The politics of 'self' improvement

(Tired of broken campaign promises yet?)

In these transitional times, the so-called ‘veil of forgetfulness’ (in its current process of accelerated dissolution), is displaying its operating system to all who are paying attention; the inner and outer structures upholding it are laid bare for all to witness. The following is one aspect of how it all works.

Some of this will sound extremely familiar, by the way, as various enlightened teachers and teachings have been banging on about it for a long time. What’s newer is the ability to see it for our own self, as it operates in our own life.

So. Here’s the question of the day:

Have you noticed? You’re not really all one self.

Within the overall personality construct that you think of as ‘you,’ there are actually loads of recurring ‘selves.’ They’re not really just different moods (as one might assume), or different aspects of your same personality self. They’re separate and unconnected to one another.

(We’re not talking about any form of possession, or dissociative identity disorder, here. This is just the current basic setup of the human personality self. Or rather, selves.)

There’s usually a primary personal self, and that’s the one with the real estate—think of that self as kind of like a private island. You’ve built your house on it. Its influence (desirable or not) feels extremely solid, and you see things through its lens much of the time. The other selves are like rafts of varying size and structural strength, moving around it on the water, as inner and outer events dictate.

Except, of course, the reality is that you are none of them.

You’re the ocean in which they all reside.

Probably a bit more posh than your island or mine. Nevertheless, all of our oceans are exactly like this one. (Photo by Zunnoon Ahmed)

So, what kind of separate selves are we talking about here?

There’s the sunny, optimistic self.

The depressed, exhausted self.

The angry, judgey, resentful self.

The confident self, or its opposite, the self-doubting or self-sabotaging self.

The fearfully cowering, or (again, at the other end of the scale) the boldly courageous self.

The loving, or the unloving self.

The open-hearted, peaceful self. (This one shows up most often during spiritual retreats, and tends to skitter off shortly after regular life resumes on Monday morning.)

And so on, and so on.

Depending on who you are, how you’re built, what kinds of life experiences have shaped you, one self will likely be the dominant one, and the others will pay a visit as inner and outer circumstances dictate.

It took me ages to recognize this astonishingly obvious setup, because of course, all of those selves feel like they’re aspects of one single personality. My personality. Your personality. Right? Or at least, that’s what I assumed they were. I know I’m not alone in making that mistake.

Yet I was shown over and over by higher knowing, that—far from being individual aspects of one cohesive personality—these disjointed pieces of self are structurally unable to join up and function as a whole self. Even if they wanted to.

In fact they’re designed to seamlessly come and go, each one doing its part to temporarily obscure from us the natural wholeness that is our own true self. That’s the whole point of their existence: To keep us from noticing our own magnificent vast ocean.

Which brings the whole concept of self improvement, or self healing, seriously into question, does it not? Because which self are we trying to improve? Who are we trying to heal? None of them are you. Nor can any of them ever become a stable, permanent ruler of your experience.

Damn.

I don’t know about you, but as a longtime inveterate self improver, I found that news pretty hard to swallow for quite awhile. Because, y’know, there were just so many things about me that urgently needed fixing.

Yeah, yeah, ok I get it. This self is not me. Regardless, I need to fix all the wrong bits, and knit my self all back together into a different configuration, before I can really take in that piece of revelatory news.

Because once those less desirable bits were fixed and put back into their proper, healthy place? THEN, I’d surely be able to spend more time as that happy, peaceful, centered self. That imperturbably wise and spiritually grounded self. The self that knows that the self isn’t me.

I’d be able to build that self a house. Buy it an island.

Uh…

…Right.

Election season

This whole multi-self, veil-inspired setup strikes me as being much like party politics—except most of the debate and the voting process itself goes on beneath our conscious awareness:

Happy, grounded, optimistic self is in power for a little while, then they’re voted out of office by one of the other parties. Wait—how does that happen? What’s the mechanism?

It must be that a secret campaign of persuasion was waged, beneath our ability to detect it.

Really? I don’t remember doing that. (Photo by Parker Johnson)

Maybe the campaign promise is something like: You can’t handle this much goodness, lightness, and effortless success all at once. It isn’t safe; it’s too hard on your body-mind. It can’t keep up with all the changes. A minor (or major) meltdown will give you time to catch up and integrate. All this is in your best interest. Promise.

And we nod sleepily, and give our unconscious thumbs-up vote.

Which allows one of those other, less sunny selves to show up, and its darker worldview takes over for a while.

We belatedly discover that this uncomfortable worldview sucks, and so another general election is called. This self is soon voted out and replaced…either by a self that spirals down even further into despair, or by its opposite: One that is determined to climb out of that original hole, and experience sunshine again.

Ahh…that’s better.

Like I said, this is where self improvement gets it wrong.

We pick a self we find attractive, and try to make it the only one. Or if we don’t like any of our existing selves, we try to construct a new one by dismantling the old ones.

Been there.

But none of this effort can bring the peace we seek, no matter what the campaign promises may have claimed. Besides, trying to strengthen those selves that we like (or trying to create nice new ones from scratch), keeps the whole unhappy political party system in place.

Let’s briefly go back to the water, to explain the mechanism that keeps the veil (and this entire multi-party political juggernaut) chugging along, despite the rapid dissolution process already underway.

Row, row, row your boat

Picture the rowboat of ‘you.’ One of your many selves is currently in power, and maybe it’s one of the ones you like. So you lean in, and the boat glides effortlessly forward toward the goodness. Then inevitably, a less desirable self gets voted into office, and you lean back to resist, pulling harder on the oars as you do it.

Forward and backward, push and pull, embracing what you want more of, or resisting what you don’t. (Either way, you’ll notice your boat is always headed in the same one general direction. Funny, that.)

But this back and forth motion itself, is what I want to call your attention to here, because it’s what powers the battery of the veil.

The veil itself is on life support, these days (which I’ve said many times recently). It is incapable of sustaining itself anymore. You and I—with our forward and backward push-pull motion toward, and away from, the antics of our various selves—provide the only battery that keeps it going.

Meanwhile, you’re the water itself. (Photo by Robert Crawford)

The key that unlocks the halls of power

Yes, there’s actually a great deal of good news, in all of this.

What happens when we see through the entire ‘political party’ structure of the veil? That’s when we can clearly recognize that none of the candidates is worth putting into power. Not even the nice ones.

Seems radical, but it’s true.

Because no matter which one it is, (and no matter how earnestly well-intentioned any given self may be) it can only perpetuate the endless push-pull of the system it was created to serve. And along the way, its campaign promises, alluring as they may be, can never truly be fulfilled. It’s structurally impossible.

So.

When we actually recognize for ourselves, the lose-lose nature of this political party setup…that’s when we can we open up to an entirely different form of governance.

Meet your new ruler. (Photo by Nick Fewings)

And that’s the real key, here. It’s a key that’s been hiding in plain sight; a key that’s been sitting on the table all along, inches away from your (formerly drowsy) hand.

The key is to turn your back on the whole shebang. De-invest. Nice or not-nice—doesn’t matter. Attach no serious importance to who’s in power at the moment, in your inner state of the union.

Because things do start to change and flow, as soon as you withdraw your participation from the voting process itself.

Life still happens, of course. Just because you’ve stopped attaching importance to any of your many selves, doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly end up drooling on a park bench, Eckhart Tolle style.

You’re not incapacitated, and you’re not floating above the fray. You’re taking care of business as you always have…but from a place of grounded stillness at your core.

(The nature of the business you’re taking care of, may begin to alter its course a bit, when the party candidates are put aside, and the depth of you is put in charge of your dealings instead—but that’s a topic for a different discussion.)

But by all means, you can still enjoy what’s enjoyable. And by taking all of the selves (and their endless issues) less seriously, maybe you’ll also be able to muster a little extra equanimity when life is crap.

But here’s the real kicker: By realizing this whole political party system is just a neverending game (in which the house always wins), and is therefore undesirable in ALL of its parts, even the supposedly desirable ones? You’ll then find it surprisingly easy, to let go and nestle into the divine self—that vast, ever-present ocean—within.

It’s only when we try to hang onto the ‘good’ or ‘desirable’ selves, that we can’t find that ocean anywhere, no matter how hard we look. (Or we touch into it it briefly, in events like that above-mentioned retreat weekend, before it disappears in a puff of Monday morning traffic jam.)

Hang onto none of the selves. Lose interest in the game itself. And you’ll soon notice the deep quiet of you. The sweet relief of you.

Here, there are no campaign promises to break.

Photo by Ante Hamersmit

Anyway, all of this is not a sudden, abruptly disorienting shift—at least not for most of us. (Because most of us are not Eckhart Tolle.)

It’s a slow process of dipping in and out. A forgetting, because we’re so wrapped up in whatever’s happening ‘in here,’ or ‘out there’…and then a remembering to let it all go, and once again seek the deliciously real world that rests beneath it all.

With practice, its silent beauty becomes ever easier to access.

That’s where I’m currently at. Dipping in and falling out, over and over again. Until, in perfect right timing, I stop forgetting to stay put in the only truth that I am.

This is where all of humanity is heading. Eventually.

No more rigged elections. No more broken promises.

I feel certain that at some point, the entire veil-inspired political system itself will surely slip away for good—simply because there’s nobody left to vote for (or against) it.

I’ll vote for that.

Aaand we have lift off. (Photo by Timur Garifov)