Very few of us can take off the “mask” we wear. We have worn it for so long we do not recognize it as a “mask” anymore. It is our inhibited manner of dealing with problems, both personally and socially, and has become the justification for the human mischief that our “disowned self” perpetuates through pride and self righteousness. This “disowned self” becomes the centerpiece of our living due to the addictions and compulsions that we protect at all costs in order to preserve it.

Due to living with no inner discipline or interest in the authentic state of Love, we have removed ourselves from the state of consciousness that is Love. Hence, we live immersed in the energies of the collective unconscious and defiant to emergence into Love through an authentic spiritual practice. We reduce our life experience down to the consequential upheaval of emotional events as Karma.

Living in the shadow of the “disowned self,” there can be no inner exploration. There is only the search for different ways to live in envy, pride and revenge, whereby we live without the Light of Love.

At the ritual meal, one takes a few grains of the Buddha rice and puts them on the end of a spatula to offer to all evil spirits for their satisfaction. The servers come by and take the few grains off the spatula, offering them to a plant or animal, thus returning them to the life cycle. This is a way to consciously acknowledge evil spirits or the shadow – to feed them the best food, yet not feed them too much.

Later in the day, if one comes across the evil spirits, one can say, “I already fed you. I don’t need to feed you again.”

In the Buddhist tradition, it’s believed that there is a realm of hungry ghosts with huge appetites and throats the size of a needle. So, they’re never satisfied, like the shadow with its ravenous appetite. By feeding it in small, regular amounts, the shadow doesn’t need to take on a devouring attitude.

We know we can’t eliminate the realm of hungry ghosts; they exist. So we must take care of them. Then the effort of their grumbling will be less. So it is with the shadow.

No one can change the DNA of the body. We cannot change the human of us. The human has its own destiny, but when we are blessed to meet our fate through entering into an authentic spiritual practice, most of us turn our backs upon this process that offers the journey to Love and fall back into the “disowned self” again and again!

So many willfully choose to live out this life through the dim method of living under the influence and authority of fear. This willful lack of interest in the consciousness that would bring us to Love forces us to live in a Karma that causes re-birth in worlds just like this one. Over and over, we live as a cycle in fear and not as the process that leads to the state of Love.

There was once a monk who would carry a mirror wherever he went. A priest noticed this one day and thought to himself, “This monk must be so preoccupied with the way he looks that he has to carry that mirror all the time. He should not worry about the way he looks on the outside, it’s what’s inside that counts.”

So the priest went up to the monk and asked, “Why do you always carry that mirror?” thinking for sure this would prove his guilt.

The monk pulled the mirror from his bag and pointed it at the priest. Then he said, “I use it in times of trouble. I look into it and it shows me the source of my problems as well as the solution to my problems.”

When we are ready to realize the “source of our problems,” we will in turn realize the power of the “disowned self” and come to the place where living consciously becomes the number one priority of our lifetime. Precious few ever cross over this line of entering into the Divine. You can do it! Right here. Right now.

For most, authentic care and maturity for our lives is not of importance in living. Being “right” is.

Allow me to pose a few interesting questions:

• How should we look at this human experience that we are having as it relates to the matter of our Karma and the purpose for which we are here?
• How do we live with what we have done?
• How should we change in order to no longer continue doing that which harms us?

Here it is in a nutshell: WE CANNOT MAKE THE HUMAN, THE DIVINE. This is the crux of the matter for most. We want to make the human “divine.” We want to make the “disowned self” be spiritual and act like a Buddha, while we live mindlessly and blithely unaware.

For those who believe they have a “future” in this world, it is assumed that in time it will all go away. It won’t! In fact, the issues only get more convoluted and contrived by the ego, which is a part of the “disowned self.”

Most of us live to be “invented.” We “invent” ourselves through emotional desires, and hence begin a process of shadow living whereby we live only to soothe the fractured state of the human that is looking for proof or validation of itself through worldly phenomena. This preference is very painful and actually retards our ability to enter into consciousness. Please remember that we cannot take the “self” into Love.

An emotional thinker who lives to arrange and rearrange emotions will only move their thoughts around, thus living simply to “rearrange the furniture” in their inner house. In an authentic spiritual practice, we must MOVE OUT OF THE HOUSE entirely, not merely rearrange the thoughts to fit the ideals.

The reason the spiritual path seems so arduous is due to our separation from Love. When we are no longer willing to live apart from authentic Love, we find that which IS. This IS then becomes the suchness (“tathata” as Buddha referred to it) of our entire lifetime. In tathata we seek only to live as a state of Being, willing to move into consciousness rather than live in the calculations of self-preservation.

My dear ones…we are all on a sojourn here on earth. We are here to mature beyond living in a pedestrian mentality and the evanescence of earthly phenomena in order to realize the reality of the Eternal in every moment of this life. Our Souls are on a journey that will not stop. We are here to be the LOVE that is LIFE itself.