The Hammer and the Nail
The Hammer and the Nail
The hammer sees only the nail. Everything that is not a nail goes unnoticed.
The ego sees only what it desires. Everything that is not a desire goes unnoticed.
The hammer is designed to drive nails. The ego is designed to get what it wants. There is nothing wrong with this.
Nails comes naturally to hammers and desires come naturally to egos. Changing this is impossible.
My point is this: If I am only an ego with a hammer, then I can only nail my desires or desire my nails. However, if I am the one who is aware of my ego and hammer, then my experience of life expands infinitely in all directions and I notice everything, not just nails and desires.
Making this distinction is the beginning of authentic spiritual life. This is because spiritual life is about what is true, not just what is assumed to be true that then becomes a massive context to which everything is now subject.
The ego is an assumption of a separate self that is then overlaid onto life. If I subject my awareness to this assumption, these ego colored glasses, then I will see only what the ego sees.
If I identify with my awareness, then I am open to whatever awareness is aware of, which is a helluva lot more than nails and desires. I’m still aware of them, but am not limited to just them.
Every religious tradition in the world, from Hinduism to the New Age, is based on the assumption of a separate self. Therefore, it is an overlay projected onto life. It’s not about Life, it’s about assumptions about life. It’s the difference between food and pictures of food. If you try to live on pictures of food, you will die.
The Current of Life, the Pulse, the Music, the Passion, the Intensity, the Searing Radiance of Existence is central to Life, not provincial superstitions like ego. It’s understandable that we invent superstitions and project them onto life. It’s understandable, yes, but that doesn’t make them true.
Every religious tradition assumes a separates self that is going from here to there, from earth to heaven, from birth to death. While it is true that lifeforms are born and die, the underlying Reality in which these cycles are occurring is the Real Deal. The fish in the ocean are born and die, but the Ocean remains. Therefore, the Ocean is the True Condition of the fish, not its’ ideas about itself. The fish would say, “What Ocean?”
In the same way, the ego says, What God? I exist, what I say and what I think and what I want are God. In this way, false gods are overlaid onto Real God, Life God, Reality God, Actual God. Beliefs about God replace God. Now, you’re lost. You’re lost and don’t know it. You’ve got your nose so close to the map, you can’t see where you’re going.
The priests say, “You’re not doing it right.” The doctors say, “Take this prescription and come back in 2 weeks”. The therapist says, “Apply this formula so that you can heal and adapt to society”
Ho fucking hum. Religious, medical, and therapeutic prescriptions for a false disease bore me. Not only that, they really piss me off because well meaning people believe this shit and are so buried, you can’t even see the bottom of the hole.
“If you repeat a lie enough, everyone will believe it”
“A lie doesn’t become truth because everyone believes it. A truth doesn’t become a lie because no one sees it”
The individuated self appears spontaneously in Nature, just like stars, planets and galaxies. These are objects OF consciousness. We are aware OF them. Therefore, consciousness is prior TO them. This means that Consciousness is the Principle of Existence, not objects, not thoughts, not ideas, not beliefs, not “your truth”, not mine, not your ego, not mine.
Now, you ask, What is Consciousness? Your awareness of Awareness enables you to ask this question. Consciousness becomes an object to itself. This is called Manifest Existence, the Universe, the Word become Flesh, the Incarnation of the Divine, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Garden of Eden. Where there is awareness of Awareness, the Nature of Reality shines brightly and illuminates the map to the point where you see that you have been eating the menu for the Meal. It’s the difference between pictures of sex and sex itself. Which do you prefer?
Spiritual life is about Truth, Absolute Truth, What has always been True, not absolute beliefs, dogmatic presumptions, or facsimiles of Truth.
No separate self ever realized the Truth. The Truth illuminates the separate self to the point where it is outshined and becomes transparent. Spiritual luminaries like Jesus and Adi Da were not separate selves. They were identified with the Divine Condition. Jesus spoke like God speaks, that’s why he was crucified. He wasn’t a megalomaniac, the separate self was not inflated to grandiose proportions, there was no separate self, only a clear passage for Truth to Radiate.
That’s why he wanted us to contemplate his State and put our attention on It, so that It would duplicate his realization in us. It was never about cultic worship of him, it was about the destruction of the cultist and his or her false presumptions about separateness from Love (God), our Actual Condition. This is true repentance, the renouncement of the false self and its idols, so that Love Intimacy, Heart Communion with Life is possible. Love Communion with Infinite Life is authentic spiritual practice. It’s the difference between a Juicy Kiss and a boring book that you’ve read a thousand times and doesn’t even have any pictures.
Spiritual life is not boring, is not dry, is not effortful. It takes no effort to be attracted to What is True, Beautiful, and Alive as all things. It’s real time love communion, not brain/mind ideas plastered onto Life. Everyone possesses this ability. It may be buried beneath the rubble, but it’s still there. Dig it up.
