The Left Eye Of Horus

[Philip Mistlberger]

The Left Eye of Horus
Psychological and Spiritual Purification
by P.T. Mistlberger

Feeling and Emotion

The goal of human feeling is love…a love which gives equally to all without demanding anything whatever in return, a love which is its own eternity.

— J. Krishnamurti

The Emotional Body

What role do feelings and emotions have in spiritual realization? I find that they are not considered very much in some of the Eastern teachings, which is hard for me because I have a strong feeling side.

In the area of spiritual enlightenment, there is a kind of final frontier faced by most spiritual seekers. This final frontier is sometimes referred to as the Emotional Body. It is the entire domain of feeling and emotion, and especially how they play out in the quality of our relating with others and the world around us.

All feelings are themselves created by specific thoughts, and in particular, the effect of these thoughts upon the body. The inner sense of this effect of particular thoughts upon the body is experienced as a feeling. The outer expression of such feelings (crying, expressing anger, etc.) is an emotion. For example, we can feel “I love you” toward someone. Then if we express this feeling via words or action, the energy will be experienced as an emotion. Likewise, on the negative side of the ledger, if we feel “I am angry at you” and then act it out, this feeling then becomes an emotion and may then express through angry behavior, hostile acts, and so on.

Feelings are by nature very simple. It is the thinking mind that complicates matters. So, as we identify with thoughts, it is typical to over-complicate and confuse the entire area of feelings. For example, it is common for a person when describing their feeling state to report that they are feeling “confused.” However, confusion is not a feeling, it is a mental state. Equally so, statements such as “I feel like you don’t love me” are also not truly feelings, they are projected thoughts.

The simplest way to recognize a feeling is by the corresponding sensation it will carry in the body. In the beginning, it may take time to learn to identify the corresponding bodily sensations that go with feelings, but in time it will be seen that all true feelings will also register in the body as a sensation―usually in the chest, solar plexus, or pelvic regions, but they may also be felt in practically any area of the body.

How does working with feelings and emotions relate to enlightenment?

What happens in the enlightenment process is that the realization of our true nature—the shifting from identification with thinking to resting in consciousness in the here and now—precedes the actual embodiment of it. In other words, we first

1) see the truth (that consciousness is the vast field in which thoughts, feelings, and sensations arise and fall away)

and then

2) we understand the truth (that who we are is the field of consciousness, not the ever-changing thoughts, feelings, or sensations)

and then

3) we spend the rest of our lives integrating this essential understanding. Along with this integration, we constantly refine and deepen our realization and understanding of the nature of consciousness.

The process of integration involves bringing it all together, embodying it in our lives— living it—in our actions, deeds, behavior, personal endeavors, and so on. The importance of integration, and the development of the Emotional Body, is underscored in the challenges faced by all spiritual seekers—including spiritual teachers—in the area of relationship and community. This is why the realization of the emptiness of the ego and the direct experience of the Natural State, do not in themselves guarantee immaculate behavior or perfectly harmonious relationships with other people or the world around us. Realizing the enlightened condition is the first step, living it fully in the “small” details of life, and most especially in our relationships, is the second. This second phase is life-long, and unavoidable, as long as we are in a physical body.

The Lightening, Thunder and Rain of our Inner Landscape

How do I work with my emotions?

Emotions are events in consciousness that appear and disappear, like the ebb and flow of a wave upon the ocean. In terms of working with them, a key is to be able to maintain awareness of the natural spaciousness of consciousness itself. Buddha once made an analogy like this—if you have too many cows in your pasture (where the cows in this case represent emotions), then the solution is not to start killing the cows. The solution is to simply make the pasture bigger. Give the cows more space to move.

So it is with emotions. As we more and more identify who we really are with the spacious field of consciousness that is our Natural State, then we gradually learn not to identify with emotions. We feel them, accept them, experience them, all the while knowing that they are just movements inside of us, but they are not who we actually are. They are the lightening, thunder and rain of our inner landscape. But who we really are is the entire space, the entire landscape, that is containing the lightening, thunder, rain, and endless other kinds of weather.

In the case of years of denial and repression of feelings, which is common in modern societies, the healing process often begins with learning to get to know these emotions, to befriend them, to accept them. Someone with great anger needs to be able to directly experience the heat of this anger as it manifests through the body. They then need to directly experience the more vulnerable feelings that the anger is (almost always) disguising. Further, they need to be aware of the thoughts and belief systems that are generating the feelings. The final step is simply bearing witness to these thoughts and belief systems, and recognizing oneself as the consciousness that it witnessing the thoughts and belief systems.

The Failure of Drama and Repression

What’s to be done with anger? I’ve found that denying it doesn’t work, but neither does dumping it on others.

Yes, exactly. In the past I used to do a lot of “anger-management” work with people, and spent years “working” on my own anger. But all so-called work on anger (or any other negative emotion) is destined to fail if the root of the issue is not addressed. The root of the issue is the assumption that the very ego that the anger is attempting to defend or vindicate is itself actual and real in a solid, consistent, definable way.

A common tendency in much transformational therapy is to work with anger by outwardly dramatizing it (sometimes known as “catharsis,” or “release”). While this sort of work can be useful to lower the emotional voltage carried in the body, and thus provide a relief from stress and the buildup of repression, it is ineffective in terms of releasing the patterns creating the anger in the first place if the very root illusion—the solidity and so-called reality of the ego—is not finally seen through.

Anger is a secondary emotion, a guardian, a dragon that protects the “pearl” of our more vulnerable feelings. Most anger is a defense against a perceived threat. It arises out of that place of believing that some situation or occurrence has in some way undermined you or failed to recognize you as the apparent separate person you think you are.

Denial of feelings (repression) doesn’t work either. Depression, which is almost epidemic in modern times, is not just chemical imbalance or predisposition. It is also often directly related to the denial of anger, and the turning of such anger (and other emotions) inward. Again, as long as the basic source of ignorance remains intact—the apparent solidity of the separate ego-identity—such negative tendencies can appear at any time.

The Negative Emotions: Anger, Jealousy, Grief, Fear

Is anger ever truly appropriate?

Appropriateness or inappropriateness is not really the issue. What is really the point is understanding the direct link between the ego’s drive to consolidate its hold and the arising of anger as a guardian emotion protecting vulnerable feelings like fear, shame, hurt, grief, and such.

Occasionally, anger can express as a kind of pure active power, a manifestation of clarity in a very passionate and fiery form. You could call this “conscious anger,” and you could think of this activity as being behind the actions of Jesus when he chased the money-changers out of the temple, or behind the stubborn fierceness of a Bodhidharma or a Mahatma Gandhi or a Gurdjieff. It is an anger that arises from a place of stable clarity, and although passionate, is ultimately sourcing from compassion. But this kind of anger is never based on any agenda designed to control others or to enforce one’s personal agendas on them.

This is all interesting but how do I apply these ideas when fighting with my boyfriend?

The name of the game is to be present with your anger as it is arising. Being clearly aware of the feelings opens up the possibility of being less mechanically reactive. Just one extra second of awareness, prior to lashing out at your boyfriend, can be enough to alter the entire course of events. The extra moment slows things down so that you can become more directly aware of your body, and the anger moving through it. This in turn opens up the possibility of becoming directly aware of how the whole drama is arising from within your own mind, and is always related to some vulnerable feeling you want to defend. This vulnerable feeling is there because the ego—the belief that you are a separate somebody—has been in some way disturbed or threatened.

Jealousy is a problem for me.

Jealousy is sourced in the mind’s habit of comparing everything. The mind is always ranking things, and ranking itself amongst them all. This comparing is simply a natural extension of the ego’s belief that it is separate and isolated in a body. To reinforce this belief it compares itself to apparently separate others. When it perceives that another bodymind has something that it doesn’t, in such a way as to bring awareness of a perceived lack within itself, then jealousy is experienced.

What are the roots of grief? Sometimes I find a good cry to be very purifying.

Grief when allowed and embraced can indeed be purifying, because what it is generally releasing is a sense of the past. Most sadness is related to the passing of the dream—the letting go of some fairy tale or cherished fiction that one has held on to for a long time. We experience sadness when realizing, often in a sobering fashion, that what we have been holding on to was in fact a passing dream. That does not mean that the dream was without value or meaning, but only that it somehow seems to have been taken away from us. In truth, sadness is always potentially wonderful in that it can show us directly what is ultimately real (our true nature), and what is ultimately not (fictions created by the mind).

So when my mother died and I felt sadness, are you suggesting that my mother was only a passing dream?

No, but what the sadness is helping you let go of is the particular form of relationship—in this case, mother-son—that you lived with for all of your life. The sadness is simply a condition resulting from inwardly resisting a natural transition, a natural change of seasons. What is ultimately true about the relationship between you and your mother remains (the love), but what was transitory does not remain (the physical experience of being born from the body you knew as your “mother,” and relating to that body as “mother” your whole life).

Everything that comes and goes is part of the dream-world of separation. Resisting this reality results in the feeling of sadness. Surrendering to the sadness and letting go of resistance to the passing away of things results in a calm peaceful acceptance of what is, and very often joyfulness as well—joyfulness being the direct recognition of what is truly real and eternal.

Much of my life seems to have been controlled by fear.

Fear is absence of love. It arises from being caught up in the mind. Fear can take endless forms, and all negative emotions derive finally from fear, but the actual condition of fear is simple—identification with thought, and a loss of awareness of our true nature.

But what about when we’re being directly threatened? Isn’t fear essential then?

There is a functional aspect to fear, as in extreme circumstances that involve a threat to one’s physical well-being. However, even there, it is possible to be aware of the fear, and while undertaking whatever physical actions necessary for self-preservation, to still make contact with the center of peace and safety at the core of the intense storm of energy provoked by more extreme forms of fear. This is more properly an act of natural, spontaneous, functional intelligence that is attuned to the present moment. A car is coming straight at us; we get out of the way.

Where do negative feelings and emotions come from?

All fear is of the future, and all guilt, grief and anger are of the past. In truth, negative emotions (deriving from fear-based thoughts and belief systems) do not exist in the present moment. Thought itself creates time, which the ego-system then uses in the service of separation. Within time, negative thoughts and their corresponding negative feelings/emotions arise―all based on the concept of limitation (not enough, not good enough, not safe, etc.). So, the process of understanding feelings and emotions is really one of being more mindful of the present moment, which is basic to the realization of our true nature.

The Inner Blocks

But why even bother with addressing negative emotions or feelings, if our Natural State is pure freedom, love, well-being, and so on?

If it were all so simple, we could just redirect our attention inwardly and rest in our Natural State. Unfortunately, such a simple redirection of attention inwardly will often not yield any particularly noticeable sense of sudden wisdom, unconditional love, or well-being. This is largely because we have the ability to develop inner blocks that prevent us from experiencing our natural condition of happiness and peace. These blocks develop over a period of time, and once in place, can be formidable deterrents to our ability to visit, let alone remain in, the Natural State.

We are made aware of the existence of the blocks via the process of experiencing negative feelings, and their outward expression as negative emotions. When we experience a negative feeling and emotion, it is a sure signpost that we have strayed far from our Natural State, and as such, the feeling also becomes a call to directly realize the way in which we have wandered away from our true nature.

What is the purpose of feeling pain?

If, for example, we experience anger, then awareness of the underlying causes of the anger will almost always reveal that this feeling/emotion is a protection for a more vulnerable, tender feeling within, usually hurt or fear of some sort. Further understanding will reveal that this hurt or fear is based on the deep conditioning and belief that our source of happiness lies outside of us―either in some person, event, object, or situation, or perhaps even in the notion of some external God. The hurt or fear has arisen because this all-important person, event, object, situation or God has appeared to withdraw its love, energy, or attention from us.

This apparent withdrawal by the object of our concern activates the corresponding false belief system and thoughts, which in turn activate the negative, painful feelings. The intensity of the feelings will show us directly to what degree we have made the error of investing this object with the power of being able to make us happy. The pain we then experience is the universe’s way of showing us just how far we have strayed from our Natural State. As such, this pain is equally an invitation to return Home, to our Natural State.

This latter point is very important, because it indicates that difficult life experiences can be an even greater motivation for waking up than extended periods of spiritual seeking or avoidance of relationships and the world. A difficult, painful love relationship that seemingly ends in failure can be a greater incentive for attaining inner, spiritual realization than years of intellectual study or contemplative practice. A domestic responsibility such as raising a child or caring for an elderly relative can be a greater motivator to search for true understanding and meaning than an equal period of time spent insulating ourselves from life by avoiding challenging, difficult or painful experiences. Owing to all this, negative feelings and emotions can be important barometers for evoking the inner call to wake-up.

Are some feelings more real than others?

There is only one primary feeling that is ultimately real, and that is love—but this kind of love is identical to pure consciousness. It is who and what you really are, ultimately. It is more properly a state of being. It does not exist in duality and thus has no opposite.

Many apparently “positive” feelings are not truly positive, they are more a reaction to a temporary sense that our ego strategies for manipulating others into giving us personal energy and/or apparent well-being have “succeeded.”

Negative feelings are often, in a sense, more authentic, because they are experienced as a result of a failure of our ego strategies to secure energy, love, or well-being from others. This is why life failures are often blessings in disguise, because the very suffering can bring us closer to reality, and the understanding of the essential flaw of believing that happiness comes from something outside of us. This is also why the intention for enlightenment is often provoked by profound disappointment about something.

The Source of Happiness

You just said happiness doesn’t come from outside of us. Does it come from within? I’ve looked there but to be honest, I haven’t found it there either.

You haven’t found it there because ultimately it’s not there either! Happiness, peace, love, and so on, do not come from “within” anymore than they come from “without.”

The whole notion of “within” and “without” is faulty, based on a conception of reality that is deriving from identification with the body. We think of “within” as under the skin of the body, and “outside” as outside of the skin. But on both sides of the skin is just matter, in different forms.

Consciousness, or pure Being, is the Ground in which all things arise—including the body, and everything that appears to be around you. Consciousness understands Reality to be one continuous Whole. The direct realization of your true nature as not separate from this one continuous Whole is happiness, peace, and love. It is the realization that Reality is non-dual, or Singular, and that separation or isolation—the source of all unhappiness and fear—is finally impossible.

Guilt and Innocence

Two other important inner states that should be mentioned, though which are not technically feelings, are guilt and innocence. Guilt is the mental state that accompanies fear, and by “guilt” we are clearly differentiating this from “shame.” Guilt in this sense refers more to self-limitation or self-rejection, and the general feeling of actually being a mistake, as opposed to merely believing that we have committed a mistake and will or should be punished for it (which is shame/embarrassment).

In the sense in which we have described it, guilt can be seen to be the mental foundation of the root of the ego, with fear being the feeling foundation. Guilt is the awareness of the root of our ego and its fabricated belief in isolation and separation from everything. Innocence is the awareness of our true condition of freedom and natural connection to everything.

Suggested exercise: The next time you experience a strong negative feeling (anger, sadness, etc.), allow yourself to fully experience the sensations connected to this feeling in your body. Just be mindful of these sensations, bringing as much consciousness as you can to them. Do not try to change them in any way, nor try to repress them or express them. Just remain present with the feeling for as long as you can, gently accepting it into your awareness.

The next time you experience a strong positive feeling (happiness, excitement, personal love, etc.) allow yourself to fully experience it while at the same time being aware of what external events appear to be causing it. Simply note the conditional nature of the feeling, while allowing yourself to enjoy it at the same time. When the feeling appears to be ebbing, allow it to go.

[Philip Mistlberger]

Projection and the Self-Image

by P.T. Mistlberger

If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be truly fulfilled. If your happiness depends on possessions, you will never be happy with yourself.

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the ways things are. When you realize that you lack nothing, the whole world belongs to you.

-- Tao Te Ching

Projection and Separation

How actually do we sustain the experience of separation? And why does it lead to so much suffering?

The experience of separation, while created by identification, is basically sustained and reinforced by projection. A projection is exactly what it implies, it is a thought, memory, image, or mental picture that our minds project onto external reality, just like a movie-projector projects an image onto a blank screen.

The mind is nothing other than a collection of thoughts. As we learn concepts and language at an early age, we slowly begin to perceive reality in terms of these concepts. Eventually, the world is largely viewed through the filter of concepts, memories, and imagination.

The groupings of particular thought-complexes in the mind can be called patterns. For example, a belief-system such as “I am inadequate” is a pattern. In order not to feel the uncomfortable feelings connected to many such patterns, the mind learns to project the pattern outwardly. It does this in the form of “what I see in you that I don’t like about myself, but am not ready to see in myself.”

The projections that are most problematic are the ones accompanied by a strong charge of negative emotion. In these cases, what is being projected is almost always something that the mind does not want to fully see or “own” within itself. The easiest way to determine the strength of a projection is by noting the degree of emotional charge the projection carries. The stronger the feeling, the greater the projection.

For example, someone you know gets very angry. As they display their anger, you find yourself feeling very uncomfortable. Suddenly you are aware that you are judging them and that you dislike them. The stronger your dislike for them, the more you are projecting onto them. What you are projecting onto them is your own capacity for anger. Their anger reminds you of your own. But rather than feel your own anger, or recognize your own capacity for anger being mirrored in them, you simply assign fault to them.

Projection works in both positive and negative ways, meaning, what we greatly admire and love about others are always qualities of our Natural State that we have simply not fully recognized. The other person then reminds us of what we intuitively know we are, and we then decide that we like or admire this person. This recognition is often not consciously realized, that is, we may be convinced that we do not have the quality that we so admire in the other—“I could never be like him or her.”

With negative projections, the very qualities we dislike in others are generally aspects of our own mind, often operating in ways in which we are in denial of. This especially applies in the case of patterns we intensely dislike in others. Generally speaking, the more we dislike a pattern in another person, the more our mind also possesses that pattern, or at least the potential for outwardly expressing that pattern.

Awareness of Projections

How do we stop this projecting?

As always, awareness is the golden key. In order to notice projections, awareness of thoughts and feelings is necessary, that is, noting that thoughts and feelings are simply arising and conglomerating within consciousness.

Projections occur as a means of avoiding looking directly at the ego. When the ego is directly observed, it is revealed to be empty, absent, impossible to truly detect. When we see the absence of the ego, we automatically glimpse the reality of our true nature. We also glimpse the ultimate absence of ego in others as well—even though we might see that they themselves still believe in their separate ego-self, that is, still believe that they are a separate somebody.

Ignorance of our true nature is sustained through projection. The ego goes about sustaining the sense of being a separate somebody by projecting its patterns onto others, thus reinforcing the apparent unbridgeable distance to these others in our own mind. When we see a quality in someone else that we dislike, it generally strengthens our belief that they are indeed separate from us.

Is this what is behind simple dislikes? I find these have been stumbling blocks for me in my relationships with my colleagues at work.

No single greater cause of relationship breakdown exists than that of simply deciding we do not like some quality or pattern showing up in someone else. If there is a corresponding lack of interest in, or unwillingness to be aware of, the projection that goes with such disliking, then it is only a matter of time before walls are built up between the other person and us, which sooner or later leads to the desire to reject the other, or give up on the relationship. Because of that, it follows that the only way out of the seemingly dead end of personal dislike is to begin to understand the whole process of projection.

Ultimately, the process of projection is a very profound spiritual teaching, because it is showing us precisely the ways in which we have defined ourselves as separate, which is the foundation of the ego. To the extent that we simply do not believe or refuse to see the ways in which we are similar to, or have the capacity to be just like, the people that we do not like, we will remain strongly entrenched in separation. As our Natural State is that of non-separation, it therefore follows that unconscious projections that reinforce separation serve to keep us unaware of our true nature.

Relationships that are very strong mirrors for us, that is to say, relationships that are capable of revealing to us many of our projections, are usually described as “hot” relationships, where there is typically a high level of energy, which often does not express as pure passion, but rather as conflict, friction, bickering, competition, strategies of control or manipulation, and simple negative emotion. These relationships tend to be difficult and equally difficult to escape from, because the very things that are bothering us are the same things that are strangely magnetizing us to stay in the relationship.

Whatever both bothers us and magnetizes us, is generally a projection, but often goes unrecognized as such. The more intense the projection is, the more deeply we will tend to feel conflicted and divided, simply because the intensity of the mirror-reflection, as much as it is showing us a pattern in the mind that in all likelihood has been judged and rejected (either by our mind, or others), is also a pull to learn about this pattern, which is almost always a fascinating prospect. That is why the people who disturb us the most are, paradoxically, often the people who fascinate us the most as well, because fear and attraction are two sides of the same coin. Or, another way of putting that, is that fear is basically disguised excitement. What scares us, bothers us, disturbs us, also excites us, and fascinates us, because we know, at some level, that our feelings are showing us our projections, and that we are ultimately seeing our own patterns in the other.

The natural pull of consciousness is to discover itself. It is always seeking itself. When consciousness gets entangled in matter, it identifies with solid things, like bodies, and then seeks for itself within the content of the world (in things, events, attainments, possessions, etc.). At more subtle levels of seeking, consciousness looks for itself via relationship with others—primarily through our closest relationships, generally life partners, lovers, or relatives. That is why we so often become deeply entangled (and deeply attached) to such people, because behind all the attachment is the quest for happiness and completion, which is really the search for our true identity. Finally, as we begin to sense how it is the mind—and its projections—that are sustaining all the experiences of separation, and the whole fruitless search for completion in external reality, we begin to take responsibility for our own states of mind. From there, it is—potentially—a short distance to recognizing the True Self underneath the fiction of the ego that is being created by identification with thoughts, and sustained and reinforced by projected concepts, memories, and imagination.

Judgment and Perception

Can you say more about the mechanics of projection? My boss can be a real pain at times and it’s difficult for me to see exactly what I’m projecting on him.

Once you are conscious of the feeling that is arising within you (say, for example, anger), then it is generally not difficult to clearly isolate and identify the particular judgment that you are making about the other person. In other words, you become alert and present with your very feelings and thoughts that are being projected.

Let’s take, as an example, your boss criticizing you. You form the judgment “you are too critical!” Once the anger, fear, anxiety, or other accompanying feelings have been felt, and the judgment has been seen and isolated, then there is the possibility of immediately becoming aware of the more vulnerable, fear-based state of your ego in that moment, which is basically the memory-echo of having been invalidated at some point in the past. This is turn opens the door to directly seeing into the fabricated nature of this ego, and how it is a house of cards built on memories and perceptions that hardened into belief systems over time. Once the fabricated nature of this personal ego is seen, there is, in that moment, the possibility of becoming directly aware of what is witnessing the fabricated ego. That witness is simply consciousness itself.

Part of seeing into the mechanism of projections is to let go of our attachment to being right about what we believe we are perceiving in the other person. All perception in life is molded by our mental projections. The perceptions harden and become fixed when we believe that the personal self behind our projections is real. The more we believe we need to defend “me” and maintain an agenda designed to benefit this “me,” the more others become targets for projections, which in turn solidifies our perception of who we think they are.

For example, your boss criticizes something you do. Your ego immediately assumes that he is in some way opposed to “me.” You then go about projecting some difficult feeling that has been triggered in you, onto him. You then blame him, and begin to develop an idea about who he is. Your perception of him begins to take shape and harden.

The more solidified a perception becomes, the more difficult it is to change our mind about it. At that point, we develop an attachment to “being right” about what we are perceiving. If someone challenges us on our perception and whether or not it is accurate, this is often seen as threatening, because the entire perception is based on the belief that you exist as a separate somebody in relation to a different external somebody.

If I catch myself projecting a pattern in my mind onto my partner, is it useful to tell him what I realized I’ve been doing?

As a rule of thumb, direct verbal communication should be made with your partner if the projection or judgment has been strong enough to create a significant sense of separation between you and him, and has involved some sort of acting out on your part -- either by avoiding or with-holding from him, or any other “getting even” action.

In long term relationship of any sort, small projections happen fairly commonly, and many can be released very quickly without having to always verbally communicate your internal process to the other. But if the feeling of separation from the partner still remains even after being mindful of your projections, then verbal communication will probably be very useful. In this verbal sharing, there is the possibility of entering into real intimacy by recognizing one moment in timelessness where you directly see the sameness of you and your partner underneath all the difference of mind, personality, and body. This is a direct glimpse of the non-duality of the Natural State, of the One Self.

The Natural State and the Original Separation

Where is all this coming from? Why did separation begin?

It’s not too hard to observe the workings of the experience of separation within the human being, whether personally, locally, globally, or historically. The enormous suffering, endless searching for meaning, and violent treatment of each other—both physically and psychologically—that underscores so much of humanity’s struggle on this planet, has its origins in a common cause. We can call this common cause the Original Separation.

Separation from what? From our basic, essential nature, which is vastness, emptiness, wisdom, freedom, and love. We can also think of this as separation from God, separation from Home, separation from who we actually are, or separation from our Natural State.

Why separation began in the first place is something most religions or spiritual philosophies have tried to answer, often with different explanations. But any explanation addressing this apparent mystery that involves time—a beginning point to it all—is still trying to grasp the whole thing with the mind, and the mind has been conditioned to think progressively, in time, via a beginning, middle, and end. Spiritual enlightenment involves a shift from time to timelessness, and because of that the whole idea of trying to understand a “beginning” point to the mystery of separation is barking up a wrong tree.

From the enlightened perspective, separation never really happened. It was all of the nature of a dream. For one locked in a dream, the dream is indeed real. But once we wake up, we see that the dream was just a dream.

I think I’m getting this but can you explain a bit further how projection relates to the origins of the ego?

The simplest helpful analogy here for understanding projection, and how it keeps us unaware of our true nature, is that of a film projector. While running, with film in it, the projector projects the appearance of a particular reality onto a blank screen. If the projector is turned off, then what remains is simply the blank screen. If, however, in our whole existence we have never known anything other than the projected movie, then the blank screen is incomprehensible and indescribable.

If, in one moment, we were to be immediately and tacitly aware that the “blank screen” is our basic nature, and is not defined by space and time, then we would be in the process of directly seeing our true, or original, nature—what Zen has referred to as our “original face.”

The basic message of the ego is that we are separate, dependent, and inwardly lacking any sort of connection with a true Source of energy and well-being. To maintain this view, the ego utilizes projection. It does this by assigning fault or blame to others, and convincing us that we need to manipulate or control others in order to “get energy” from them. This energy—generally coming in the form of attention—then seems to compensate for our inner lack, which the ego convinces us is the case, owing to the belief that we are separated and isolated.

The Root of the Ego: The Self-Image

The Original Separation can be understood as the root of the ego, or what we experience as our self-image. The self-image is the basis of who we think we are as a separate entity—and all the limiting core beliefs that comprise this self-image, including inferior ones such as “I’m not good enough,” “I don’t deserve it,” or “I’m afraid of love,” and so on, as well as superior ones like “I’m better than others,” or “I’m entitled to more than them,” or “I’m just plain special.” Many of these belief systems are unconscious, and thus the outward expression of our self-image is almost always a kind of blind spot. We can’t see it very well (though others often can). As long as we can’t see it, it continues to function in such a way as to severely limit our experience of fulfillment and happiness in life.

The greater our resistance to directly facing and experiencing the self image—and the greater our unawareness of it—then the greater will be our desire to control our surrounding conditions in order to remain unconscious of the self-image. This control is done either passively through “victim-consciousness” (low self-esteem, defeatism, or passively manipulating others), or actively through various levels of controlling others in more obvious ways. It is also accomplished by dulling ourselves and getting absorbed in the typical, conventional routines of life, or narcotizing ourselves with food, drugs, drink, television, etc.

I sense the workings of the self image whenever I get close to success and seemingly back away, or experience some sort of breakdown in a relationship. But I don’t quite see the connection between non-dual enlightenment and the self-image. Is the self-image real, ultimately?

Ultimately, no. But the same can be said for the physical body, because of its changing and fallible nature. That doesn’t mean, however, that we ignore the body. It still has to be maintained and its needs have to be addressed. Likewise with the self-image, we have to be sensitive to how it appears in the mind, and how it works to block our awareness of our true nature. To simply speak of the ego or self-image as “unreal” before we have directly and maturely realized this is to spiritualize the ego, or to be phony holy.

By being conscious of the root of the ego, we begin to reduce the power of its effects. It diminishes in the light of awareness. This is the true meaning behind Socrates’ famous words, “Know Thyself.” If we are not aware of the root of our ego—the self-image—then any awakening we seem to experience will likely just be a state of mind, or a peak experience. States of mind and experiences come and go. They have no ultimate reality to them.

I think I have a pretty good self-image, actually. Why should I want to let it go?

Non-dual spiritual realization is finally not concerned with whether your self-image is positive or negative. Of course, life is generally easier if the self-image is positive. But all self-images are based on a fundamental illusion, being the notion that the “I” really exists and that I truly am a separate entity, with all attendant limitations.

The self-image is a fabrication of the mind. Who you think you are as an apparent personality is never who you really are. It can’t be, because the self-image is founded on contrasts and comparisons to others, and the assumption that these others are in fact ultimately separate from you—“not-me” in relation to “me.”

What do we do with the self-image once we are aware of it? How do we get rid of it?

There is no need to get rid of it because it does not ultimately exist—any more than there is a need to get rid of dreams at night when we are asleep in our bed. All that finally matters is waking up. Similarly, simply being aware of the appearance of the self-image is everything. Feel the feelings connected to it. See the way it shapes your experience of life, and your thoughts. Note the effect it has on your relationships. Just bring consciousness into it. That is enough. In time, its fictional nature will become more clear, as will the reality that limiting thoughts and difficult feelings are simply arising in consciousness, without any separate ego or personal self or self-image behind the scenes to whom all this drama is somehow occurring.

Can you sum up the self-image in a few words?

The root of the ego, the self-image, is essentially the belief that “somehow I do not quite fit in to the grand scheme of things.” It is, ultimately, a belief that I am special (either superior or inferior) in some way that involves the belief that others can never quite know me for who I am. Repeatedly facing this fundamental core belief head on eventually reveals its illusory nature.

To summarize all this, at a certain point in time, early in our life, we define ourselves as a separate personal identity—the ego is born. Then, we begin to project onto the external universe—the movie projector of the mind projecting its movie onto the blank screen of reality. In this external universe, sooner or later someone shows up who conveys to us the understanding that we are in some way flawed, by telling us that we are not good enough, or we are too much, or we are doing it wrong, or that we are in some way lacking something, and so forth. Conversely, some influential person during our early years in life may tell us that we are superior in some way—special, talented, smarter, better looking, more entitled, or they may simply spoil us. Through all this, our self-image takes shape—who we come to think we are.

Trapped in the painfully convincing illusion that our Source, or basic nature, is somehow outside of us—either in the approval of our parents and peers, or in the authority figures of our society, or even in the God of our religion—this decision to believe that we are somehow flawed or superior or just plain different becomes the root of the self-image. As we get drawn deeper into the basic illusion of separation, we attempt to create special “contracts” with others, with the idea of getting them to make us forget our self-image, or to dominate them with our self-image. Once we have done this, we have entered into the dance of codependency, and all its eventual frustrations, disappointments, and sufferings.

When the mechanism of projection is clearly understood, we get a glimpse into who we really are. Ultimately, to understand projection clearly is the same as seeing directly into our true nature. This is because to understand projection clearly is to uproot the ego’s main way of operating and sustaining the illusion of its existence and of a universe of separation.

Once projection is clearly understood, does life then become without struggle?

Awakening to this level of insight does not imply mastery of it. In the beginning, the insight comes in the form of a momentary flash of understanding. Integrating our understandings of this truth with our actual life is an ongoing process.

Once we see clearly into the mind’s ability to project, we begin to take responsibility for the mind. Taking responsibility for our minds opens us to the understanding of how there are actually no “personal” issues as such. As the Buddhist teacher Steven Levine has described it, we go from understanding our own pain, to seeing it as the pain—seeing the universal, shared aspect of thoughts, feelings, struggling and suffering. This opens us to understanding the interdependence of all things. In grasping the interdependence of all things we acquire a glimpse of our basic nature as part of an indivisible matrix—part of the fabric of everything. That “matrix” is consciousness itself. It is the center of our shared, collective identity. With that comes the realization that our basic nature is not just a “part” of this matrix, it is actually indistinguishable from it. Or, it has no existence separate from it.

Ramana Maharshi used to say, “Go back the way you came” and “Follow your thought back to its source.” These are simplified directions for what we have just been considering about projection. Basically, the shift from projection to awakening looks something like this…

1—An apparent problem appears, followed by projection and blame, being based on the “me” and “not-me” dualism of the ego’s world.

2—Taking back the projection(s) by taking responsibility for thoughts and feelings. (“These thoughts and feelings are simply occurring in my consciousness, they were not put there by you.”)

3—Seeing and understanding how thoughts and feelings are arising without any actual thinker or feeler behind the scenes creating them—either in me, or in you.

4—Seeing the interconnectedness of all things.

5—Recognizing the essence of this interconnection—consciousness itself.

6—Recognizing that your essential identity is this consciousness.

Suggested Exercise: Imagine yourself seated in front of a large mirror. Then imagine that the entire room you are in has disappeared. There is only you and the mirror. Then imagine that your body disappears, and you are gazing into an empty mirror. What do you notice? Alternately imagine this mirror to be reflecting pure light (with no objects), or pure darkness (with no objects). See if this really makes any difference, from the point of view of you as pure consciousness.