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Very little in today’s modern world allows us the time to pause and examine the reasons for the destruction and suffering we see on the news everyday. Look at war for example. Wars are always initiated by people and the people that orchestrate them are usually consumed by an insatiable lust for power, greed, or revenge. However it is disguised to sound admirable and justified, where euphemisms become standard procedure; one need only look beneath the surface and the truth should reveal itself readily. There is only one justification for force and that is to protect and uphold values that are beneficial to people, and stop those without the understanding or discrimination to leave people in peace. Even that principle has been undermined by deception, greed and the sacrifice of innocent lives in recent history.
So we can see some evidence of the inner enemies and their effects in the world around us, but to see them in our own self is not so easy. Delusion has the power to make things invisible, like a cloaking device. Delusion provides the cover so that the inner tyrants can carry out their war by stealth. Even when we do catch a glimpse that we are somehow creating our own misery, we are immediately mocked by doubt and delusion allowing us to override the insight. Another name for delusion is denial, and its power is astonishing. It not only has the power to disguise itself, but it can and does cloak the other inner enemies with an aura of invisibility.
When a person is in a state of denial, it does not matter how much evidence you present them with about being a victim of inner enemies like anger, pride, greed, etc., they can literally be unable to see what is obvious to everyone else. Any drug and alcohol counsellor will tell you that the first step on the road to overcoming the challenge of addiction is for the person to admit, thus see that they have a problem. They can give you many examples of people who even after losing their home, relationships, careers and other possessions swear they are only social users and its not really a problem. This is delusion. This is the power of denial. Another aspect of this veiling power is forgetfulness. Just think about that for a minute, and understand how forgetfulness can keep us in an invisible fog that prevents us from grasping our own inner wisdom.
This can be applied to any of the other tyrants as well. Have you ever been around someone who is so angry that you can only spend time with him for brief intervals? How about a person that is so full of himself with pride there isn’t enough room in his awareness to acknowledge that you or others even exist? How long do you want to be with someone that is constantly looking at you with only one thing on his mind, and that is to take advantage of you, because his greed or lust is so overwhelming he hasn’t the capacity to contain it? Yet he may even believe you don’t notice his motivation or feel it on an energetic level. And delusion being as powerful as it is, maybe you don’t for your own reasons; that is the power of delusion.
Take an example of the person who gets fooled by a scam that sounds too good to be true and loses his shirt. A person not influenced by greed intuitively feels an impulse to say, “No I am not interested.” A person who is in denial about greed may be blinded to the impulse to say no. Greed overrides it and says “yes this is the ticket I have been waiting for, let’s go for it, I’m all in!” Delusion allows the exaggerated greed to appear normal, nothing out of the ordinary. Delusion operates in the murky spheres of the unconscious mind much of the time, and doesn’t allow us to examine our inner tyrants closely. They manifest usually as a strong impulse or desire and we often act on them before we give them any consideration. All the inner enemies like to hang out in the shadows of our unconscious impulses, vague thoughts and beneath repressed emotions.
To use the example of a person who is a victim of their anger, it is always just under the surface like a crocodile waiting for something to make it snap. This energy vibrates under the radar of the person that it is emanating from most of the time, but others can pick it up as a negative vibe. Even though the anger is coming from that person and everyone else in the room feels it and knows where it is coming from, delusion or denial allows the person who is transmitting it to feel things are somewhat normal.
Then some external situation will come up that pride feels justifies anger and the crocodile leaps onto the shore to attack its victim. Due to the power of delusion, the anger doesn’t really appear on the radar screen of the infected person until the scene evolves into a full-scale drama. Pride had whispered in his ear, “Hey did you see the look that guy gave you?” How dare he disrespect you like that, doesn’t he know who you are? You’ve done such and such, you know so and so, is he not aware of your reputation? The person who issued the look of course was most likely oblivious to this angry person and may have been simply looking in his direction, daydreaming. But that is no excuse for pride, how dare you daydream in my presence? Do you not see I am the glorious shining sun? The inner enemies can quickly turn one into a tyrant.
The immense power of delusion allows the inner enemies to shape shift and imbues them with a chameleon-like ability. It is hard to see the enemy when they appear to be such an integral part of our inner emotional and mental matrix. Let me stress appear here because ultimately when we do attain victory over those inner tyrants, there will be no place for them to reside within us. There will only be a blissful loving consciousness that knows it pervades everything in creation. Everything that this loving consciousness views from any location in time and space will be but another reflection of its own Self. Until we get there, however, we need to give priority to understanding the nature of the qualities that limit us and rob us of the joy, love, understanding, connectedness, compassion, gratitude and freedom that are our birthright to claim.
Delusion has the power to veil our worth with a sense of unworthiness that is so strong at times we cannot possibly believe that the supreme Lord dwells in our own heart. It makes the whole idea seem absurd, and yet in reality it is unworthiness that is absurd. Someone can live in the finest circumstances and feel like they are living in hell because their inner state is such that they feel an overwhelming sense of dread or anguish or some other dark emotion. They can have an abundance of everything and because they feel unworthy; it can make their wealth feel like a burden of guilt that seems more like a curse than a blessing. Actually unworthiness is one of three knots that limit our consciousness that are eventually dissolved through grace and the effort of one’s spiritual practices. Regardless, one can expedite the process of becoming free of its choking influence by first recognizing that it exists within you. It does not mean anything in particular about you this is a trick of the ego to make you believe you are unworthy. It is an inner affliction that we all must deal with on our journey through the multi-dimensional matrix.
Now a person may feel confused, thinking that on the one hand they are worthy and on the other they have to destroy their pride. Let me clarify. The feeling of unworthiness arises from a condition of human existence in which the individual soul becomes confined to limitations. There are three of these knots that bind the consciousness and they have sanskrit names in case you would like to research them. The first of the knots is the anava mala, which allows for the sense of limitation and imperfection; mayiya mala which allows for the sense of multiplicity and separation; and karma mala the tendency to act in ways that create karma and continued bondage. Anava mala is the knot that is the root from which our feeling of unworthiness grows. If we deny we have feelings of unworthiness denial is at work. When we are in denial about anything we expend a tremendous amount of energy on pretence.
This energy of pretence creates a vacuum, which we try to fill by surrounding ourselves with all the outward appearances of having worth. No amount of outward attainment however will ever fill this void that has been created by denial, and so the struggle to have the look of worth continues, supported by another inner enemy like pride. But is one really any closer to true happiness? Why is it that when you look at the faces of those lost in the struggle of keeping up appearances that you see no happiness? Instead it has been my experience that you see a lot of anger, resentment, envy, jealously reflected on those faces. They have a look of pride on their face toward those who appear to have less and a look of envy toward those that have acquired more. And the inner enemies claim another victim. The secret is that our worth has nothing to do with what we have acquired in this world. It has more to do with how much effort we have made in dealing with our inner enemies and merging into the loving bliss of God, our own higher Self.
Religions have seized on this sense of unworthiness and have used it as a means of exploitation, burdening people with a false guilt, then convincing them that they are somehow responsible for some sin or stain upon their soul. The truth is the soul is absolutely pure consciousness, identical to the shining glory of God. Our sense of unworthiness is part of the matrix of allowing the all-pervasive consciousness to take up individual forms. You could liken it to putting air in a balloon; burst the balloon (the three knots) and the air merges into its original source.
One could say they have taken the first step on the road to recovery by admitting that a sense of unworthiness exists within them. The problem though is that they get mired in the dogmatic propaganda of exploitative religions very often at this point. What they really need at this point is genuine guidance from a being that is established in the Self and to make efforts to follow spiritual practices that help to free the soul or individual consciousness.
Now let us consider the mysterious power of desire and its ability to bring about one’s destruction. What is this quicksand of the senses, this vortex that pulls us into the ocean of suffering? What is the nature of this insatiable fire that consumes without end? Like gravity on this planet, desire is one of the forces that can keep our soul in bondage, unable to soar into infinity. It is the soul’s destiny to return to the ocean of eternal bliss. Because of desire it can jump around but never seems to get airborn in a manner it knows is possible. How then do we escape its pull? One must take with both hands the sword of dispassion and slay this demon called desire. There is no other way! What is addiction? It is an all-consuming desire to have something. How do you overcome addiction? By giving up what one has allowed oneself to become addicted to. The same principle applies to everything else in life. One must repeatedly apply the spirit of non-attachment to all the cravings that bind our soul.
The Bhagavad-Gita says that there are three gates to hell, desire, anger and greed, therefore you must relinquish all three. Krishna says that desire arises from rajas which is one of the three modifications which stretch between the two polarities which make up all things in the manifest universe.
Rajas is a mixture of the other two qualities, sattva which is purity and tamas which is darkness. Rajas is also considered passion, it is active. What action do you take that is not motivated by some desire? According to the sages all our actions should be without desire, because this keeps the soul involved in karma that binds the soul to the cycle of life, death and rebirth. That is why selfless service has been a practice in true spiritual paths since the beginning. It is action taken without the binding effect of being ensnared by the promise of some desired fruit. How often have we wanted something really bad then once the desired object has been acquired, the pleasure it promised to deliver soon fades into nothing? Delusion allows us to keep believing that something out there will satisfy that fire burning within us even though experience has shown us again and again that desire is insatiable. Delusion allows desire to make fools of us over and over.
What happens when we allow desire to burn and something keeps obstructing us from having that which we desire? If we cling to the feeling that we must have the desire fulfilled, instead of establishing ourselves in contentment, a vacuum is created. This will then serve to increase our sensitivity to needing to fulfill that desire. If this is not filled eventually anger rushes in to fill the void. From anger one loses their usual sense of boundaries, discrimination is overwhelmed and subordinated by anger and all the rules of proper conduct are quickly jettisoned in favour of some action to feed this fire.
It is easy to see in the case of a drug addicted robber, but the same influences are at play in the lives of all us who have not reached the goal of liberation, perhaps to a lesser degree, or somehow they are just channelled differently. In the business community you can see desire and greed as the prevalent motivations for all action. Desire and greed are encouraged, and corporations have a legal mandate to actually profit regardless of its consequences to people or the environment. With these tyrannical inner enemies giving license to exploit people and resources, and supported and sanctioned by law is it beyond the bounds of common sense to conclude we are headed for anything but destruction as a civilization? Are they not armed robbers? Armed with the protection to operate and exploit and if there is dissent it will be crushed under the boots of well-armed goons. The recent WTO gathering might give you a hint of the underlying motivation by their obnoxious display of fascist arrogance. Interesting how the demands for input into one’s future economic structure decreased after the 911 event. Too much smoke and mirror magic going on these days. One must ask the question of, “ who benefits?”
What is greed but wanting to have more and more? Discrimination suffers too at the hands of greed. When is enough, enough? For those allowing this particular enemy free reign the answer is never. A person makes their first million, wow, now they are set. But wait, if I had two million I would really be set. There are people out there with billions and some are driven by greed and there are some that have greed under control. Can you imagine having billions and being plagued by the feeling that you must have more? At what point do we call it obsession or insanity? Delusion in the case of greed allows one to believe this is the only course of action that can be taken.
What of those who believe that finding fame is the answer? Pride is part of the motivation. Usually greed lends a hand to this quest for fame. And as soon as one gets the recognition of now being famous it triggers envy and jealously in others. Envy and jealously are twins. The desire for recognition is really the desire to be loved. The problem is not that we want to feel love but that we have bought into the delusion that is comes from outside ourselves. Anytime we look for love to come from out there we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. Another side effect of this projection is the fear that someone else might cause you to lose the person you have projected this source of love onto. In this case of delusion, it causes us wrongly to assume that the love we are looking for is outside of our self. Our natural state is love, the fact that it lies buried under so many subtle impressions from many previous lives does not suppress the knowledge that we are missing something vitally important. The root of the problem is based in something real, the need to feel love. The problem arises however when we are fooled into thinking that love can come from outside our self.
The love we are seeking is right inside our Self; it is the inner enemies and the subtle impressions from past lives that keep us from discovering it. They act as a thick inner wall of darkness; and again anytime there is a void or vacuum we feel a need to fill it, so we create an image in our mind of that special person who will love us and fill that need. Then we store it away in our fantasy file. Later we see someone who almost matches our fantasy and we are flush with a sense of warmth and desire and we think, yep that’s the one. But any feeling of love that may have welled up did just that, it welled up from within.
Delusion in this case allows us to project our love onto the individual and unrealistically expect them to satisfy our expectation of filling us with love. So by allowing this to happen we are setting our self up. Of course delusion will focus our anger for this dissatisfaction on the other person and will not allow us to suspect the fact that we have been set up from within.
The point to be remembered about recognition is that which needs recognition is your inner Self, one has to truly understand the nature of their inner Self. The ego is basically composed of the inner enemies and a wrong identification of our self as being consciousness limited to the human experience. We identify our self by believing we are various labels that have been created. At times we think we are the physical body, and identify with career, status, possessions and other people’s projections. During sleep when we have withdrawn from the physical body into the subtle body we think were are part of the dreamscape, and when we withdraw deeper into our being and experience deep sleep we identify with being somewhat blissful. All of these and all of the outer labels whether man or woman, rich or poor, honourable or dishonourable, happy or sad are not who we are but shadows of our Being.
The only kind of recognition that will be enough to fill the lack of love we feel inside will be the recognition of your own Divine Self. Recognize your inner Being; only that will be enough. Then all the inner tyrants will start to lose their influence over you, and you will start to walk the path to self-mastery. To walk this path is no small undertaking; in fact, it is a path fraught with difficulties. It is for this reason one needs the guidance of someone that has walked the path to its completion, has navigated through the multi-dimensional matrix and become established in that state of enlightenment.
Pride is an inner enemy that pervades so much of our society that we seldom notice it, and it is implied from various sectors that it is important to have pride. I will say to those people no, you have been deluded. It is the transitory pleasure offered by the senses that is the root of suffering. The pleasures offered and indulged in through the senses will always be balanced in the future with equal suffering. If you do not accept this reality you are allowing delusion to blind you to the truth. One must see that it is indulgence itself in any sense pleasure leads to suffering whether sex, drugs or any other pleasurable experience offered through the senses.
Another misconception is that God judges us morally because of such an indulgence and so we should enshroud ourselves in a thick blanket of guilt for our past actions. This too is a subject that needs some clarity. God does not punish us for anything! We punish ourselves by indulging in pleasure that by its nature is a two-sided coin. By putting that coin in your mouth the degree of sweetness will in time become the degree of bitterness you taste. Let me warn you against embracing guilt for any reason, because it is toxic to your soul. No act is as bad as accepting guilt. Guilt is the weapon of parasites.
If pride is allowed to influence a society they might find it acceptable to exterminate another society or race because pride deludes them into a mentality of superiority. If some segments of society are given special status this calls for envy and jealousy to take up arms. The right to equality for all people is indisputable. The right to live without guilt and be free of being made to feel worthless according to someone else’s moral opinion is a given. There is a great danger when pride is allowed to influence the interpretation of religious teachings, such as when it declares from the highest mountaintop that it is the only true path to God, and that those that don’t follow are worthless. In these areas of life the inner enemies have a field day. I will tell you a secret. God sees us all with an equal eye, and judges our action by its motivation, not the act itself. You must ask yourself, “Was it initiated from a place of love?” This has to be the guiding principle, let your actions and motivation originate only from a place of real love. If it does not come from a place of love in your heart, then you must know that an inner enemy has you under its spell! Benjamin Franklin once said, “To be proud of virtue is to poison yourself with the antidote”.
In terms of our own pride a great being once said, “It is harder for us to see our own pride that it is to see an ant in the darkness.” For me truer words were never spoken, and it was only through the grace of a saint that I started to get some glimpses of how pride was the cause of so much destruction, pain, misunderstanding and strife in my own life. Sometimes it is easier to see it by its effects than trace it back to the source.
Look at how pride affects our spending. Think about what people buy for the sake of pride; and how they like to get together and talk about their purchasing power compared to those with less. Just think of the way status is sold. People will pay the most exorbitant amounts to meet the expectations of their pride. In fact they will spend far beyond their means if they have the opportunity, and in today’s society such sacrifice to pride is encouraged of course by those that will profit from that weakness.
The other side of the same coin is that, those that have limited resources and income think that having less materially is a true reflection of their value. So they are left with a feeling that feeds their sense of worthlessness. They feel obliged to play the game because this feeling resonates with the natural feeling of unworthiness which arises from one of the three knots mentioned earlier. What we own, our social status, our position in a company, are not in anyway true reflections of who we are, they are more who we want people to believe we are because we are fooled about our identity by the ego and the inner enemies. Who we are ultimately is the all-pervasive Being, and our real value is priceless literally and this is something we have to know through personal experience. And for that we need the help of someone who knows this reality from experience, one who lives in that state continually. For this you will need a true spiritual master.
