The Inner Critic

Most of us have an inner critic that tells us that we are somehow flawed/inadequate.  It comes from negative things other people have said or done to us, usually in our childhood.  We then believe their opinions of us to be true.  This creates a “voice” in our head that keeps criticizing us.

What did our parents/schoolmates criticize/reject?  Things we said or did.  In other words, our ego.  Our false self.  Not us.  But because both we and they mistook our actions and words to be us, we misconstrued their opinions to be about the real us.

So our inner critic comes from two big mistaken beliefs: 1) that other people’s opinions were accurate, and 2) that the ego that got criticized/rejected was us.  In reality, none of those people could possibly criticize the real us because they didn’t know the real us; all they knew was certain things we said or did, which in no way define us.

If there’s one thing we know about the ego, it’s that it is flawed and inadequate.  It is a fear-based mental construct, so it cannot possibly be anything but flawed and inadequate.  So the inner critic might be right about the ego, but not about the true self.  Therefore whenever the critic rears its ugly head, we can agree with its assessment of the ego, but not feel bad about our true self.

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.