the problem is always how to maintain the collapse when it is spontaneously experienced with, and through, another. How to resist the ego’s press for return and the eventual imposition of conditions as time is again re-experienced.  How to perpetuate the unconditional within the timeless.

Can two or more apply a method for harnessing collapsed time?

Possibly for another essay to be posted…

…in “time.”

Artwork by Jacek Yerka - "Nauka Chodzenia"

“You”… are Slowly, but Surely….Unraveling

The fear is rising in crescendo.

Things are slowly unraveling.

Watch how the ego-self struggles to maintain its structure. It will fight to hold onto the self-construct, demanding that the avenues of self-actualization remain OPEN.

Yet soon, it will be abundantly clear that the ego-games of "life" no longer sustain, no longer fulfill... can no longer be counted on for your egocentric identity.

The infinite player is prepared, while the finite player may be in for a powerful dose of suffering from failure to self-actualize through what it "knows" as "real" and "true."

Egocentric identification is always maintained through engaging the ego-games the world provides. Playing by the rules, "you" seek to accumulate ‘rewards and this is how you know your “self.” This is how existence is experienced. You engage in the games of the world in order to achieve the outcomes from which you will weave the story of “you.”

Yet, when the ego-games can no longer be sustained and when identification can no longer be achieved through the games, how will you play? What rules will you follow?Who will you be? How will you know your existence? What will become of the STORY of “you”? In what way will you engage your ‘self’ and others?

When money, career, ownership, possessions etc, etc, NO longer work as a means of identification, what will you turn to as means of defining your life and your self?

Will you turn to drugs and alcohol to anesthetize you hopelessness, your disillusionment, your suffering? What games will be played when the rules NO longer protect you? Will you turn to God (found mostly in foxholes and prison cells) to alleviate your helplessness?

Or will you deeply and fully engage those around you as a means of knowing your 'self'? Will you dump your dogmatic bullsheit or clasp ever more tightly to the objects of your crumbling self-concept?

The finite player has always weaved his/her ego-self fabric from the cloth provided. He/She weaves no unique or genuine garments, not provided from the world. Hence, interwoven deep within that fabric is always a pervasive sense of fear in the realization that the fabric is held together by invisible thread and thus…

…not held together at all and ready to unravel at any moment.

That moment is approaching.

Yet, the infinite player, of life’s ego-games, is not deluded by the static nature of his or her self. They are aware of the fragile strands of a fabric weaved out of nothingness. They are not victimized by the ego-self’s inherent vulnerability and experience invulnerability in every game they play.

The infinite player will NOT suffer through the loss of self-identity because they have been playing with loss for many years. They have been constructing and deconstructing all along. They have become experts of egocentric dissociation and de-realization. They have taken the time to unravel the egocentric threads, only to sew it back up... and unravel it again.

Hence, although the ego-centered fear is growing for you and I…

…they have NO fear. They have been there, done that.

Their egocentric identity may seem as intact and impermeable as the self-structure of our own identities. They seem just like you or I. Yet, the infinite player has expertly conditioned him/her self to fully experience self-dissolution and non-attachment. They have invoked the disassembly and deeply and fully engaged the nothingness from which the self-identity is woven.

They see what it’s ALL made of….

So when your self-development methods NO longer work wonders in the recognition of the futility of egocentric development. When your self-actualizing needs turn to basic survival issues, when all the strands of your identity have been torn loose from their threads, leaving tattered patches all balled up on the filthy tiled floor of life…

….there will be an infinite player around to show you…

…how fooking hilarious it’s ALL been from the very start.

And you may again remember to laugh.

Artwork by JeDavid - "Breaking Apart men"

The Accidental Guru

The Great Spiritual Guru is historically renowned for bringing up your sheit. Making you LOOK at yourself, exposing your delusions. Why else would you seek him out?

And while you were busy seeking your Great Guru, accidental gurus were all around you.

How many did you encounter today?

Or did you miss them and, thus, fail to retain the teachings?

Per chance....an accidental guru looked at you on the elevator and one slightly bumped you in line at McDonalds (with a quiet “sorry” that you barely heard). One loudly beeped his horn at you, while another let you pass. Yesterday, one made you angry and last week one made you laugh. Last month one made you cry and last year one hurt you real bad. There were others that made you leap with joy and some you just couldn’t get enough of and some you just can't stand.

Some are happy and some are sad. Some are vain and some are humble.

But not one of them…

… is sacred.

Let’s face it, you know a “Master Teacher” when you see one!

With an accidental guru, you just never know...

Hence, you pay them little heed, as you return to your sutra’s and scriptures, mindfully repeating your “OM.”

Because you know what to look for, you will seek and find your Master Teacher and he will always meet your expectations. If not, you'll just seek out another, until you can finally make your bow.

But you will never bow to the accidental guru, because you never know they're there. They will never meet your expectations, so don’t bother looking.

Yet, make no mistake, they will FIND YOU.

They never fail.

It’s inexplicable how they always seem to be there to teach you what you need right when you need it. Although, most likely, you’ll claim the timing was bad and miss the point altogether. Then you’ll angrily demand the accidental guru find a “Master Teacher” like yours.

You can’t prepare for what the accidental guru teaches. But you can always be prepared to learn. Unless, of course, it is the Great Spiritual Guru you seek. In that case, you’ll learn nothing by accident and everything on purpose.

Probably not the best way to learn…

…that YOU are an accidental guru.


Artwork by Mark Ryden - "The Apology"

Love is an Infinite Feedback Loop

Love is a feedback loop that when extended, only comes back around to the mind extending, even when receipt of that extension is denied by the love object you are extending to.

This loop originates with extension TO another, but is not conditioned on extension FROM another.

To know love you must extend love, yet it makes no difference if love is extended back from another. In this way, one can BE love and this BEING is not conditioned on anything other than that BEING.

Nevertheless, according to your ego (the conditioned and socially trained part of your mind), for love to be experienced, all extension, or giving, must be conditioned on ‘getting’ in return. Therefore, your extension TO another is specifically conditioned on their extension TO you. If a return is not forthcoming, based on your extension, your egoic mind will purposely obstruct or even fully terminate the loop that originates from your mind.

Love requires extension to another in order to be experienced, but it is not contingent on another returning it. Mother Teresa was steeped in love for the sick and suffering in her care. Yet, the extent of their sickness may have made it impossible for a return extension. Nevertheless, her love to them magnified love within her experience of self and the loop was completed, and maintained, like an unbroken electrical circuit.

Love magnifies YOU and this magnification is contingent on nothing but extension. This is because the only way to experience love is to extend it.

Of course, you need not be a Mother Teresa, sacrificing your life for the sick, to experience such magnification within your own experience of “self.’ However, there must be another for which to extend. Those we extend to are often family or loved ones of our choosing. Unfortunately, the ego chooses primarily for what it can ‘get’ and less by what it can give. This impedes the feedback loop that is not contingent on receiving anything at all.

Christ Consciousness is an extended infinite feedback loop. It requires nothing in return because it is always returns back to itself.

A feedback loop in the extension of love can have no interference for the impulses you send out to return to you in a magnified form. Love conditioned as contingent on return impulses from another only impedes what you extend from returning to you. Love is a state of mind and, although physical manifestations are available for observation, unconditioned love is an enlightened state of mind available to all minds.

Love is the nature of Being and extension is our natural predisposition. Demanding extension be contingent on return will cause the loop to eventually contract in upon itself. Many live their entire lives in the experience of a contracted and obstructed feedback loop and never experience the love that serves to magnify life itself.

The difference between this feedback loop and other forms of feedback is that your experience of love is contingent on the impulse you send out being returned in a magnified form, but that magnification requires nothing from anyone else and your only focus is extension. Therefore, you cannot obstruct this extension of mind through imposing conditions on that extension.

This requires a sense of ‘self’ in which your security is not contingent on a return of extended love. In this sense, your giving love to another is free and clear of the egocentric imposition of any factors whatsoever. Love is not a dependent state and must be free of conditional dependencies that your ego defines.

Surprisingly, (and many have experienced this), what actually takes place through this feedback loop is that, because there is no dependency on a return extension, that return naturally occurs.

When the loved one you extend to experiences that you have no demand for the extension to be returned, the natural predisposition is to extend as well. To experience diminished egoic involvement in extending love is to be inspired through it, and touched by it, instilling a desire to replicate the experience for oneself.

If you extend to me and all my hatred of you does little to impede or terminate that extension, I can only marvel and seek to emulate the experience I reckon you must have encountered. This is because deep down I know this experience and have wanted, longed for it, all my life. We all long for the freedom of extension that makes no demands and requires NOTHING. This is a condition of our Being, but is actually NOT a condition at all, but freedom.

In a spiritual sense, there is only one way to experience your Being, free and unfettered from egocentric attachment, and that is through the extension of your Being (which tends to be defined as "love") to another, with no condition on whether this is returned or not.

This is the nature of your existence. But a more important point relates to the magnification of the experience of love. This magnification within the feedback loop is infinite. Therefore, increase will continue to occur as much and as far as the mind will allow, based on increasingly diminished conditions. Thus, if another agrees to join the loop you have extended, this serves as an addition to the wholeness you magnify through your own mindful extension and magnifies them in their mind as extension is mutually engaged together.

Non-egoic love is always an increase to 'self' (minus conditions) regardless of who does or does not participate. Yet, make no mistake, participation is naturally compelled in the minds of those so touched by the experience you model through your own secure feedback loop. Take away egocentric impositions and the circuit cannot be broken.

See for yourself.

Artwork by Martin-Georg Oscity - "Der Schöpfungszyklus"