Today I realized more fully than I ever have before, that I could do The Living Inquiries, do any number of meditation techniques, live in Babaji’s cave for a month, undergo primal therapy, psychotherapy, music therapy, underwater therapy, physiotherapy, or food therapy, past-life regression, future-life progression, or any other type of therapy for the next zillion years, and never, I repeat, never, be able to clean up this mess that has been called my ego.

I believe it was Ram Dass who said something like, “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend time with your family.” Here I am in Westchester County, New York, where I grew up. This particular piece isn’t about all the events that have taken place here, as much as it’s about what I have seen of the absolute mess that is(?) my ego. There is so much disfunction going on in that arena that I could’t even begin to delineate it all, even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Let’s just say it’s hard for me to actually find any authenticity at all in my personality.

This is particularly ironic, given that the title of my website is, “Gateway to Authenticity.”

What I have seen, thanks to The Living Inquiries, is that yes, there are sensations happening; yes, there are emotions; yes, I see images of my memories; and yes, I have seen and heard the harsh words I have been saying about myself. And, I have also seen that all this has been happening to absolutely nobody. That’s what I saw today, that there was no one here who could identify with any of that, all while I was experiencing all of the above, and crying during most of the Inquiry.

So while there isn’t a hope in Heaven of cleaning up the mess of my ego/personality, it is clear that none of that is the truth of who I am. There is really only an emptiness which experiences all of that. Who I am is impossible to find, let alone define. Maybe now I can stop trying to fix the unfixable, unfindable, illusory I.

In closing, here is a short piece by Rupert Spira which seems particularly apt at this point.

First we imagine an ego,
then defend it,
then express it,
then fulfill it,
then try to get rid of it,
then welcome it,
then understand it,
and finally see
that it was non-existent all along.