Who is the Follower? What is the Follower?

The word follower is, like many words, used to describe someone else, someone else whom you think is not thinking for themselves or under the spell of a leader, or merely doing something with someone that you do not want to do. And, of course, the person suggesting someone else is a follower is, without a doubt himself or herself not a follower. 

Shocking as it is, we are mostly blind to the underlying motives of our own actions and speech, yet we presume to know exactly what someone else is up to. Our own indoctrinated self, our conditional self, becomes none other than who I am and by the powers that be, I am not a follower. 
However, listen to our selves, our opinions and judgments and excuses. It is penetratingly clear our common attitude and approach to Life (what Life is about, not what It IS) is based on an individual’s particular indoctrinated self, the conditional self. Very little of it, in fact next to none, is founded in direct experience resulting from whole bodily submission into the Wondrous Being of Life. 

Well, yes, you and I have experienced much in bodily-based life, based in the physical: sex, food, money, family, travel, learning, building, breaking down, working, rejection, praise, winning and losing, and on and on. How much are we holding onto a self, a self engrossed in the sensation of our bodily experience, our conditional experience? We like to think we are not followers but are we aware how blind we are to the way we follow our conditionally dictated life? 
Ask your self how much of this experience and, more importantly, your reaction to this experience, has awakened the already Free Being-ness of the You into direct whole bodily experience with and as the constant Realisation of Spiritual or Unity Consciousness? 

In fact, what tends to happen (without us recognizing it is happening) is that we begin to identify not so much with our experience but more with our reaction to experience. We tend to become the sum total of our reaction to experience. We tend to become followers, servants to that one - the self-meditating “I” – the one that is living its life by the forces of reaction to life. 

Before too many years have gone by in our bodily existence, we are holding onto our self, an “I” based on the sensation or effects of our reactions to and assumptions about physical existence - family, school, society, culture, friends, our own body, relationships and so on. On the basis of this limited mind self (or the one we call “I”) we think we know what Life is all about and how it is meant to be because we have thought about our self a lot. 

That “I” really knows, oh yes, by the powers of self-reasoning it knows, how things should be and should have been, how everyone else should be, how someone should respect you and how you did not get what you felt entitled to. Oh, this one can play around with all kinds of fascinations and philosophical conundrums, religious beliefs and spiritual endeavours. This one can say they love and their heart is in it (whatever they think they are in) while all the time remaining firmly embedded in the self-meditative “I.” This one is a fervent follower of an indoctrinated self, a conditional self, an always threatened self - a misleading “I.” 

This one is always trying to sniff out the conditions to find where they can best get their sense of worthiness from, where to get their desired status, where they will be elevated to all they think they are entitled to. And, if they do not get what they are looking for (rather than doing the Real Work and Awakening the Great Life Qualities in their Consciousness), they will remove themselves from that situation and criticise those who remain as followers.

We would much rather follow the desires of our not yet fulfilled conditional self, our worldly based identity and its desire to be satisfied and successful. Well, of course, why not? Our total socialisation - that is in fact indoctrination - does not instruct us in Self-Understanding as a Life-Being, but rather teaches us to be greedy. Our schooling, our socialisation teaches us to get out there and save our self by any means. It teaches us to try and find self-worthiness through someone else or some endeavour out there in the world. 

We very quickly become followers of fashion and the popular fashion is to engage with the world and others in order to find your worthiness, your meaning, your success, your love, your importance. You are not meant to be a Great Student of Life, of Radical Self-Understanding. We are first socialised, indoctrinated, conditioned into a frightened self, a limited self, an essentially traumatised self and then told to go out there and save our self. Our attention becomes so densely trapped or hijacked by the fear and threat of the conditional self that most people do not study anything more than a restaurant menu, and even then they are often more influenced by the person with them - someone else’s righteous opinion about what they should be eating. 

Without being aware, we become followers of our own seeking. Well, that’s what seeking is - the follower. We become followers of whatever we think is important and it seems we are willing to clobber our partners over the head with it, when arguing who does what and who did what and all that merry-go-round. Well, allow me to re-phrase that: all that horror-go-round. In order to merely cope in a society so much about every individual for her or himself, one is inclined to turn one’s attention to constantly honing the quick comeback for the purpose self-defence and self-justification, to support whatever one’s seeking desires. 

Most live in obedience to our base reactive desires - apathy, cynicism, self-gratification, envy, jealousy and self-defence, along with a rabble of uncritically examined prejudices. You are not meant to have a self- critical insight into Life, into your inherent Self. What’s more, such a focused, sustained and deliberate enquiry most often frustrates, exasperates and antagonises the follower. 

The follower quickly becomes willing to sacrifice the Process of Uncovering their Greater Being to their own inclination to self-concern, their own seeking somewhere outside of themselves for the Great Life Qualities already in their Inherent Consciousness. Many, in fact, confuse the Sadhana of Self-Realisation with their search for worthiness and love, for acknowledgement, power and control in the world. Ah, and here now we uncover the follower, but so very often it is the case, rather than come face to face with the follower (the seeker) many bail out using every kind of excuse in favour of clinging to their patterns, their self-protected, self-defending, self-justified and self-righteous beliefs, judgments and opinions that support their seeking. 

The follower is one who exclaims “I am this” or “I am that.” The follower is one who thinks her/his culture is superior to that of others. The follower is one who is always seeking approval and reinforcement for their worldly based identity. 
They live by a doctrine, probably a doctrine they have not recognised. It is the doctrine of how things should be according to them. 

Oh, that’s right, we like to say, “I am not a follower.” We think we know our self because we have thought a lot about our self. It’s much like those who think they know Jesus because they have read a lot about him. The individual is as much a follower of his or her conditioning as one is a follower of Jesus or Buddha or the idea of “how it should be.” That is the most common lead we follow. 
The notion or belief of how we think things should be and what we are entitled to; then we get mightily and indignantly upset when they do not turn out that way. And then begins the blame game. 

If you are to grow, that is, continually grow beyond the boundaries of your worldly experiential idea of your self, beyond your habits of thinking, beyond the patterns of character laid down by your reactions to bodily experience, you must be prepared to go to a place you have not gone to before, a place in you where you have not entered. You must be prepared to go beyond the self-medicated trauma of you. You must be prepared to move out of your comfort zone. You will then come face to face with your own ingrained conditioning, your self-imposed comfort zone designed essentially to protect the conditionally traumatised self. Ah, to actually engage in such growth is only possible through one’s love, courage and perseverance, through constant conditional-self surrender into the Great Life Unity of All. 

When we pursue something or someone for the goal of what we want, then we are a follower. Well, that pretty much fits as the basis of all our common motivation. 

When you are no longer chasing after rewards or compliments, when you can meet a person who is different to you without the feeling of threat or the need to prove you are more right than they are, now you are not so much a follower.

When there is no longer a spiritless bitterness towards those you have parted company with, when you can speak with them with the fundamental humility of Spirit, now you are less of a follower. 

When you no longer want something that is of some use to your social personality but, instead, you desire to shed that for the courage of Love, now you are not so much a follower. 

When you no longer have the urge to gossip or make trivial remarks to another about their appearance or behaviour, when you no longer make all manner of judgmental and blameful comments merely for the purpose of establishing your own power, superiority and one-upmanship, then you are falling out of being a follower. 

When you see the Natural Unified World as it is, not how you hope it to be for you. Now the follower is leaving you. 

When you no longer have the need to gain control over another merely to protect your own fear, nor the need to resort to the use of bolshie aggressive energy and remarks as a means of protecting your own self-importance, now you are renouncing the follower.