You can’t bullshit a bullshitter

All are called but few choose themselves

Imagine what it would be like if there was no division between past, present, and future… as if it all was really one continuum, one dimension with no divisory lines.

Our perception of the present and past is an illusion continuously created by our beliefs, presuppositions and attachments. Thus, we only perceive the Present, while we blind ourselves to our Past and Future. We are blindsided in our ability to affect the past or create the future. If we could see time as one continuum and ourselves in it, we could be like wizards, all-powerful to transform the reality that can affect our lives no matter where we were in the spectrum.

‘Reality is a controlled hallucination’

So asserted Anil Seth, a British neuroscientist at a conference [https://bit.ly/3QO2OQq]. It’s a hallucination, not because we are seeing what’s not there, but because it is just too much to see, so we downsize it to adjust its resolution and blur the image, sometimes rendering it irreconcilable with what it represents. Do we really have the incredible power to affect our past in the present?

We live through experiences embedded in circumstances and context. These experiences make an impression in our perception of who we are, and our attention focuses through our value system. We are story-telling creatures, not only because we tell stories to uncover the meaning of reality, but especially because we understand the world and ourselves through stories. We conjure stories to a sequence of events that mold who we tell ourselves we are. We manufacture, on this blindside, who we are and then unfold the values and beliefs that solidify the mask we call ME.

It has been said that our dream time is what is true, and our waking hours are the dream; that myths are stories that spring from dreams to make sense of our awake hours and they unravel what is really happening to understand who we are and to clear the way back Home. So, there is a correlation between the story I tell myself and the one I live in, connecting those two seems extraordinarily important.

Dressing up the Ego gives us a sense of certainty

The fundament of psychotherapy is to change our present by discovering meaning and reassigning value to the past that unsettles our lives. We do affect the past by the story we tell ourselves and the meaning we assign to it in our lives. It is a dot we have effectively connected even if it has a limiting-negative meaning and projection; and by the way, most times they do, when we have not purposely connected them.

Our personality is a living-breathing interface that connects the dots of the past with every dot experienced in the present to sustain the story we tell ourselves we are. Therefore, in essence our personality is a false truth that governs our experiences and perception through attention.

What is truly awesome is that we do have the power to change ourselves; by changing the meaning of the dots in our past and assigning a new value. It is a beginner’s process, because by doing it you alter one dimension of the interface, and it all initiates a cascade of changes and rearrangements that pushes you forward.

That is how we change ourselves.

From https://www.klipfolio.com/

Who is the architect of this personality structure?

In the 5th Century BC lived the sage and mystic Gautama called the Buddha. His insight into the solution of the human dilemma was three-fold: life is embedded in suffering, suffering is caused by attachment and there is a way out of suffering. The crux of the matter is attachment. The predicament of being human is simple, but the solution is anything but simple… it requires so much effort it will test your very soul.

What is simple about the human dilemma? Taking to heart three basic precepts: the only constant in the universe is that everything is continuously changing; second, suffering will spring out of your clinging, resisting change and it will be present in your life often; and lastly, you have within you everything you need to be a master in the ART OF LIVING! That is the simple part. The tough nut to crack is that the process is painful. It requires you to counter-intuitively confront the assumptions you hold and feel safe in your skin: to be the real YOU! Recognize your attachment, your dependence on being you.

Original graphic @agsandrew at depositphotos.com

The counter-intuitive skill that can lead to a new life

Lean into suffering. When learning the art of life, you must risk being out of your comfort zone, to stretch yourself until you are vulnerable and capable of being hurt. Risk investigating what hurts you and why. Risk uncovering dirt and mud, feeling dirty to be able to understand and clean your life, your past.

It may feel like you will never feel comfortable leaning into pain or suffering, but you will have a wider acceptance of contradictions, conflict, and disappointment, whether they come from within or from the circumstances of life. Once you get the hang of the uneasy feeling of counter-intuitively doing what “feels right”, you begin to have fun riding the waves of life.

It's impossible to maintain balance while striving for an ideal.

A basic skill to master your life

Because we are unfathomably deep, we would feel dizzy continuously being as we truly are; so, we conjure this character of our life’s script to act and be us. What sustains it is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves and the reasons why we are the way we are. What keeps me anchored in whatever I am experiencing, is the density with which I sustain the lie of who I am; the little lies we tell ourselves to uphold our story. Maybe it is just too much weight to handle with all the baggage of tens or maybe hundreds of little lies we tell ourselves every day; because lies need to be upheld and thus, require effort.

These lies shape our personality, our values, and our actions in ways we cannot fathom. They create a veil in front of our eyes. However, that can become our “teacher”. We have learned that we project our values and assign meaning to the world we see: the eyes do not see, they project [A Course in Miracles]. Therefore, when you place a veil in front of a light being projected, you do not see what is behind the veil; you see a projection of the light; if it is you, then you see yourself. Therefore, the projected you, becomes your best teacher to really understand who you are.

If you want to know someone, look at what they value and how they act. That is why, when you are challenged you are enraged, or happy when validated, or saddened when overlooked and ignored. Look at what upsets you and find out who your veil reveals, what you are using to dress up your emptiness.

How relevant is all of this?

Think about how much our whole culture is permeated by lies. ‘Lying is a cooperative act’ as Pamela Mayer brilliantly presents as the first principle of lies, “a lie can only harm you if you believe it” and usually you do because it upholds what you want to believe about yourself [Liespotting. https://adbl.co/40VIMYV]. Our whole culture is sustained by lies and it has an overwhelming cost, financially, socially, and individually; $4.7 trillion dollars are wasted annually to fraud by employees, reported between 2020 and 2021. You are a part of this mess of the world we live in, because your lies uphold the big lie in a web of pretense and self-deception.

You have a choice

You have the choice to do what you know is right, a choice to be true to yourself and stop lying to yourself. We have access to a compass that can help us make that decision and allow us to weather such difficulties. The most advanced state-of-the-art compass in the universe: our inner sense of what is right and wrong. It guides us to achieve what is meaningful; and even when we get things wrong, it is an asset. Risk being wrong for the right reason. Lean out of your comfort zone, assume suffering is just an experience of being outside your comfort zone.

“Fear is the belief that you have of not being able to cope with a situation” (Harry Palmer). It is just a belief, and we know we can change those. So, lean forward and up, choose yourself and grow into who you are meant to be.

For now, there is no better way to express it than “Jamie" MacKenzie Fraser stated in the series Outlander [S01E09]:

I have always known I lived life different from other men
when I was a lad I saw no path before me
I simply took a step and then another
ever forward, ever onward
rushing towards a place I knew not where

And one day I turned around and looked back
and saw that each step I’d taken was a choice
to go left, to go right, to go forward or even not to go at all

Every day every man has a choice
between right and wrong
between love and hate
sometimes between life and death
… and the sum of those choices becomes your life

The day I realized that, is the day I became a Man.

HONESTY is your compass

…so profound that it hurts. That is your defense, your island in the midst of the ocean; that is how you deal with suffering and pain and take it in and come out on top. It is you who chooses to seek meaning and purpose and so you need to assume responsibility [Jorda Peterson]. Life is calling on us all to be the best we can be. Become a student of truth and choose yourself to begin your apprenticeship on the Art of Living.

---