You Are the Source

There is a fundamental quandary in the pursuit of one's own Liberation, which is that as you become more Free, you can't help but to notice how stuck the world is in its self-inflicted horrors. As you extricate yourself from your own delusions of identity and conditioned fear, the cacophony of the madness and suffering around you becomes deafening in contrast to your own inner silence.

This, I believe, is the cause of the "Bodhisattva vow" (i.e. the promise to be reborn until all beings are liberated) and all spiritual service: As you become more aligned with Truth, you can't help but to express that inner alignment by helping others untangle themselves from their self-induced delusions of ego, and the suffering that inevitably results.

What are those delusions? They all come down to one, fundamental lie, which is this: You lack what you need in life, and you are therefore dependent upon outside forces for your happiness and survival. This is the lie that the ego perpetuates upon You* every moment of Your life; it is a lie that, when believed, separates You from the infinite Source of Being from which we all are born. Once You are separated from Source, it is only too easy to convince You that You need the ego to survive, that You must sacrifice Your integrity to get Your needs met, and that Your whole world would come crashing down if You ever disobeyed the fearful dictates of the voices in Your head.

This pattern is a classic in abuser-abused relationships: The abuser tears down the abused person's self-esteem, isolates her from those who might give her the strength and insight she needs to fight back, and then promises to take care of her - so long as she avoids crossing him (which is impossible because there's always some new offense to rage over). The only remedy to this situation is to stop believing the lies that drain your self-worth, and re-connect to your own inner sense of strength.

The same is true of the relationship between You and Your ego. The bitter truth is that the ego takes away everything it promises to give You. It operates on the principle of contraction - it creates fear, which forces you to contract/disconnect from the object of your fear, which then creates so much suffering that your "best option" is to try to dominate and/or destroy that which you fear. The idea is that if you succeed, then the object of your fear will be gone (or at least under control), and the contraction/suffering goes away. But far more often you will fail, leaving you disconnected and afraid, and even if you succeed, that will only encourage the ego to find something else to dominate or destroy. It's a sad, miserable existence, robbing You of the abiding joy that comes from feeling connected to Source, all in the pursuit of a happiness that is elusive and - at best - transitory.

There is an alternative, though, which is to recognize that You are the Source, You are the answer. Abide in what You are, and everything else takes care of itself. Stay connected to here-and-now, and Your choices will naturally be good ones because you won't be crazed with fear. Start your path to Liberation simply by acknowledging that the ego has You doing crazy things, and that there must be a better way. YOU are that better way, but that You has no identity aside from its own IS-ness, so embracing it will be terribly unsatisfying to Your ego. Be prepared for a struggle as Your ego fights for survival; it cannot live unless it can convince You that You need it, so be prepared for ever-more-convincing tales of what the ego supposedly does for You. Because the ego is a lie, Your best strategy is simply not to believe the lies. This will eventually become easy enough- Truth comes from the Source, and YOU are the Source.


* I capitalize "You" and "Your" at times to emphasize the higher nature of my readers' True Self.