The Carrot and the Stick

By Robert Cinque

The ego is born through an emotional recoil from its Origin.  This creates the appearance that God is distant and must be found.  The spiritual traditions of humanity are based on this search , this impulse for re-union with the Divine.  However, the search is based on an illusion of separateness and isolation, which reduces God to a carrot on an ego stick.

Throw away the stick. Eat the Carrot.

Creating the stick is an activity that produces “me” and then the “world”.    Authentic spiritual life is about recognizing this, not “overcoming the ego”, which cannot be done anyway because it does not exist in the first place, except in our imagination.  This practice is about Standing Prior to the birth of ego, not overcoming it after you created it.

Try picking up an imaginary rock, it’s impossible. The disease of egoity is self created and imaginary, too. When recoil is replaced with emotional intimacy, the ego is pre-empted and cannot form.

The spiritual traditions exhort us to overcome this fleshly “ego” and be more “spiritual” by identifying with our non-physical, “inner” being.  This so-called inner being is only yet another spontaneous patterning of this Infinite Consciousness, Whatever That Is altogether, but the inside of me is not the exclusive domain of truth, only That in which the inner being is appearing is the Domain of Truth, the Amphitheatre of the Heart.

I am in awe of This, I surrender in love to It. Ultimately, I am It, or rather, It became “me”.  Once it becomes clear that It is the basis of “me”, all dilemma disappears, all searching, all “other”.

Authentic spiritual life is about recognizing what is already true, not deifying my beliefs about it.  Conventional spiritual practice is like using a really excellent and detailed map of Detroit while you’re trying to find your way around Paris.  Conventional spiritual life places enlightenment at the end of the journey, the search is finally over, but authentic spiritual life places enlightenment at the beginning, middle, and end, as the very foundation of human life. It is based on heartfelt response ability, not belief, not technique, not method, not mythology, not search.

It’s about Discovery.

Jesus is reported to have said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure a man finds buried in his field.”

Authentic spiritual life is about love, which is truth.  Truth, whatever it is altogether, is identical with Reality.  What Is, is True.  Find out What Is, prior to mind, prior to “me”, prior to “world”.  That is the knockout punch and is why “you” won’t survive the “journey” to “God”.

Conventional religious belief, from fundamentalism to New Age metaphysics, is based on this search, on the “great path of return” to God, to Unity and Wholeness. Sounds great, doesn’t it?  It’s exciting, adventurous, and romantic.  The only problem with it is the fact that you’re not actually lost, not actually separate from That which you seek.  The problem with conventional religious belief is that it supports and enables a carrot on a stick.  At best, ordinary religious beliefs prepare us for authentic spiritual life if only by providing an illusion to demolish.

Only God Exists and You are not separate from It.

That’s the truth that sets the heart free, not that I need to be saved from Original Sin or that I can have and do and be anything I want, that happiness can be found in the manifestation of my desires. Happiness cannot be found because it is not lost.

Happiness is the nature of Reality already and our spiritual obligation is to realize it, not believe in it, not seek it in pleasure or in the fulfillment of need and desire. Happiness is prior to pleasure and need and desire, and everything else. See for yourself.

Happiness, freedom, organic, natural emotional, mental, and physical alignment with Whatever it is that originated us is the only sane and realistic way to live, everything else is a desolate madness that amounts to a big fat finger in my eye, a squirrel in a cage, and a carrot on a stick.  God is God, now.  Life is Love, now, not just later. My carrot on a stick obscures my vision and realization of This.

The universe is like a gymnasium and a laboratory.  They are located in the Heart. The Cosmos is like a speck of dust on the Garment of the Infinite Heart of the Radiant Being of Life, your very identity, now.  This is where the Power of Now is located, in the eternally Radiating Presence of the Living Current. It is where we already live, no need to go looking.  The One you are looking for is doing the Looking! What a paradox, what a Joke.  Enlightenment is the getting the Punchline and Falling Completely Apart, Laughed to Death.

The I of my heart and yours, the I of Life, are the same, now. It has always been this way.  This is not a belief, an idea.  Find out for yourself. Who are you? What is your most fundamental identity? And, What is your relationship to That which created you?  When you ask these questions, get ready, because the end result of such Enquiry is a psychotectonic Shift in your life from you to the One and Only I Who Exists. You will clearly be able to see the Whologram and the way it fractalizes into unspeakably imaginative versions of itself, like you for example, because you will be seeing with the eyes of the heart, the Garden out which the brain and body grow.  There is only One Heart breathing all beings.  No one knows What it Is or How it could Be.  It is wonderful, glorious beyond belief. What is your relationship to This?

When you begin to make this Enquiry, you quickly see how emotionally withdrawn and bewildered and doubtful you are.  You can see the holes in your beliefs and so you whistle past the graveyard, trying not to think about how profoundly ignorant you are of literally everything. You secretly don’t know what anything is or what it means or if it has a meaning at all and this is terrifying.  The reason it’s terrifying is because when you come to the end of belief and knowledge, which is where the Enquiry takes you, the reality of your fundamental ignorance completely shatters the false presumptions that you believed to be real. That’s the Avalanche.  It hurts, but you’ll get over it and you will soon forget your dilemma of doubt and confusion. Confidence will be restored because the knucklehead you created in your fear, the one you thought was you, is gone, bye bye.

It’s not that he died, it’s that he never had an independent existence in the first place, a whirlpool in a River of Light. This is the point at which you become unplugged from the Matrix, and breathe your first breath of Free Air, the point where “me” sees that it is inherently one with the River, period.

This realization is the Temple of the Heart. The body and the mind grow out of That.

Don’t just follow your heart, be it. You are it.  Once this identity as heart is finally established, everything becomes crystal clear, transparent.  This is the supreme goal of all the yogic traditions, and it’s your very nature, now.

This is a yoga of the heart and it informs all of the yogas, all of the ways and practices.  True yoga is about love, it’s about what is true, what is beautiful, what is Truly Great: the infinite Current of Light and Love, the very substance and nature of Reality Itself.

Becoming Intimate with the infinite Heart of Life is the true basis of authentic, effective, useful, practical, highly enjoyable, and pleasurable spiritual practice.  Love communion with What is Alive, realization of Only God , realization of what is already true, now, is  at the beginning, not just the end, of true and meaningful, life giving, spiritual practice.  Sadhana becomes the ability to respond, and replaces belief.  It becomes recovery from bullshit and abuse I’ve been enduring my whole life, recovery from addiction to “me” and what I think I want.  My ideas have been crushed by the Avalanche.  Now, there is only What I is, at heart, at center, at fundamental Essence: Light, Love, Truth, Intelligence, Innocence, Fierceness, a Current of White Hot Intensity.

That’s what I am, you too.

We were born into piles of rubble that have buried this Current under millions of years of ego beliefs.  People are being murdered today in Gaza and elsewhere from ego beliefs, false I’s and their gods, grotesque and profane idols of that which is God, the Light and Love of every heart.

We are That, let’s start acting like it.  We share the dignity and majesty of the Cosmos, our Position is secure and eternal, there is no need to control anything.

Laying down the ego stick is easier than falling off a log, in the same way that it takes no effort to be attracted to what is beautiful.  Spiritual life is about being distracted by the Beautiful so much that you can’t remember your “self”, the one you thought was you.

This is how all addictions are ended, by getting what you truly need, then the habit falls away on its own, no need to struggle, only listen to what is most deeply needed.

In the Light of our hearts shines the truth of Existence. It is up to us to Conduct It, to stop obstructing It with puny, brain based ideas and beliefs. The Current is White Hot, Life Giving, and radiating from the Center of our hearts.  Only a mind run amuck, oblivious to its’ Root, could possibly turn That into a problem.  When we stop doing that, stop making ego, and stop slathering it all over the Place, things will get better. We can do it, our hearts require it and deserve it.

Occupy your heart.