I was struck by the following words of Epictitus the other night at a local bookstore so I jotted them down:
“You are a primary existence. You are a distinct portion of the essence of God, and contain a certain part of Him in yourself. Why then are you ignorant of your noble birth? You carry a God about within you, poor wretch, and know nothing of it.”
It’s as if Epictitus is saying that people are dreaming, or hypnotized to believe that they are homeless orphans.
There is only one reason why people are ignorant of their connection to the infinity of the Divine. They are living life based on programmed thought. It’s nobody’s fault. Parents, teachers, media, friends, all reinforce the notion that we are all separate from each other. We are all led to believe that the world is actually constituted out of separate fragments. And this belief leads us to act in ways that create fragmentation.
For example, if you are told by your doctor that your accelerated pulse causes him grave concern, then your pulse will accelerate even further due to the fear of heart failure.
The numbness of life that so many people feel is a condition only as long as they are in denial to the infinite reality of life. How could life not be numb if one’s perception is only of the finite. Life becomes an uninviting affair when it appears that we are destined only for suffering, old age and death. As the cynical saying goes, “Life’s a bitch, then you die.”
But though this is not the reality, it can become a lifelong virtual reality if you allow it to, and therefore a lifelong experience of despair. This is a serious problem that needs the highest priority of attention. This is not something to put on a backburner until after you retire. That’s just getting more and more entrenched in patterned thought based on limitation.
To get beyond this limited life of patterned thought is to replace the identification of the limited self with the Unlimited Self. This is a gradual process. But just to begin the process of identifying with the Oneness that pervades all life is a major shift in consciousness. It’s movement, and as Einstein once said, “Nothing happens until something moves.”
But how do you proceed? How do you undo the limiting chains of the conditioned past? How do you awaken from a dream? How do you put an end to a false identity? How do you start moving?
How does an ice covered lake unfreeze? By exposing itself to the warmth of the Sun. Likewise, when we embrace our inner light, we melt the rigidities of our conditioned past.
The Source of Being, the Sun that melts our ice, is not separate from us. It is not something to find. It is something to realize as one’s Self. It’s what we are. But through flights of imagination we somehow conclude that we are something else. This is the dream of conditioned thinking. This is playground of the ego. Separateness, division, conflict, poverty, and even having it all.
The way out of a dream is to realize it as a dream. Sometimes we awaken in the middle of a bad dream simply because it is so bad. But the good dreams keep us entranced in their hypnotic allure.
“But it is a good dream,” you say. Perhaps. But it is only a dream. Something far greater awaits you when you awaken. Even if you’re still a little groggy.
