The spectrum of self

‘Greed is good’, declared Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street’. That’s about as egotistic a sentiment as can be. We spiritual folks shy away from egotism. It makes our skin crawl.

The next level in the spectrum of the self is to be ‘full of it’. That’s a more subtle energy but again we spiritual folks have an antenna for it. ‘No-BS’ is another way of putting it. Sadly, our community has plenty of this as well.

‘Selfless’ is the next level. Unfortunately this word is already reserved for a different meaning, ‘unselfish’. It attracts the Mother Theresa and sufferers as well who can be ‘full of it’ too. No, selfless in this context means that the self is temporarily absent in the Now. 

‘No self’ is the last stage in the spectrum of the self. The self has vanished altogether. We are Consciousness and life is flowing through us. Subject and object merge into One and Consciousness is aware of the fact that the avatar ‘I’-identity is separate.

Anyone who is on an Awakening path experiences the entire spectrum of self. Every category has its own set of problems. The egotistic person fails to see Oneness while the guy who is full of it needs a wake-up call.

This year brought the first ‘no self’ glimpses but I also now realize that they had occurred before; the ‘I’-identity was just not aware of this fact. Moreover, stretches of egoism and bs are not the problem either, sometimes they catapult us directly in the ‘no self’ state.   

Let the spectrum of self be as is, just be aware!