The Void

We’ve all felt it: that inner sense that something is missing. It gnaws at us even when on a physical level things are going pretty well. We might have a good job, relationships, health, and hobbies, but still something is amiss. We might then seek ways to fill the void. Religion. Therapy. Money. Television. Sex. Possessions. Travel. A new relationship. A new job. A new hobby.

What we experience is a lack not of anything external, but of our true self. We keep up a false self, all the while losing touch with who we really are.

If you ask people, “Who are you?”, most will reply, “I am Michael/Jennifer, man/woman, husband/wife/single, father/mother/childless, American/Chinese/Irish, Christian/Muslim/Jew/Buddhist, Republican/Democrat/Libertarian, 20/40/70 years old, a teacher/doctor/lawyer/engineer.” They think that they know who they are, but they don’t. All those attributes that they ascribe to themselves are just features of their temporary life situation. All of them can change or could have been different. Anyone could be born in any country, at any time in history, with any skin color, with any particular religious upbringing. Anyone can lose their job, get married/divorced, procreate, become ill, or change religion or political party. We all gain and lose objects, wealth, relationships, and abilities. Our bodies age.

Our viewing these arbitrary, temporary, vulnerable things as “us” causes a gnawing sense of insecurity, because we’ve built a mental house of cards that we know deep down could crumble at any time. This is the source of the emotional void, the inner sense of lack that pushes us to pursue things such as wealth, social status, and accomplishment in a futile attempt to add security to the insecure state we are in, to add stability to the inherently unstable mental construct we uphold.

This mental construct – the ego – is a façade that we present to the world. It is a grand image-maintenance project that we spend lots of time and effort on in order to “prove” to others and ourselves that we have value. We define ourselves by a respectable career, a devout religious/political belief, parenthood, athleticism, humor, physical attractiveness, or whatever, all the while ignoring who we really are. We have done nothing more than blow up a balloon, which has a flimsy outer shell, with nothing inside it, so if it pops, nothing will be left. As long as we continue to believe that we are nothing more than this balloon, we will remain terrified that it will pop, thereby annihilating us.

The fear of annihilation causes a very predictable knee-jerk reaction of self-defense. People defend their balloon with competition, criticism, deception, arguments, and even violence. Whenever someone demonstrates an irrational need to acquire, to win, to be praised, to be right, to feel superior, or to oppose anyone who doesn’t agree with them, it is nothing more than a fear-driven effort to protect the mental construct that they mistakenly believe they are.

What causes people to believe so strongly that they are their ego? Conditioning. The belief has been ingrained for so long that it has become unquestionable. Further, since they have invested so much time and energy in it, they don’t like the prospect that they have been wrong (the ego hates to be wrong) or that they have wasted a lot of their resources. Actually the resources spent on the ego have not been wasted. They have been used in the vital process of learning what the ego is and how much pain it causes. This can wake us up and therefore be an extremely important part of finding who we really are.

If we would only let go of the image that we so desperately clutch, we would see that all this time we have foolishly clung to nothing. We would realize that the ideas we’ve desperately maintained for so long are not us. This would open the door to finding our true self: the unchangeable awareness that perceives but is independent of any name, race, gender, age, nationality, career, accomplishments, or belief system.

The true self is the one and only thing that we cannot lose, because it is us. Only things that are not us (objects and ideas) are subject to loss. Our true self is, by definition, always secure. Therefore when we discover who we really are, we find the security we have so desperately been seeking. There will never again be any reason for fear, insecurity, or the void.

Social Acceptance versus Love

Social acceptance is a major ego need. The ego wants to be considered valued and worthy, not only by itself, but also by others, because it is vaguely aware of what a fraud it is, so it depends on others to give it the sense of value that it inherently lacks. As a result, we look for ways to make ourselves appear worthy to others in order to gain their esteem. We then act, not the way we (our true selves) would like to act, but within the narrow confines of other people’s egos’ preferences. So we are slaves not only to our own egos, but also to the egos of others!

Social acceptance is different from love. We are inherently loving beings (although the ego, which is incapable of love, often masks our love). We want to love and be loved, not as an egoic way to add value to ourselves, but because love is characteristic of who we really are. We love unconditionally, and enjoy it when others love us unconditionally. Social acceptance, on the other hand, is a very conditional state wherein the ego is temporarily gratified by someone else’s behavior or appearance. This “acceptance” is always in jeopardy, because as soon as someone acts or appears in a displeasing way, the “acceptance” vanishes and is replaced with anger, criticism, or disgust.

We see the fragility of social acceptance all the time. Someone might appear acceptable to others for a while, so they have no reason to reject him, but one day he says or does something questionable, and instead of discussing it with him, they criticize and reject him. They let one act erase months or years of goodness. Why? Because the ego wants to feel superior to others, so it looks for any excuse to consider someone else to be less worthy than it. Anything less than 100% perfection is all the reason the ego needs to reject someone, because it considers the feeling of superiority to be much more important than friendship or love.  Remember, the ego cannot love.

In a nutshell, social acceptance is the ego’s conditional, temporary state of non-rejection (while always being in a state of non-love); while love is the true self’s unconditional, eternal way of being. There is no such thing as conditional love or unconditional acceptance.

We Are Our Own Worst Enemy

We’ve all felt it: that inner sense that something is missing. It gnaws at us even when on a physical level things are going pretty well. We might have a good job, relationships, health, and hobbies, but still something is amiss. We might then seek ways to fill the void. Religion. Therapy. Money. Television. Sex. Possessions. Travel. A new relationship. A new job. A new hobby.

What we experience is a lack not of anything external, but of our true self. We keep up a false self, all the while losing touch with who we really are.

If you ask people, “Who are you?”, most will reply, “I am Michael/Jennifer, man/woman, husband/wife/single, father/mother/childless, American/Chinese/Irish, Christian/Muslim/Jew/Buddhist, Republican/Democrat/Libertarian, 20/40/70 years old, a teacher/doctor/lawyer/engineer.” They think that they know who they are, but they don’t. All those attributes that they ascribe to themselves are just features of their temporary life situation. All of them can change or could have been different. Anyone could be born in any country, at any time in history, with any skin color, with any particular religious upbringing. Anyone can lose their job, get married/divorced, procreate, become ill, or change religion or political party. We all gain and lose objects, wealth, relationships, and abilities. Our bodies age.

Our viewing these arbitrary, temporary, vulnerable things as “us” causes a gnawing sense of insecurity, because we’ve built a mental house of cards that we know deep down could crumble at any time. This is the source of the emotional void, the inner sense of lack that pushes us to pursue things such as wealth, social status, and accomplishment in a futile attempt to add security to the insecure state we are in, to add stability to the inherently unstable mental construct we uphold.

This mental construct – the ego – is a façade that we present to the world. It is a grand image-maintenance project that we spend lots of time and effort on in order to “prove” to others and ourselves that we have value. We define ourselves by a respectable career, a devout religious/political belief, parenthood, athleticism, humor, physical attractiveness, or whatever, all the while ignoring who we really are. We have done nothing more than blow up a balloon, which has a flimsy outer shell, with nothing inside it, so if it pops, nothing will be left. As long as we continue to believe that we are nothing more than this balloon, we will remain terrified that it will pop, thereby annihilating us.

The fear of annihilation causes a very predictable knee-jerk reaction of self-defense. People defend their balloon with competition, criticism, deception, arguments, and even violence. Whenever someone demonstrates an irrational need to acquire, to win, to be praised, to be right, to feel superior, or to oppose anyone who doesn’t agree with them, it is nothing more than a fear-driven effort to protect the mental construct that they mistakenly believe they are.

What causes people to believe so strongly that they are their ego? Conditioning. The belief has been ingrained for so long that it has become unquestionable. Further, since they have invested so much time and energy in it, they don’t like the prospect that they have been wrong (the ego hates to be wrong) or that they have wasted a lot of their resources. Actually the resources spent on the ego have not been wasted. They have been used in the vital process of learning what the ego is and how much pain it causes. This can wake us up and therefore be an extremely important part of finding who we really are.

If we would only let go of the image that we so desperately clutch, we would see that all this time we have foolishly clung to nothing. We would realize that the ideas we’ve desperately maintained for so long are not us. This would open the door to finding our true self: the unchangeable awareness that perceives but is independent of any name, race, gender, age, nationality, career, accomplishments, or belief system.

The true self is the one and only thing that we cannot lose, because it is us. Only things that are not us (objects and ideas) are subject to loss. Our true self is, by definition, always secure. Therefore when we discover who we really are, we find the security we have so desperately been seeking. There will never again be any reason for fear, insecurity, or the void.

“Becoming Spiritual”

Sometimes people say that they want to “become spiritual”. While this is a good sentiment, in reality no one can become spiritual because we (our true selves) are already spiritual. That is our eternal condition, no matter what kinds of efforts we make.

However, what can (and usually does) happen is that we forget our spirituality by adopting a false self (ego), which is a nonspiritual thought system. So all we can do via effort is pretend that we are not spiritual. Hence when we get tired of being egoic, and/or start to wake up from the egoic dream, it might seem that we are “becoming” spiritual. In actuality we are remembering the spirituality we had all along.

When one becomes a spiritual seeker, who seeks? The false self. Only something nonspiritual would seek to become spiritual, and only via the false self can we seem to not be spiritual. Since the false self can never become spiritual (because it is inherently nonspiritual), it is doomed to fail. As long as we believe ourselves to be the fabricated false self, we are hiding from our spirituality, from our true selves. Only when we drop the mental construct of ego can we see clearly and feel the spirituality that is us.

The Egoic Thought System

To the false self it seems that the only way to sense our own existence is to think and perceive. We see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and think, which provide feedback and let us know we’re alive. Since the ego is merely a process, not an actual being, it believes that those other processes are essential to its existence.

Our true selves go beyond our minds, bodies, thoughts, and perceptions. The true self is an actual being that exists, so it does not need processes in order to be. Therefore it can know its own presence without using the mind and body to think and perceive. The mind and body are merely things that it has, not what it is. The ego cannot fathom this. It believes that there must be processes of brain and body in order to be aware. This is why it is gullible enough to believe that it is the brain and body: it cannot imagine existing without them, so it assumes that they are parts of its very self.

The belief in being a body/mind can make us seem tiny, weak, and vulnerable. Even if others don’t criticize, abuse, reject, or abandon us, the mere belief in being a tiny being in a gargantuan universe can make us feel powerless, worthless, and fearful. When we see that we are way beyond mind and body, we don’t seem small at all. We feel omnipresent, as though we are one with everything. We no longer compare our bodies with other bodies, the planet, or the Universe, because we know that we are not our bodies.

The false self’s unpleasant thought system in which we are, by default, worthless and weak, ensures that we can never be happy or satisfied. In an attempt to add size, power, and worth to ourselves, we run around obtaining and accomplishing little things, such as winning games, impressing others, and buying possessions, but no matter what we do, we are merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic because the entire time we are dying in the mental oppression of feeling that we are inherently lacking. No matter how “big” we make ourselves, we will always be much smaller than the rest of the Universe. This causes us to constantly feel that we must “grow”, which in turn causes us to believe that we always need more (possessions, status, accomplishments) and that we are always vulnerable to diminishment via loss of what we have. There will never be any rest because no matter how good the status quo, we will feel the need to strive in order to get more or protect what we have. We will always feel the need to change what is in order to “improve” our situation. We cannot relax and enjoy what is happening now because we fear that tomorrow will be worse, so we must work today in order to enjoy tomorrow. But when tomorrow comes will we enjoy it? No, because the fear of the future will still be with us, so we will work in order to enjoy the day after that.  We thus continually work for a future enjoyment that never comes. We constantly strive to obtain pleasure and avoid suffering, but the very process of pursuit and avoidance is what causes our suffering in the first place. We’re trying to put out fires with gasoline.

Why We Cling to the False Self

When we are very young we are mostly blank slates. This enables us to absorb data directly because we haven’t yet developed a mental filter. We become attached to things and people, such as certain foods, our mother, our lifestyle, and our religion, because there is nothing else to compare them to, so they seem like unquestionable “givens”. That is, since there is nothing else to compare them to, there is no question as to whether they are true or real. They are all we have, and so we attach ourselves to them. This is known as imprinting.

Later in life we might become exposed to other people, foods, lifestyles, and religions. They might be very different from what we’re used to: the people might have a different skin color, the materialism of other lifestyles might be greater or lesser than that of the one we grew up in, foods might taste very unfamiliar, and religious dogmas might contradict what we’ve been taught. Since we have already imprinted on a particular set of people, things and ideas, we might view these new ones as “bad” or “wrong”. This is why people tend to cling to and defend their own race, lifestyle, and beliefs. No amount of logic, reason, or even proof will convince people that what they are used to isn’t necessarily any “better” or more “right” than anything else. They can’t fathom that if they just happened to have been born and brought up with a different skin color, lifestyle and belief system, they would think that those were “correct” and that the ones they currently cling to are “wrong”.

Why does this stubborn blindness occur? Because people make a (false) self out of their circumstances. They have built the idea of an action figure with a particular skin color, nationality, religion, lifestyle, community, family, etc, and have imprinted on it. By the time new data arrives, the mental construct that they view as their “self” has already been formed. Even if they see that different nationalities, lifestyles, and beliefs might have equal validity to their own, they see their “self” as unchangeable. Hence they cannot – or, rather, will not – change anything about themselves, because that would be tantamount to self-annihilation.

This is a simple case of mistaken identity. The true self is unchangeable, so feeling unchangeable is a good thing; but people apply this sense of permanence to their false self, which is changeable. In fact, since it doesn’t actually exist, the false self can be changed at the drop of a hat. People cling to the false self for a sense of permanence, when the only permanence resides in the true self.

Time

Some people say that time doesn’t exist. For those of us who have spent our lives by the clock, this can sound absurd. Well, let’s look at this thing we call time.

Have you ever noticed that when you wake up, it doesn’t seem as though time elapsed since you fell asleep? Or that when you’re engrossed in something, time seems to “fly”? Or that when you remember an event from long ago, it “seems like yesterday”? Where did time go? Can anything that is real just disappear?

We perceive time as a mental construct that represents the distance between events. For example, if we’re waiting impatiently for a bus or for a line of people ahead of us to move, we perceive time. The more we want a future event to occur, the longer time seems to “drag”. But, as described in the previous paragraph, on many occasions we perceive no time at all. So is time real? It seems that time depends solely on our perceptions, i.e., it has no reality of its own.