To See and Know in Full

The relentless battle to stand upon that solid foundation we call truth. The militaristic mindset needed to slice and dice through every fiction of the mind. The restlessness and eagerness to dispose of every fantasy and dream to get to what is real.

This is a battle. Some call it war.

And the enemy is the ego. 

All life, and all death, dances around the fringes of egoic perception. Life, with the golden face of a cherub, wraps you up in its ecstatic glory, trying to bring you closer.

And death…

...that gaping hole of nothingness that petrifies our being…

...waits for you to fall in.

It is fearful ego that focuses our attention away from the battle for our soul, and pulls us into a morass in which mind, body, and spirit, are not quite alive yet not totally dead. The world of ego is a world of imitation, of hollow spirits and empty shells. Puppets dancing on a stage, the ego symbolized by the tension in the strings that guides our spasmodic movement.

A show; a drama; an ephemeral and emotional high.

1. This is death mistaken for life.

A force that develops from the fear of the battle for truth, that battle between life and death, ego channels our energy away from our sensations and withdraws us into the world of the mind. We see not with our eyes, but with our beliefs and prejudices, which give to us comfort and stability.

The world is transformed from what it is, to what we believe it to be, which is to say what we like it to be. We are hypnotized to accept this world as real, though it is only a tool for our pleasure.

2. This is life misperceived as death.

The confusion of the ego is therefore twofold. Death becomes life, and life, death.

Each confused for the other, and neither truly glimpsed.

While we are so confused, we see just a shadow’s shadow of the true nature of the two.

Suppose now a metaphor, that the nature of our lives is such that we walk in pastoral landscape.

Whereas true life and death exist all around us, in the mountains and trees and earth and sky, we continue on with eyes locked straight out ahead. It is ego that keeps our eyes thus fixed. And as this ego erodes, we will begin to see heaven above and hell below.

Be careful.

For in this process of spiritual purification you will open your soul to both.

Avoid letting either in like the plague.

Once in, they can rot the heart and corrupt the mind.

A word of advice as you begin to explore this landscape: look, but do not wander. Do not give in to temptation of heaven or you will find it lapses into hell. Do not award yourself heavenly gratification through the pain of hell.

Have eyes to see, and no more. Your place is here on Earth, where you will walk the fine line between the two.

If you can manage this feat, you have found yourself, and you have known truth.

​All that is left is to enjoy God’s creation.