you are not who you are conditioned to believe you are

Summary of Discourse in Losing Shadow Wednesday 27th May 2020 

You are not what you are conditioned to believe you are. 
You are not the self you are conditioned to experience. 

What you are conditioned to believe you are, think you are or experience as the “self” of you is encapsulated in the sensation and experience described as “my life.” 

There is the Life that lives you and all existence, and there is a separate life called “my life.” We commonly talk about Life and One-ness and Universal Life and so forth, but that is not what one is experiencing. What one is actually experiencing is the sensation and identity of a “my life,” a life set apart from all other individuals who also inhabit a “my life.” 
Everyone has a “my life” that has very little to do with anyone else’s “my life,” and nothing to do with Life. 

Furthermore, this “my life” is all-consuming.
With whatever vital energy is left over from trying to save our own “my life,” we measure out the constant and often despairing endeavour of trying to get someone else to be devoted to “my life” or at the very least, interested in “my life.” 
And, of course, the other person is trying with all manner of acceptable moral constraints to get you interested in, if not devoted to, their “my life.” 

What is this thing called “my life”? Consider this: it has become a little more fashionable not to get caught out using the possessive pronoun “my” when speaking about a wife or husband (especially if you are trying to be spiritual) but it seems we are certain we possess a “my life.” And, what’s more, it’s about here we call on love. How convenient. We each want love to be agreeable to the individual culture called “my life.” We want Life to be agreeable to this entity called “my life.” 

Yes, the culture called the individual culture. Not merely the Hindu culture or the Chinese culture or the so and so culture - no, the individual culture, the culture of “my life.” Embedded in every world culture there is the constant threat of domination from the underlying simmering discontent and motives of the self-possessed individual culture. 

The “my life” culture, the individual culture, is the all-pervasive oppressive coloniser most humans suffer under. 
The Principle Life-Being (the Life of the human and all) has been overpowered and enslaved by the contracted form of a “my–self-life,” otherwise called egoic-self. This is the self most people are actually experiencing, regardless of their spiritual theories, beliefs and practice. 

How did this “my life,” this “all about me life” form? How was it constructed around the Life-Being? How did we withdraw from our Ultimate Source, our Ultimate Universal Identity Experience? And, how do we maintain this frightful collapse into the Spiritually impoverished, cramped conditions of a “my life?” 
Did you know you were doing this? If you had known, would you have diminished the Radiant Life Being Self to such an isolated and therefore threatened point of view? No, of course not - Life forbid! 

Well, Life does forbid but we become the apple of our eye and so we brew a stew called “my life.” Oh, it terrifies us, it threatens us, makes us anxious, it craves to be reunited, it always feels like something is missing, no matter how good things get and it is always on the ready for defence. 
But, that’s right, it’s “my life” and I am sticking with it. 
We pretty much sup on it all day and all night long. 

At this point is there anyone who wants to leave the table to come and Sit with the Sentient Renunciate Order? If so, read on. 

Let us be very clear, the “my life” state is not a mere lockdown, it IS self-isolation.

No body is having trouble Living Life or Life Living them. 
That is happening regardless anyway. No, that is not the problem. The stumbling block, the discontent, the self-concern is the belief the usual human has about how Life should be. Well, no prizes for guessing on what basis these beliefs about how Life or Love should be rest. That’s right, Life or Love should be in accordance with what one’s “my life” needs in order to experience a worthwhile, happy and fulfilled sense or experience of one’s particular encapsulated self – the “my self.” 

Every “my self” or “my life” is an argument for a Love or Life that complements and confirms and enhances that particular “my self” reality. 

Plainly put, in this way we are constantly working each other over to obtain the sense or experience of self we want. 

Well, Life is a Glorious Mystery but the “my life” is no mystery at all and can be dismantled by anyone truly willing to see it is a false identity, a concocted status, a withdrawal from Life and it is the generator of fear. 

If we are to understand and experience Self-Realisation, or in other words Realise the Spiritual Truth, the Unqualified Life-Self, the True Self, then we must understand how, in our early childhood years, we unconsciously retreated into a “my self”, a “my life.” We must understand this and whole- heartedly desire to move beyond this retreat, this contraction into a “my life” experience. Why? Because it is only the “my self,” the “my life” experience that is the block to one’s experience of the True Life-Being Self, the Self-Being that is the Life of All. The Self that is not qualified by anyone or anything. 

From the time you were a baby, you began to form ideas and interpretations about who you are, about what kind or type of self you are from the responses of others to you. If your early caregivers smiled at you and were happy with you, you formed impressions about your self: I am good enough, I am worthy, hey, even amazing. 

Or conversely, if they were anxious, troubled and more often frowned at you, you formed the impression, the interpretation, the idea that perhaps you were not good enough or damn it you were somehow seriously flawed. Not only that, you begin to feel inadequate – inadequate insofar as no matter how hard you try, you cannot obtain from others that great sense and experience of a self you are happy with. 

As the years go on, you use this method to further construct a self, a self-experience assembled on other people’s opinions and reactions to you. 
This is how we leave the Garden of Life and retreat into a closed off, private domain called “my life.” 

This is “the self” (called the unenlightened self or the ego-self) that most people experience, regardless of their relationships and religious or spiritual beliefs and practices. 

At this early stage of your human existence, you are not conscious you are doing this but the practice of using this method to qualify the sense of self becomes habitual. If someone likes you, you think they are saying something about you and so you feel good about your self, but in fact they are saying something about themselves. They feel good. They have something to give. They are happy. 

And similarly when someone is annoyed with you or does not like you, you think they are saying something about you and so you feel not so good about yourself, but again they are only saying something about themselves; they feel unfulfilled, they are unhappy and you do not have what they want. You don’t fit the approval system of their “my life” requirement.

This is the activity of the egoic-self, the personal-self, the “my self” state, the “my life” imperative. The activity (no matter what else is going on) of seeking and depending on others’ impressions, others’ responses, others’ love for our sense and therefore our experience of self - constantly manipulating each other in order to get the responses and impressions we want for a better sense of self. 

The main endeavour of the usual human is the worldly or outer pursuit of an enhanced experience of self. We are pretty much always on the hunt for that booster shot that will elevate an uneasy and dimming experience of self. And, if we are not getting it, we are bored, not interested and withdraw further into our own dream world. Ah, we sulk! 

In fact, we get annoyed with others when they do not give us the feedback we are looking for to feed the hungry ghost - that false, isolated, insecure self that haunts and scares the Life out of us. 

We are not conscious of how much our identity and therefore our experience of self relies on the impressions and reactions and whims of others, who are also equally suspiciously and anxiously scrambling around for favorable reinforcements to bolster their own “my life” experience of identity. 

Since you are here, then “Be fully in the world but not of the world.” 
What is this “not of the world?” 

Well, in what is called the unenlightened way of forming the experience of self, we gather impressions from the world and from others, and we begin to form an impression, an assumption, an idea that we experience as a self – a “my self.” We are describing an experience when we say, “my self,” an experience that comes from the world, from others, from conditions – not from Life. 

The usual human is constantly forming their sense of self, their experience of self by comparing it to others – others’ opinions, others’ moods and on and on. Always using the outer world to get and maintain the experience or sense of self. This is how we are creating our experience of self. Doing it this way only confines a human into a conditionally constricted experience of self, a self called a "my life," in which, of course, it is impossible to feel secure. 
And so the search goes on…. 

We, in the sleep of self-concern, build up a construct around the Life-Being based merely on others’ opinions and reactions and impressions, along with whatever our conditional experience was through the years of so-called “growing up.” 
In this way, the ego is being formed – the experience of self, the image of self formed by the mirror of others - the uncomfortable tightness of a “my life.” 

This is an attempt to arrange the letters of the alphabet in such a way they convey and reveal the unspeakable Heart of Self-Realisation. 
Perhaps enough, though, for you to see there is nothing you can do to that “my life,” to that “my self” contraction experience that will enable “it” to experience the True Life-Being Self. There is no improvement of it, no austerities to subject it to, no further knowledge to be crammed into it, no better or worse conditions for it, no better partner for it, no better fine food to feed it; nothing!! 

What then? 
Understand it, be done with it and give that self a break. Awaken out of it. 

Are you ready to leave the table now to come and Sit with the Sentient Renunciate Order and dissolve into Life? 

 Inshallah.