Can you imagine how it feels to be truly carefree – to be untouched by worry or anxiety or doubt? Can you imagine feeling only the peace of knowing “all is well” right now? Consider that it is your birthright to feel such peace, to know you are completely safe and secure, to be light and carefree. But there is a catch – the ego will never experience that and as much as you believe you are working to be free of the ego, it is only the ego that is working. That which is real and true within you does not need to be freed of the ego – it is already real and true, already authentically peaceful. We cannot overestimate the degree to which we are trying to spiritualize the ego. It is insidious in its ability to make us forget that it is not real, that we are not it.
Think about this. You are asked to imagine being carefree. It is most likely that you are trying to imagine the ego being carefree. You are thinking of yourself as your ego. You are thinking “you” with a small y. Freedom, being free from anxiety and worry and doubt, is not possible for what you think is ‘you’. For here is the key to knowing truth. If you believe you are separated from the truth you can’t know it or you don’t know it. If you believe you are not free, if you don’t feel carefree, then you are saying “no” to the truth. You are saying “yes” to spiritualizing the ego. Perhaps you are working earnestly at being spiritual but that which is not spiritual cannot be made spiritual because that which is not spiritual does not exist.
To make spiritual is an oxymoron. Spiritual is and can never be anything but what it is already right now. Anything that claims to want to be spiritual is not real. Anything that claims to be separated and apart is not real. So everything new that claims to be anything but perfect peace is not real. Consider more closely for the moment how much you have invested in doing your spiritual work. Not that it has been irrelevant or a waste of time, but look at what you have been trying to do.
We know we need to let go, to stop this fight but how can we stop? How can we stop when we have so much faith in the ego? We act as if, and believe, it has power; we constantly proclaim its power over us. We talk about it as if it was an enemy – not something of our own making, our own dreaming. It is just another way to keep control. If we are engaged in a battle with the ego we do not have to surrender. And so it goes on and on.
We must come to recognize that this self with a small s is truly who we think we are. We think this self is choosing to fight the ego. We think we can make this self become spiritual – we will train and discipline it. Can you see the insanity of this idea? The true Self with a capital S has no need of our assistance. Nothing has happened to it. There is nothing wrong.
The purpose of this discussion is that we may see the ridiculous quest of trying to become spiritual. This may sound like a judgment or harsh criticism, but it is in fact a statement of the truth. And it is not to be expected that we should already know this, that somehow we have failed because we did not already recognize this truth. It is a journey that everyone must make.
We must become absolutely clear that what is not perfect peace cannot be real, cannot be fixed and cannot be made spiritual. It is to be recognized by what it is: an idea that we have clung to in desperation for so long that we don’t know how to let it go. A person clinging in terror to an object will never realize they are better off letting go until they try. And until they have freed their mind of the idea of clinging as the only answer – once they are open the possibility of another answer – then other possibilities can arise.
So here is our task – to continually examine and challenge our belief about what is real right now, particularly in terms of who and what we are. There is only one truth, one reality and that truth is unmistakable, undeniable – it is known to us and we recognize it instantly. It knows only peace and perfection. We cannot accept anything else as real.