The Same Guy
El mismo tipo
A student asks about the paradox of trying to practice surrender, and the teacher explores how the identified self cannot free itself, and why victimhood is the foundation of illusion.
The Same Guy
A student asks about the paradox of trying to practice surrender, and the teacher explores how the identified self cannot free itself, and why victimhood is the foundation of illusion.
This is a bit like what you said to me earlier. It's this pattern of having a realization about surrender and then suddenly trying to practice surrender. But can you explain what you mean when you say, as you did a few weeks ago and again today, that it's not like we're helpless and it's happening to us, but rather that it's our choice not to want to see reality?
It's so difficult to talk about in language. It might seem contradictory or paradoxical, which it is, but in a sense I'm speaking to different levels.
The part of us that is identified, believing we are limited: I can speak to that. And when I speak to that, I say, "No. Don't believe that you're a victim, that this is all happening to you." It's a reminder. Something deep in you that you're not aware of is choosing this, and it is not out there to punish you. It's you, freely choosing this experience, this way of relating.
I'm speaking as if there were two of you, but it's just this sense of what we tend to believe we are versus what I know to be, let's say, more real. The part of us that is identified cannot surrender. The part that is identified will fight till the end. It will find all of the traps and tricks and rationalizations and loops to stay in the dream.
And that story of saying "I can't do it, it's the habit, something is playing against my own will," that's also a story?
The victim story as foundation
Exactly. It reinforces the illusion, because one of the foundations of identification is that we're victims, that things happen to us that we don't want, and that we will be okay if things were different. The fundamental experience is: there's good in the future and it's not here. Somebody played a bad trick on me, and I'm trying to get to a better place. "Reality isn't what I want." That's a story. It's a narrative. It serves the purpose of experiencing limitation.
Because you're here, I more freely speak to the part of you that is awakening, which is the part of us that is choosing to no longer be identified. I wouldn't speak this way to a person in a different context, but I trust that you're here because that part of you is waking up.
It feels so powerful right now. Because the part that says it can do something and the part that says it can't do anything: it's just the same guy.
Piercing illusions
And what can happen is this. You could think of this kind of work, meeting in these groups, listening and speaking, as a piercing of illusions. There's a part of you that's here. There's a contract: you're coming here for illusions to be pierced, and I'm here doing what I can to pierce them. It's all voluntary, all consensual.
So what can happen is I say something that pierces an illusion, and a part of you is going to react with resistance, and a part of you is going to feel, "Oh, that feels good." Sometimes one side is stronger than the other. But once an illusion is pierced, there's a tipping point where enough has been pierced that you just can't go back. It's a snowball effect, because there are only a couple of ideas that keep all of the illusions standing together. It's like a big house of cards. You take a few things from the bottom and it all comes down.
The core illusions
The illusions are these: we are separate. That which I am, this separate entity, can on its own have revelation, choice, and control. It is a victim of reality; things happen to us that we don't like. And it's my mission to change what is into what it could be, to make it better.
All of them are playing in me right now.
I know it well. I'm talking to myself here too.
Creating from fullness versus fixing from lack
There's an important distinction in that last point. One thing is: what is, is beautiful, and I have a love for co-creating, for dancing with what is, toward what I personally feel called to. That could be a different living situation, a change in something, creating music, working on a project, some kind of generative process. But it's coming from a place where nothing is essentially missing now. From there, there is a movement with reality that is very different from "something is essentially wrong right now, something is essentially missing, and it will only be okay when I get the coffee, the house, the job, the partner, or get rid of the partner."
I can't name the number of things we think in this way, because it's constant and constantly changing. We have our favorite themes, but it's always the same structure: the problem is this thing that's here now (which is an interpretation of reality), and when I change it, it's going to be okay. That's the part we're trying to pierce.
But piercing that doesn't mean there's no more dancing with the imagination of the future. It becomes a creative process, a process coming from loving what is now, without any resistance or reactivity. A complete embracing of what is. And from there, using all of our vitality, imagination, creativity, generativity, love, and passion to simply enjoy the experience of being here.
And that requires us to be okay with fear and pain, because it's scary and it hurts at times.