Lolita

In case you failed to notice,

in case you failed to see,

this is my heart bleeding before you,

this is me down on my knees, and

these foolish games are tearing me apart.

You are breaking my heart!

(Jewel, Foolish Games)

The other day I was looking at a teen-aged girl and literally saw an angel in front of me. Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita novel crossed my mind; who could sexually entice such a beautiful soul? It must be literally a case of selective seeing; a middle-aged man zooming into the pre-historic male wirings that are attracted to youth, but must be equally selectively in overriding the spiritual energy floating around that even a blind man could perceive.

The ego does that to us. It is a case of selective viewing because there is supposedly something to gain. Humbert, the middle-aged, well-educated European immigrant fell into this trap in the Lolita novel. He forced his adopted daughter into having sexual relations with him, and as time went by, became increasingly insane. This is another classic ego device. After first luring us into abusing the spiritual, it then presents the evidence, accusing, judging and executing us all in one go.

Vladimir Nabokov's novel is an extreme case in the study of the ego, but the essential problem statement is always the same. We can literally see and feel spirituality in every situation, just as we experience the ego's cravings. The beauty of the "here and now" is that we always have a choice to do the right thing by God. So if you happen to see a soul-sibling with a bleeding heart before you, I hope you know what to do. Not because there is a God who would punish you for your sins afterwards, but simply because the ego's wild goose chase becomes  plain and simple to see once you look at the situation as it is. Allow yourself to fall in love with life, moment by moment, and the ego has little choice but to vanish into nothingness.