Seductive Trap

The false self is the opposite of the True Self.  But the reverse doesn’t apply.  The True Self isn’t the opposite of the false self.  Sounds illogical, I know.  But when you understand this, you’ll no longer fall into a very seductive trap.

Look at the most popular self-help programs today, and you’ll notice that they take something that is unwanted (false belief) and flip to the opposite thinking.  It now sounds like they’re teaching the truth.  But they aren’t.  They’re expressing the opposite of something false.  True words inserted into the false self are still false, not true.

Truth is accessed by the elimination of all that’s false, not the opposition of it.  I’ve often labeled this false superiority clone mind; it’s a huge trap for seekers.

Truth Has No Opposite

If we’re caught in this trap, we’ll feel like we’re good or right; and there’s an enemy out there that’s wrong or evil.  We’ll often feel proud of our superior position or expertise.  We might feel angry or fearful when we think of the opposition.  The best technique for getting rid of this mental trap is the triangle process.  When we eliminate both the right and the wrong, the good and the evil, from our OWN mind, we naturally end up resting in the truth, without opposite.  Now the beliefs of others show up as meaningless, false, and powerless.  They aren’t opposing us anymore.

People spend fortunes on programs that prey on our susceptibility to this trap.  If our undesirable state is poverty, they teach us how to get rich.  If we’ve been taught that we’re sinners, they’ll teach us how to be good.  We don’t want to be fat; so they teach us how to be thin.

Initiates called this being stuck on the cross.  It’s a great metaphor.  It means you’re stuck on the horizontal arms of the cross moving between opposites.  You can’t move in the vertical direction toward truth.

An Example

One day you’re feeling unloved.  You’re very aware of your beliefs and emotions.  Underneath your emotion is a belief like, “Nobody loves me or I don’t matter.”  If you dive down into your emotions, you’ll discover the exact causal belief.  You’ll realize that your belief isn’t true because it feels horrible, and you’ll let it go.  You’ll never believe that thinking and the corresponding emotional signal again.  If you happen to think it, it will look silly and false.

But let’s say that instead of letting go of the causal belief, a friend or family member comes along and says “I love you.  Don’t feel bad.”  It feels like they fixed your problem.  But they just put sprinkles on your bullshit.  For now, the emotion appears to be gone because your mind temporarily focuses on their nice words.  But that fix will wear off; you’ll need them to tell you those words again and again and again.  If they don’t say the words when you feel unloved, you might manipulate them into telling you they love you.  You might work tirelessly to get approval and love from any outsider, you could take drugs to numb yourself, or you might even pay someone else to give  you love.

People look for gurus and priests to tell them that they’re spiritual and good, teachers to tell them they can become prosperous, and doctors to tell them they’re healthy, etc.  We’ll accept belief after belief to patch our holes.  But the holes don’t stay patched.  The causal belief is still there, and it will reopen the hole in time.  Our holes need constant maintenance.

We Can Let Go

Occasionally, someone realizes that the answer isn’t outside.  They’ve looked everywhere, but they still have holes.  They realize that they’ve been trying to fix an imperfection that wasn’t even true.  The imperfection was a false, causal belief.  Now they’re ripe for initiation.  They’ll let go of anything.

Until the false self looks painfully stupid and wrong, most people won’t let it go.  The false self is very resistant to letting go of anything that it believes makes it superior.  People fear that if they let go of their positive bubbly self, they’ll become negative.  They fear that if they let go of their good girl or boy, they’ll become evil.  That isn’t true as long as we let go of both of the opposing sides of duality (triangle process).

If they’re an expert, their false mind will try to hold on to knowledge.  That’s how they make money.  They don’t realize that letting go of knowledge reveals true wisdom.  Wisdom is the only thing that’s true.  It can fulfill our desires much better than knowledge.

If we’re in a religion that says we’ve been chosen and everyone else is going to die in the apocalypse, we’re in a false superior trap.  We don’t want to lose our spot on the train to heaven so we hold on to our beliefs.

This is where the win-win test is invaluable.  We must look at our thoughts to see if they work for everyone in the universe.  If they don’t, they’re false beliefs with an opposite.  We’re in a false superior place.  It’s often hard to see the opposite within without the win-win test.  We’ve all become so good at projecting our unwanted beliefs on to others.  We’re sure the other is evil or wrong.  We don’t believe that our letting go can strip their false power, but it can.  Because they’re simply reflecting the other half of our dual thinking.  They complete us.  Yikes!!!

The goal of initiation was no beliefs — none, nada.  It allowed one to return to a pure, creative and unified state of mind.  After purification, the initiates inserted beliefs in their minds for creative purposes only; they let the beliefs go when their creative usefulness was done.  All creation was beneficial for everyone.  They never saw themselves as special or superior.  They didn’t have enemies.  They only saw themselves as free.