To say
that you are a Caucasian, or a man, or a Republican, or a Venezuelan, or a Buddhist,
or a lawyer, makes about as much sense as a banana calling itself a yellow, or
an ice cube calling itself a cold. The
labels we use to describe things are adjectives, not nouns. You cannot be an adjective; you can only be a
noun.
So, what
noun are you? A conscious entity. That’s it. No body. No possessions. No reputation. No group affiliation. It’s a difficult concept to grasp if you have
spent your life looking at everything as mere physical objects.
Let’s
say you were to lose a leg, or an arm, or an eye, or your money, or your
house. Or let’s say you were to change
jobs or political parties. Would that
change you? Would you be a different
entity?
When you
define who you are by your attributes, you might become afraid to lose
them. For example, someone who has
always been a Democrat or a Republican might be deathly afraid to give up that
party affiliation. This is what makes
them defend their long-held viewpoints, even if those viewpoints don’t seem as
correct as they used to. It’s not about
truth – it’s about self-preservation. That is, preservation of what they perceive as themselves, which is of
course their false selves, only they can’t see that.
A lot of
thought, activity, worry, and defense go into the false self, so even if we are
“winning”, there is still a constant level of discomfort and stress that we
endure. We call this the cost of doing
business: internal currency (physical and mental energy) in exchange for external
commodities (wealth, approval, housing, food, possessions, social acceptance).
As long
as we perceive that the benefits of upholding the false self outweigh the
costs, the false self will endure. Only
when the amount of suffering (worry, stress, fear, regret, frustration)
outweighs the benefits will we become sick and tired enough to drop it.
