How Un-Self-Conscious can we be in a World of Funhouse Mirrors?

We’ve all seen quotes taken out of context. We’ve seen people misrepresented for the sake of sensational copy and we’ve seen people painted according to someone’s understanding of them, or lack of understanding as the case may be. So, when I say, “I have been as much a hypocrite and a liar as any man under the wrong circumstances.” I could well see that quote come back to haunt me. It would not make it untrue, nor am I unduly ashamed of the fact. I have to be honest with myself, even if I am not always honest with you; whoever you are.

I can’t be honest with everyone. That’s neither safe nor sane. I’ve also said one thing and done another more than once in this life. The fact is though; if we are too hard on ourselves we can tend to be too hard on others as well. We need to cut ourselves and others more slack. Surely we know how hard it is to live up to an ideal. Is it any easier for anyone else?

I have hated myself because I was taught to hate myself. I came in here with all of the shortcomings common to the mortal state. My view of myself was responsible for my behavior. The fact that my view of myself was wrong caused me to be very erratic and unstable. How I managed to survive to the point where I am writing this is a virtual miracle. We blame so many things on God. This I feel I can blame on God without hesitation. No other power could have saved me from so many dangers and my own ignorant state.

I’ve said it before and I will continue to say it. I know there is a God. I am absolutely certain of it. But when our faith in ourselves is so conflicted, it serves that our faith in God will be shaky too. We don’t know who we are and we don’t know what we want. We get the results that condition brings.

The fact is that I am God. I am that portion of God’s substance formed to express and experience in a manner peculiar to me. We can all of us say, “I and my father are one.” We are seduced into aping the world in order to fit in. We develop all sorts of odd behavior in order to be understood and accepted by our fellows. We become liars and hypocrites. If we were not liars and hypocrites every man’s hand would be set against us. One of my favorite quotes from the Bible is; “Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”

God is the life that is living us. Any power that we have, our health, our ability to think and to feel comes from God. Blessings await us like planes circling an airport. We forbid them to land. Had we any idea of what was possible for us and what is held in trust for us we would run dancing and spinning down the street. This is why the dervishes do that. That is the act of a madman though. It just isn’t done. Oh, I’ve done it plenty of times and received the usual reactions. The police are here to see that you don’t make a nuisance of yourself. Laws are created to circumscribe human behavior. Telling the truth is sedition.

Nearly all of our laws and those who enforce them are servants of materialism. THINGS MATTER. Wealth goes to the head of the line. Temporal power and the vanity of the imaginary self rule from the despotic throne like a chimpanzee in royal garb. All the vast power of earthly hallucination is arrayed like a vast army against our pursuit of enlightenment. Up is down, back is forth, in is out and crazy is sane.

The God that is denied, the idea of a God that is rejected or labeled as myth never did exist. God can’t be comprehended. What is the point of rejecting something you don’t understand? Now that’s crazy. There’s me and God and there’s you and God. One displaces the other. If you are you then God is apart. If God is you then you are you no longer. It’s right there all the time, through the ages, inside of every moment. That subtle thing is always there, permeating everything, composing everything out of itself. The entire drama of existence has only one point and that is self-realization. You are either really you or you are a collection of fantasy projections based upon your desires and appetites. Everyone you see is giving you their version of it.

Some dress up in costumes. Some makes laws and some enforce them. Some perform on a smaller stage and we all perform on the larger stage. The sage is sleeping, curled up within us. Sometimes we feel that presence; mostly we go ‘our’ way. Every time we miss the target we are aiming at; which is the real definition of sin, a new set of circumstances are written into the script so that we can try again.

I look around me at this vast mental institution. I look at the people crunching numbers and buying and selling crap with no value to people with no taste. I see sleepwalkers moving around in a dream.

Fear is the biggie because fear displaces love. When you don’t know who you are then you don’t know what anything else really is either. Fear is a natural in that climate. If you can’t trust in what you can’t see you are doomed to believe in appearances that fall every day like leaves from a tree and which the wind sends dancing down the street, into the gutters and down into the drains. Appearances are not real. Everyone sees them differently.

We fear death but we are already dead. The body is a coffin. You wake up when you die. Some can die while they are yet in their body and enter into life everlasting while still resident in the flesh.

We have to let go of fear and the only way we can do that is through complete reliance upon the master helmsman. There is that great poster of Krishna and Arjuna in the chariot. It says it all. The body is your chariot and the horses are the senses. The reins are your mind. It’s all been said a long time ago. It’s always the same. There’s no new and improved truth that’s going to evolve out of the mix. Intelligence is not the end result of existence. It is the initiator. People don’t get smarter as they get older. It’s right there all the time.

I often think of our life and the trial, the cross that we bear as being like a man hanging on to the top of wall by his fingers. He can’t let go. Who knows how far he will fall? Yet when he does let go he finds that the ground was right below his feet.

A guest waits outside the door. You are the habitation. If you have cast him out in order to be the ruler then you have made yourself the slave of circumstance. If you step aside and let him in all of your concerns are at an end. It’s that simple and it waits in every moment. It’s waiting there right now. Through your whole life it is waiting. Through all of your lives it is waiting right at that point… waiting on you.


Please forgive me if I wandered all over the place with this, trying to circle ever tighter up upon the things that can't be said. I haven't done this in awhile. I haven't known what to say. I'm not sure what's coming is going to be an improvement but we will see as we go by.