The Unknowable You

You can never know yourself directly. Every means you have of perceiving yourself is always in contrast to a past version of yourself. In other words, you can only think of yourself in retrospect, in hindsight.

The person you are reflecting upon no longer exists. They may look like you, feel like you, think and talk like you but that person is gone. The ‘you’ that is here right now in this very moment is beyond the grasp of your mind and intellect. Similarly, the version of the world and of other people you hold in your mind has already expired. To see into the present is to see without any knowledge of what it is you are witnessing. It is a perspective devoid of any conceptions or abstractions. This perspective is fresh, innocent and vibrantly alive.

The mind can only deal with dead and static images. It uses the limited tools of language and imagery to comprehend the vastness of reality. The English language contains approximately 230,000 words, of which the average person's vocabulary register less than 10%. And yet words, are what we use to define ourselves, other people, our world.

That voice in your head, that thought stream, that incessantly playing background monologue that is the foundation of your entire self-concept - is nothing more than a limited, rudimentary and clumsy combination of a few meaningless words. What you are, is so much vaster, so much more complex, subtle and infinitely more profound than anything language can aspire to. And yet you believe in the words you tell yourself. Yet, you place value upon opinions as if a bunch of sentences could actually capture even a microscopic fragment of your reality.

If a child asked you to construct a model of the entire Universe from 230,000 Lego pieces could you do it? And if you could would you feel satisfied that what you have created adequately represents the reality of what the Universe is for that child? What about if you had to construct a human being out of 230,000 Lego pieces? Would you believe that this would give the child a realistic sense of what it means to be human?

Words are no more than symbols. They represent reality but are not reality. A word is as much reality as a pink ribbon is cancer and as a flag is a nation. Your mind is nothing more than a processor of information. It's only function is to create abstractions which only serve to disconnect you from what is actually happening. The only way to reconnect is to let go of your reliance on your thoughts. Use your mind but don't be used by it. Re-establish yourself as master of the house.

What you truly are is only available to you in this instant. You cannot see it or know it. You can only be it.

Wake Up to Uncertainty

Uncertainty is the most honest way in which you can experience this moment. It is the sobering reality that robs you of each and every way in which you cling to control. It is the great equalizer. It reduces all beings young or old, rich or poor, healthy or sick, powerful or weak to the same one common denominator.

To truly see this is to face your own mortality. It is to see that all forms of Life are equally frail, equally fleeting. It is to see that no matter how you have lived your life, we all die the same.

Uncertainty is the only reality there is. And since reality is uncertain, there is no way in which to "know" this reality. There is no way to be "certain" about anything.

Becoming aware of this is a great tool for self reflection and self discovery. When you reflect on all the things you are certain about what you really see are all the ways in which you are holding on to delusion, all the ways in which you are denying the reality of what actually is.

Much of what you believe about yourself or about the world is no more than conjecture. It is one potential possibility in a universe of infinite possibilities. Certainty presupposes a reality which is static. Yet the true nature of reality is one of constant flux, in which every moment is but a drop in an endless ocean of potential moments.

To really see this is to glimpse into the magnitude of the mystery that is Life. There is no history of a past behind you, there is no image of a future in front of you. There never has been. There is only a vast abyss of potentiality surrounding you in every direction - and there is you, right here, right now.

Let go.

The Myth of Self Improvement

You can never lose yourself and therefore you cannot find yourself. You can never become any more or less, any better or worse, any more worthy or unworthy than what you already are.

You are not incomplete. At this moment you are not half yourself, 70 percent yourself or even 99.9 per cent yourself. You are and have always been wholly yourself and it cannot have been any other way.

Who you are does not and cannot change. Your body will change, your mind will change, your circumstances, opinions and ideas will change. In short, all the catalysts that feed and evolve your image of yourself, i.e. your self-concept, will change. But you, that self that you are, is the constant that never changes.   

The desire to create a better self is really the desire to create a more acceptable self-image. After all, you are what you are and have never, even for a moment, been what you are not. But what you “think” you are, is essentially what the whole notion of self improvement is about. When talking about improving or bettering yourself, what you are really referring to is creating and adopting a more acceptable self-image that your mind will be satisfied with.

And yet the mind is never satisfied. This is because the very reason the mind creates a self-image in the first place is to perpetuate this sense that something is incomplete and so needs to achieve completion. It is a sense of lack that drives the quest for self improvement. And even though, the goal of such a quest seems to be to reach a state of self perfection, all it really achieves is to perpetuate the sense of lack, of not being or having enough.

Reflect on every decision or choice you make in your life to change, to manipulate, to improve your circumstances or yourself. Look beneath all the reasons and rationalizations that your mind can come up with: the pros vs cons evaluations, the shoulds vs the shouldn’ts, the analysis and projections in the future. Look beneath all that to the root of what is motivating you in all this decision making and in your choices. If you go deep enough, you will find that more often than not the motivation is fear that rises from an assumption of lack. Our minds are always operating on an in-built assumption that there is not enough and the programmed emotional response to this assumption is fear. The problem is we have become so accustomed to operating in this way that we have a hard time even recognizing that this is the mechanism at work.

Recognize that you are already whole and complete. There is no better, more improved, happier version of you out there. There is no reality to your self-image. What your mind says you are has no connection to the truth of who you really are. It is only a distorted shadow. Your shadow changes from moment to moment at times appearing pleasant and at others appearing terrible. But it is only a shadow. Perpetually repositioning yourself in order to adjust your shadow achieves very little of value. Turn your attention instead to the one that is casting the shadow and rest easy in the knowledge that all is well.

Reality's Reflection

The root of all dissatisfaction results from the denial of a certain inescapable truth : that this moment, right here right now is as good as it gets. In whatever form it appears, no matter how joyful or painful, extraordinary or mundane - this moment is already whole, complete and lacking nothing.

The lack, the dissatisfaction, the anxiety you feel is not an evaluation of reality but rather is a reflection of your own internal discord. It is an indication of how out-of-synch you are with reality. Reality is the flawless mirror which reflects you back to yourself. If you get angry with the mirror,the mirror remains unaffected, it is only your reflection that scowls back at you.

There is nothing dramatic or extraordinary about life. The drama and the extraordinariness is the overlay we ascribe to it. Success, failure, triumph, tragedy, war, peace, oppression, revolt, violence, justice, birth, death are as ordinary an occurence as  the first snow of winter, a bird nesting in its tree, smoke rising from a cigarette and the whistle of an approaching train.

To Life, the mirror, these are all phenomena of equal relevance and profound ordinariness. In recognizing how profoundly ordinary everything is, no matter how small or vast in scope, no matter how mundane or sensational, we come closer and closer to a sense of harmony with reality and a deeper sense of reverence for all that is.

The World Inside

Believe it or not there is nothing that you experience that is without your consent. All of the circumstances, the events, the joys and the pains that you experience are being chosen by you on some level of your consciousness whether you are aware of it or not.

The world "out there" is not as separate from you as you might imagine. In fact, you are influencing and shaping its evolution from moment to moment in more ways than you can imagine. And everything you perceive is right or wrong with the world out there is a reflection of some aspect of yourself that you are in fact relating to. And very often the things you tend to judge the most about people or events in your world around you are aspects of your own self that you are most in denial about or afraid to acknowledge.

As a society we have built intitutions, laws and religion in an attempt to do exactly this - to compartmentalize humanity into different versions - a worthy version, an unworthy version, a conscientious version, a perverse version - so that we may witness that same division in our world that we experience everyday within our own beings, where we pit our good self versus the evil, where we reward the repenter in us and chastise the sinner, where we idolize our generous nature while shaming that part of us that is greedy and covetous.
Its all a game. And the game you play with yourself is the game you will see in the world you live in. The world is a direct reflection of your inner state.

The point is not to reach some state of peaceful, joyful liberation. Rather true liberation is the liberation from having to reach any particular kind of state at all. True liberation exists only in the present moment and exactly within the content of this moment.

The entire Universe exists as a result of opposing forces. Every being constitutes positive aspects and negative aspects. It is the acceptance and deeper understanding of the necessity for both of these sides to exist that will lead you to a greater appreciation of who you really are.

Pain and pleasure are two necessary aspects of each and every single life experience you have had, are having or will ever have. Every coin must, by the limitations of our physical reality, have another side. It is impossible to experience only positive experiences. When we pursue happiness, this is what we in effect are telling ourselves. That there is such a place where I can feel good all the time.

There isn't and nor is it set up that way. The point isn't to try and setup a life in which you are impervious to heartbreak, to grief, to disaster, chaos or sorrow. Rather the point is to see that the pleasure and the pain, the joy and the sorrow are twins that worl in tandem, each feeding off the other, each strengthening the other.

You cannot truly understand the meaning of success without having faced failure, of confidence without doubt, of the true appreciation of family without loss, of the meaning of love without heartbreak. These dualities serve each other in allowing you the benefit of experiencing Life in a multitude of flavors.

Even in our societies, without war and genocide we would never have evolved to a point as a civilization where we collectively value human life and cherish it as we do. Without disease, we may never have evolved our understanding and creativity of medicine and anatomy, without nuclear holocaust we might never have developed a true respect of the awesome power and havoc we hold at our fingertips and the frailty of human life.

Every tragic event while tragic in circumstance, in the bigger picture provides catalyst for great positive change. It may be that the catalyst needs to be provided a number of times over and over until the lesson is learned. But without challenge, without chaos and without limitation there would be no such thing as success, harmony and liberation. The negative, the evil, the tragic, the destructive gives context to the positive, the good, the heroic and the creative. You cannot have one without the other.

This is the world you live in and this is the world that lives in you. The moment you stop dividing your inner world is the moment you begin to live in a world undivided. That means bringing the light of wisdom and love to ALL aspects of yourselves: the worthy aspects including the good, the generous, the kind, the selfless but even more vitally all those forgotten aspects of yourself that lurk in the shadows : the dark, the envious, the cruel and the selfish - these are just as worthy of your love and compassion as the others. They are all your inner selves and they are all deserving.

The Positive-Negative Relationship

Positive and negative are the two basic aspects of everything that exists in nature - from the microscopic to the macroscopic. Everything exists as a polarity of the two. And it is the interaction between the two that manifests as movement, as energy, as flux and as life.

A Universe in which everything is only positive would be devoid of any experience. Because there would be nothing to contrast against, nothing to relate with. There would be no way to even be aware of anything. This would be the case in a purely negative Universe, as well. Yet, when both positive and negative are present, the contrast between the two allows the current of reality to flow.

A photograph that is only white would show no image, nor would one that was only black. It is when the two coexist in relationship and balance that the image becomes clear and discernible. When positive and negative exist in balance, life can exist in harmony. However, when the balance begins to shift into bias in either direction the photograph soon becomes over exposed or under exposed compromising the image.   

What we term as “being positive” or “positivity” in our society is really a positive bias. And what we term as “being negative” or “negativity” is really a negative bias. As a culture we have come to fear the negative aspect of ourselves and have labelled it as undesirable and the positive as desirable. This is the very attitude that skews us.

The pursuit for Happiness is rarely a pursuit for balance and more often a pursuit for some state of pure and unconditional positivity. And this is where we tend to miss the mark in a big way. Because in skewing our perspective to value all that is worthy and positive in us and suppressing, denying and reprimanding all that is negative what we are really doing is fragmenting ourselves even further. We are creating an even greater divide between the two poles, a divide that energizes the conflict between the two and allows for misunderstanding and a lack of compassion.

In effect this is what we are witnessing in the word around us. Humanity itself functions very much like a single entity. We value those who represent all that is positive, all that is good, all that is in service of others. But also devalue those who represent the negative, all that is evil, all those who are in service of only their own perversions. The effect this has is in creating a further gulf, a greater void between the two and thus enhances the fear, the mistrust and the violence. The greater the polarization, the greater the conflict. Watch the dynamic at play within yourself.

When you are ready and willing to come out of denial and recognize that there is not one, but two, essential and equally vital aspects to yourself, then you may choose to approach it from a very different perspective. In recognizing that neither the positive nor the negative is of more value but that it is the harmony between the two that is your greatest responsibility, you immediately begin to see things from a new perspective. You see your body and mind as a weighing scale (a balance with positive on one side and negative on the other). Too much bias in either direction causes the scale to tip.

Ultimately, it is the dynamic between positive and negative that allows for growth and evolution. And in every case both positive and negative are of benefit. When the dynamic within you is a harmonious one, the flow of your life becomes more effortless and you embrace the whole of your being.

The Dynamics of Inner Conflict

This is an excerpt of a response I wrote to someone who asked me a query about inner conflict:

Hi (name omitted),

In your life you will find that there are certain motivations which are highly attractive to you and there will be some that cause a strong sense of repulsion in you. These motivations which manifest in various forms as thoughts, feelings, events, circumstances are essentially the course-syllabus of your life lesson. Each one's syllabus is unique to them. What is a strong attracting influence or repelling influence in one may have absolutely no effect, either positive or negative, on another person i.e. they are neutral in their response. But it is these attracting/repelling urges which set up the polarizations that then feed the energies of your ego.

For example, you may not be a very materially motivated person by nature and so material success and acquiring things may not be something that particularly interests you. In other words, you may have a naturally neutral attitude towards it, whereas for someone else it may be an aspect of their lives that consumes them and defines how their life will progress. On these so called neutral issues, you will find that there is not much ego momentum that can build up around it because there is no magnetic pull towards the issue. On the other hand, you may be someone who cares very deeply about the state of the world's affairs, about injustice and attrocity. On these issues you may find yourself having strong opinions, judgments and identities about things. And here your attractions and repulsions will be palpable - and this is the kind of arena in which the ego loves to play.

However, the point is not to be completely neutral. The point is to get a deeper understanding of what polarizes you.

Think of yourself as a battery, where the positive pole corresponds to all the light-natured aspects of yourself and the negative pole corresponds to all the dark-natured aspects. As long as these two poles exist the current of life will continue to flow, animating your body-mind.

Now I'll extend this analogy one step further. In physics, the voltage of a battery is defined as the potential distance between the two poles. As you polarize more and more strongly towards your attractions and against your repulsions, the voltage (polarization) of your self increases. From your school physics you may recall the formula for Ohm's Law V=IR where V is the voltage, I the current and R the resistance. If the current (ie the life energy stays the same) an increase in voltage implies an increase in the resistance you experience. There is a quote that goes "Ego is the resistance to what is." This resistance is essentially what the ego feeds on.

In other words, the more identified you are with your mental positions, the more polarized you are, the more resistance you will experience. And vice versa, any resistance you feel from external sources will polarize you further. It is also true that every electrical current generates a magnetic field around it. This is what attracts/repels other egos around you and you to them.

In response to you regarding my comment about "immersing yourself in the illusion" - this is the natural progression of life. At first, it is only through experiencing great resistance within ourselves that we become aware of how polarized we are and more importantly about the need to understand that polarity. This can only be done through a process of allowing the experience of these polarities. As we begin to understand, our understanding has a sort of balancing effect, a bringing together in a sense of the positive and the negative. This decreases the potential difference (the voltage) between the poles and hence so does the resistance. As the resistance frees up, the current flows more freely, the poles come into a balance and the magnetic field around the wire no longer magnetizes other egos in the way it once did.

There is no way around this process. any attempt to be only postive by avoidance of negative only polarizes further. Any over indulgence in the negative while losing perspective of the positive only polarizes further. If you shift your focus from attempting to contrive a more positive/negative scenario towards reconnecting with that current that animates you in every moment, you will have a stronger and stronger sense of the wholeness that is essentially at the root of all of it.