part0027

One way to understand how the wetiko bug deviates the psyche is to contemplate a wholesome psyche free from wetiko’s pernicious influence. In the same way that we become more acquainted with the light by studying how it contrasts to the dark, we can gain deeper insight into wetiko by studying it in contrast to what it is not. When I refer to a wetiko-free psyche, I am speaking in relative terms, in terms of degree, as wetiko can be understood to be a spectrum of deviance from our genuine wholeness that we all have in potential and which any of us can succumb to at any time. Being a field phenomenon, wetiko is something that we all have to come to terms with within ourselves. When we are firmly established in the wholeness of our true nature, instead of being food for wetiko, wetiko becomes fuel to deepen our realization.

As a starting point in our discussion, a wetiko-free psyche, I imagine, has woken up to the existence of the wetiko pathogen. Turned onto wetiko’s nonlocal and shape-shifting nature, both as it plays out in the world and within ourselves, we become aware of the very real tendency within ourselves of self-deception, of how we all have the potential to fool ourselves via the creative power of our own mind. This realization of our potential susceptibility to self-deception, which could lead to unwittingly becoming instruments for the evil of wetiko to act itself out through us, serves as a psychic immunization, inculcating a true humility that safeguards against evil. Everyone, including ourselves, has the potentiality for falling into—and acting out—the unconscious. Because of our awareness of the possibility of pulling the wool over our own eyes, a relatively wetiko-free person cultivates on a daily basis the practice of “mindfulness,” 1 which serves as a guardian of the gates of our psyche. In addition, to use religious terminology, because we are aware of our potential weakness and yetzer ha-ra (Hebrew for the “evil inclination” within us), we develop a relationship with and rely upon a “higher power” beyond our own limited ego, whether we call it God, the Self, our daemon, our true nature, or whichever of the thousands of names by which it is called. This is very different from when we are afflicted with wetiko, as we are then unconsciously identified with this higher power, which is the very stance which allows us to get away with murder.

The healthy human psyche is primarily characterized by an empathic sensibility in relation to all apparent “others” as well as to the Whole of Existence. The wetiko pathogen simply cannot survive in so coherent a psyche because the wetiko deviation cannot grow in the healthy ground of a psyche pervaded with the felt sense of the radiant contiguity and unity of all Existence. The psychic substrate or “soil” of a psyche suffused with the felt sense of unity and radical non-separateness does not provide any toxic “nutrients” of fragmentation or separateness upon which the wetiko pathogen can feed and thereby ramify and propagate itself. Only in the fallow, poisoned, and infertile soil of a split-off sector of a psyche that presumes itself to be walled off and isolated from the rest of Existence and is thereby bereft of the felt sense of empathic and compassionate resonance with others and with the Universe as a Whole can the wetiko pathogen take root and grow into its myriad deviant varieties of psychopathic forms. The wetiko pathogen can only flourish within the specious hall of mirrors of a fragmented psyche because it is in Reality nothing but an artifact of the shattered mirror of the psyche. There is no autonomous, independent wetiko virus separate from the optical distortions and self-replicating hall of mirrors that creates the appearance of an independent virus that infects a psyche and gradually takes it over. In fact it is the fragmented and broken wholeness of the psyche reflected through the hall of mirrors of its own lack of coherence with itself which creates an aberrant relationship with the very ground of the psyche, the light of Primordial Awareness itself. This distorted relationship with the light of Primordial Awareness is what creates both the illusion of the separate self and the illusion of the separate wetiko virus, as both are optical delusions and artifacts of an un-integrated and fragmented psyche. Therefore the cure for both delusions lies in the healing and Whole-ing of the psyche such that the broken mirror of the body/mind is restored to its original un-shattered, coherent condition. Then the very real seeming delusions within the fragmented state vanish and are revealed to have had no reality outside of being a spectral phantasm created by the hall of fractured mirrors of a shattered, traumatized, or un-integrated psyche. The wetiko pathogen then dissolves into the clear light out of which it arose—undermined and eliminated in the irradiation of the radiance of indivisible unity and the blazing fullness of a psyche having realized the always already existing truth of non-separation.

Wetiko progressively desensitizes us to the sentient (sensitive) nature of other beings. The wetiko pathogen breaks or engenders a progressive deterioration of the empathic bond which enables the holistic awareness of universal interconnectedness. It is this empathic feeling-connectedness that bridges the gap between self and other and helps us to see through the seemingly convincing illusion of the separate self. Wetiko-free people have what I call “tel-empathy,” a highly developed telepathic sense of empathy, which combines the intuitive, telepathic power of the mind with the empathic feeling of the heart. Unlike people afflicted by wetiko, a wetiko-free psyche has a strong sense of empathy, of being able to feel into another person’s experience and point of view, as if the quality of empathy has been “promoted” to be the guiding light of all of our relations with the world. Wetiko-free, we can find within ourselves the place that resonates, identifies, and relates with the other, thereby recognizing the other as a part of and not separate from ourselves, a realization which engenders compassion. Genuinely wanting the best for others, a healthy person has a felt sense that the well-being of all other beings is deeply connected to our own well-being. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama puts it, we should become “wisely selfish,” by which he means that in thinking of others’ welfare, because of our interconnectedness, we are ultimately benefiting ourselves. Buddhism calls this attitude the “precious bodhicitta,” which translates as the mind or the heart of awakening. Interestingly, the precious bodhicitta is the very attitude to be cultivated at the beginning of the path, while also being the very result that is accomplished. Simply put, in cultivating the precious bodhicitta, we are taking our narcissistic fixation off our selves, and are devoting our energies to be of service to others. Generating the precious bodhicitta, we are cutting through the illusory, dualistic pattern of relating to the world in terms of self and others. This realization instantaneously expands our compassion, connecting us with our deeper mission in life, as we invest in our newly found career as fledgling bodhisattvas. The precious bodhicitta is of the nature of a diamond, in that it cuts through wetiko, leaving wetiko no place to stand, while it itself cannot be harmed. The compassion at the heart of awakening which results from seeing through the “us versus them” duality dissolves the toxicity of wetiko on the spot.

In distinction to when we are afflicted with wetiko, which is to be continually grasping and clinging, attempting to fill a void within ourselves that can never be satiated, which is, in essence, to be coming from a place of lack, need, and scarcity, when we are wetiko-free we embody and express a place of wholeness, of fullness within ourselves. Not needing anything from outside of ourselves, the “economy” of our psyche is self-sustaining, neither depending upon nor requiring “imports” such as recognition or validation from outside of itself. Feeling safe within ourselves, we have no desire to impose our will, control, manipulate, coerce, or force others to do anything or be a certain way. Because we genuinely embrace and accept ourselves, others typically feel accepted when they are around us.

When we are wetiko-free, we are in touch with ourselves such that we don’t give away our power or feel compelled to take on other people’s point of view, be it about the world or ourselves. We are able to imagine how others see us, which are reflections that inform our own self-image with potentially useful information about our own unconscious, but we don’t necessarily buy into, take on, identify with, or get hooked by others’ version of ourselves. We are therefore able to see and experience the world, and ourselves, through our own eyes. Having found the balance between being spontaneous while at the same time being able to, at least to a “good-enough” degree, control our desires and impulses, we don’t just compulsively act out whatever idea falls into our head. We are able to delay short-term gratification with an awareness of the long-term view in mind. We have an appreciation and understanding of what in Buddhism is called “the law of karma,” of cause and effect, which points out that it is our own “doing” that conjures up our experience and its fruits, for good and for ill. This understanding becomes the basis for an internally generated morality which engenders a great sense of self-responsibility. Jesus says in the Apocryphal texts, “If thou knowest what thou doest, thou art blessed; but if thou knowest not, thou art cursed and a transgressor of the law,” 2 which is to say that it is consciousness itself that is the true basis of individual morality.

Seeing the world through wetiko-free eyes, we would be aware that there might be a difference between what we perceive or imagine is happening out in the world and what might actually be going on, which is to say that, unlike many people, we wouldn’t conflate the two. We would not just assume that what we are seeing objectively exists, as we are aware of the projective tendencies of the mind to influence our perceptions at each and every moment. We’d be aware that what we are perceiving to be happening in the outside world oftentimes tells us as much, if not more, about what is going on within ourselves. This is tricky business, however, as some of us at certain points in our lives have had our perceptions marginalized and negated, so that for some, part of freeing ourselves from wetiko’s influence is to stand up for the “objective truth” of our perceptions as a way of healing from having them wrongly dismissed in the past. Supporting our perceptions as having validity can be a vital phase in our healing; once we develop this capacity, we can then realize that our perceptions by their very nature are subjective, which instead of being a put-down, is simply the nature of how we all see the world differently .

Wetiko-free, we are aware of the dreamlike nature of reality; we cannot help but see that the world and its experiences are in the nature of a symbol, reflecting back something that lies hidden within ourselves, in the realm of transsubjective reality. We realize that we can mytho-poetically re-imagine our lives, as well as our very selves, to reflect our shift in perspective from seeing things literally to realizing that the universe, just like a dream, is speaking symbolically. Instead of relating to our life in a literal, linear, and objectively existing way, in which we “author” our novel life as if writing prose, simply “reporting the facts,” when we are in touch with the dreamlike nature of reality, we realize that our moment-to-moment experience of ourselves and others is a function of our creative imagination. The expression of our experience is then not based on dogma or holy writ, but, to choose but one example of the numberless mediums at our disposal, on the holiness of writing itself. From this point of view, it is not the story of Christ that is liberating, but the storying Christ. We are literally being created and re-creating ourselves anew each moment. How we experience life is determined by the meaning we place on it, how we view it, the metaphors we use to contextualize it, and the story we tell ourselves about it. When we “tell our stories,” about ourselves, both to ourselves and others, it is important to differentiate: there’s a way of telling our story that solidifies and reinforces the spell we are under, and conversely, there’s a way of telling our story that liberates us from our spell. The first form of storytelling feeds wetiko, while the second type of storytelling dissolves wetiko and is worthy of the name “art.” Storytelling is a shamanic art-form through which we can, shaman-like, journey back in time and change the past, transforming the past by changing how it affects us in the present. The fictive power of the literary imagination is the imaginal power of the psyche, and as we develop this part of ourselves, we are like shamans, retrieving the lost “soul” not only of ourselves, but of humanity as a whole.

This realization highlights the importance of the “storying” part of our psyche, that is, the part of ourselves that is endlessly mythologizing, imagining, and dreaming through the events in our lives, as if creating a work of living art, of flesh and blood fiction. We can become agents of awakening who help to creatively re-imagine and transform the prevailing myths of our culture, which have become rigidified, imprisoning, suffocating, and literally death-creating instead of life-enhancing. This is to creatively give (re)birth to the universe as an ongoing work of art, which is to realize that we are the creative artists through which the revelation of the universe as art becomes manifest. Just as in a dream at night, there is a deeper part of ourselves that is literally the “author” of our experience, a fundamental aspect of ourselves which invests us with genuine “authority” to create change in ourselves, and by extension, the world around us.

To awaken to the dreamlike nature of reality is to symbolically “kill” the mythic negative patriarchy, Saturn-Chronos. To be under the spell of the negative father, “Father Time,” is to be entranced and absorbed in “chrono”-logical, linear time at the expense of the timeless dimension of our being. There’s nothing inherently wrong with linear time; it’s simply a construct of the mind which can be a convenient tool for navigating our life, but it is a terrible master. To symbolically slay the negative patriarchy is to step out of being “time-bound” and find ourselves “syn-chronos,” in “dreamtime,” where time is experienced as a radial matrix whose center is here and now. Dreamtime is not linear but circular, not fixed but fluid, not mechanistic but natural, and not historical but ahistorical. Dissolving the figure of Father Time, no longer living by the clock in a world where “time is money,” however, we become introduced to the “syn-chronic” order. The synchronic order, whose timing frequency is a universal factor of synchronization, is a realm of infinite interconnectedness and inter-resonance between everything and everything else. In the synchronic realm the microcosm and macrocosm are synchronistic, mirrored reflections of each other, different iterations of the same underlying, harmonic fractal. This inter-nested fractal reflects a singular nowness eternally unfolding in endlessly diverse and novel patterns through multiple dimensions simultaneously. This realization not only changes our sense of time, but as if becoming “time travelers,” we have entered not only a different order of time, but a different time altogether. Symbolically slaying the negative patriarchy snaps us out of the spell and logic of linear time and introduces us to the four-valued logic of dreamtime and the synchronic order. This is to “die” to the sense of being a “separate self” who is alien to and alienated from the universe, and to be “reborn” in and as spirit, interconnected and at one with all beings. This releases us into and as the present moment, the access point through which we connect with our true power to consciously change the shared waking dream we are having. As if agents from “outside of time,” we are able to be of genuine benefit to others and to our world as a whole, or so I imagine.

Any constellated, unconscious content which we are not in relationship with possesses us from behind and beneath our conscious awareness. This unconscious content is still too much a part of the frame of reference through which we interpret our experience for us to examine it with any objectivity. When we are unconscious of something that is activated within us, we are identified with it and are compelled to act it out unconsciously in our life. What we don’t know about ourselves is what we do—to the other. When we are unconscious of something that is kindled within us, Jung writes, “It moves us or activates us as if we were marionettes. We can only escape that effect by making it conscious and objectifying it, putting it outside of ourselves, taking it out of the unconscious.” 3 If an unconscious content is not made conscious, it becomes a devilish factor that is always thwarting our best-laid plans. It is essential, therefore, to differentiate ourselves from this unconscious content so as to bring it into relationship with consciousness (see active imagination in the Glossary) and de-potentiate its demonic potentialities.

Regardless of our religious beliefs, or lack thereof, there is a psychological fact that we can call the devil. Jung writes, “To consciously take into account the existence of an evil factor would be the psychological equivalent of devil worship. Of course that is quite different from those [Satanic] cults that worship the devil under the symbol of a peacock, for instance.” 4 On the contrary, in an act of devotion, undertaken for the love of our neighbor and ourselves, rather than projecting this evil factor onto our neighbor, it is a necessity to objectify and construct a devil to carry our projections (a process, I might add, which is similar to how we “construct” a dream). Objectifying our devil-like complexes is the psychological equivalent to, in religious language, “casting out” the devil. When there is a diabolical, separating factor between us and someone else (be it our neighbor or our neighboring country), we need to “catch” this demon in an alchemical vessel in between us and our seeming enemy. To compare this devil to water: if we don’t create an image for it, this devil will either get projected outside of ourselves and poured all over others in a hurtful, destructive way, or it will flow and dissolve back into our own unconscious and not only will nothing be gained, but this will do us harm.

The seeming autonomy of these diabolical unconscious contents is a most uncomfortable thing to reconcile ourselves to, and yet the very fact that the unconscious presents itself in this way gives us the best means of handling it. This is to say that encoded and hidden in the seeming problem is its own resolution. It is not hard to objectify the contents of the unconscious, as being autonomous, they seemingly possess an identity all their own, so they naturally have a tendency to spontaneously personify themselves within our psyche. It is our unconscious identification with autonomous complexes that makes it so hard to get a handle on them. Objectifying and dialoguing with these contents allows us to get on “speaking terms” with them. Personifying and entering into conscious relationship with the figures of our unconscious as if they are autonomous, independent living entities takes away their compelling power over us. When they are fully objectified, we “distinguish ourselves” from them, which not only takes away the unconscious contents’ power over us, but allows us to access and unite with the power which animates them in a way that empowers us. The energy giving life to the seemingly darker powers then becomes a force serving the light. Relating to the contents of our unconscious as if they are other than ourselves is at the same time to relate to ourselves as other than these contents. In objectifying contents of the unconscious, we are simultaneously dis-identifying from them and creating ourselves distinct from and relative to these contents. As we see the “evil” part of ourselves, the part of us that is seeing the evil is free from it, for we couldn’t objectify it otherwise. For example, if we have jaundice, we couldn’t pick out what objects are truly yellow, for everything looks yellow. The part of us that is seeing the color yellow is the part of us that is “yellow-free.” It is only in recognizing the evil within ourselves that allows us, by virtue of being the witness to it, to relate to it as “other” than ourselves; that is, the part of us that is witnessing evil is not the “guilty party.” 5 Paradoxically, recognizing these contents as other than ourselves is the very act that allows us to eventually own, embrace, and integrate these unconscious contents as parts of ourselves.

Just as a vampire can’t stand the light of day, a bug like wetiko can’t stand to be seen. The disease obfuscates itself, creating any number of distractions to hide behind, and will even react violently to being seen, for being seen takes away its seeming omnipotence. Flooding light on wetiko’s machinations takes away its seeming autonomy and alleged power over us, such that it can no longer compel us to act it out unconsciously. “Seeing” this vampiric parasite is to relate to it as other than ourselves, while at the same time recognizing it within ourselves. Though the vampire is a figure within us, it is not us. In differentiating ourselves from the vampire, we recognize the difference between ourselves and it, thereby dis-identifying from our subjective experience of the vampire within. This is to say that in seeing the vampire, we free ourselves from our unconscious identification with and possession by it, and step back into ourselves. The evil I witness within me is an aspect of myself and I own it, but it is not mine. This is the personal/impersonal paradox of the soul: what is most me is not mine.

The greatest protection against becoming negatively affected, and in extreme cases possessed, by the evil aspects of wetiko is to be in touch with our intrinsic wholeness, which is to be “self-possessed”—in possession of the part of ourselves that is not possess-able, which is the Self, the wholeness of our being. We truly “defeat” evil when we connect with the part of ourselves that is invulnerable and cannot be vanquished by it. In Buddhism, the wholeness of our true nature is likened to a mirror, which embraces and reflects whatever is put before it. The mirror itself, however, no matter how vile the object it is reflecting, is detached from and never tainted nor stained by its reflections, always remaining the same, retaining its intrinsic purity and never wearing out. The reflections do not affect our mirror-like nature, which is transcendent to the reflections, just as a mirage of water in the desert doesn’t make the grains of sand wet. Fire can’t burn our true nature, earth can’t bury it, water can’t drench it, and the wind can’t blow it away. Pure from the beginning, our true nature is “unimpeded,” in the sense that it cannot be bound by anything. In the same way, when we are in touch with our true nature, the evil of wetiko cannot “touch” us. Paradoxically, while on one hand the reflections seemingly obscure the empty, open surface of the mirror, on the other hand we would never notice the mirror without the reflections, which is to say that the reflections are the revelation of the mirror. The reflections in the mirror are the inseparable, indivisible, unmediated expression of the mirror, as we never have reflections without a mirror, nor a mirror without reflections. The reflections are the expressions of the mirror, indistinguishable from the mirror, while simultaneously, “not” being the mirror.

The reflections in the mirror help us recognize what is not a reflection, that is, the underlying mirror which embraces, contains, and is fundamentally unaffected by whatever it reflects. In the same way, wetiko potentially introduces us to the part of us that is wetiko-free. Without a break in its symmetry, the true nature of Being would have no way to encounter and become aware of itself. This is similar to light transforming aspects of itself into particles so as to reveal its potential in a new way. It is only after we have become engaged with wetiko that we potentially become aware of the part of us that is invulnerable to its effects. Previous to wetiko’s bursting on the scene, we were unconsciously identified with our true nature, which is to say that we were not conscious of it. It is as if a deeper part of ourselves dreamed up wetiko so as to make us conscious of the part of ourselves that is transcendent to it. Wetiko itself becomes the very instrument through which our intrinsic wholeness is consciously realized in time—the present moment—the only “place” it can be realized. Similar to how a shadow is simultaneously an expression of the presence of light as well as its absence, wetiko, though apparently obscuring our true nature, is a disguised form of, expression of, and introduction to it. Then wetiko is not only recognized to be a manifestation of our true nature, but actually evokes it. Once again we are at that mysterious place where the opposites become indistinguishable: is wetiko a disease of the soul that is getting in the way of our fully realizing who we are, or is it an initiation into the very true nature that it is apparently obscuring?

We won’t notice the underlying mirror, however, if we become entranced by, fixated on, or conditioned by the reflections. The reflections in the mirror are like thoughts in our mind; the problem is that we become absorbed in, react to, and identify with the thoughts in our mind, without recognizing that who we actually are is the pure, all-embracing mirror which underlies and is transcendent to the reflections. Thought-forms in our mind are like dreams, in the sense that if we recognize the empty, illusory nature of our thoughts, they have no power over us, just as when we recognize within a dream its illusory nature, the dream has no binding power over us. On the other hand, if we identify with our thoughts, which are like whole, self-contained universes, it is as if we have gotten absorbed into and attached to the forms of the dream, which we then take to be “reality.” In doing so, we have invested our thought-forms with an unwarranted reality and have unwittingly created reality to reflect back our thought-forms, thereby limiting our creative freedom, as well as ourselves, in the process.

The intrinsic purity of our true nature can be likened to the way the clouds in the sky, though apparently obscuring the clear nature of the sky, in actuality never sully the deeper, spacious nature of the sky one iota. The spaciousness of our true nature is transcendent to and other than its contents, similar to the way the clouds in the sky are separate and can be differentiated from the underlying spaciousness of the sky. Though both the clouds and the sky are present together, the clouds never become a part of nor touch the spacelike nature of the sky. And yet, from another point of view, clouds are actually an expression and adornment of the sky, inseparable from the sky, in the sense that they emerge out of and dissolve back into the sky. This is similar to the way our true nature is inseparable from its infinite manifestations, though its essential substance is transcendent to its myriad display.

Our true nature is like a spacious, empty openness in which the endless variety of thoughts arise, momentarily have their existence, and in which they dissolve. Our true nature is like the background and deeper spacious “context” in which the specific “contents” of the mind appear. Our true nature is empty, in that it doesn’t have any form, while at the same time it is the nature of this emptiness to “take on” form. As the Heart Sutra, a.k.a. Prajnaparamita Hrdaya, or Heart of the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom, reminds us, “Form is empty. Emptiness is form.” Just as in a dream, the physical forms of the universe are empty of inherent, substantial existence from their own side, as the seemingly outer, waking dreamscape is inseparable from our consciousness of it. There is no independent universe; there is no independent observer—life is truly a participatory sport, a display in which we are creatively engaged, whether we know it or not. Form isn’t just empty, “Emptiness is form”: it is the nature of emptiness to appear in the form of form. If we become overly attached to the forms of the dreams, however, we are cultivating ME disease, that is, wetiko, within the petri dish of our own minds.

Emptiness and form are not separate things joined together; they are inseparably one, the universal opposites completely united. Quantum physics has had a similar realization: the material-like “stuff” of the universe has been recognized to be a condensation of and inseparable from the spacious, underlying formless field out of which it arises. Entertaining both opposites as being true simultaneously—emptiness is form—is an expression that we have become united with(in) ourselves, while at the same time we ourselves have been united by the opposites. When the opposites come together, a profound question arises: is wetiko the deepest evil, or is it a Judas-like entity of utmost necessity, evoking its own evolutionary transmutation, and thereby an expression of the highest good? When the opposites start to reveal themselves as being indistinguishable, wetiko “outs itself” to be a reconciling symbol whose function is transcendence that unites the opposites within us. Seeing the identity of the opposites is to step out of the two-valued logic of the dualistic mind into the four-valued logic of a mind seeing (w)holistically. To recognize the relativity, and hence, identity of the opposites is to realize the Self, which is a union of opposites. One of the deeper meanings of the Buddhist word “nirvana” is to be released and have attained freedom from the opposites. In alchemy, the philosopher’s stone is found and the “gold” is made when the “greater coniunctio” is accomplished via the “sacred marriage,” which is when the opposites are united as one.

Our true nature is already accomplished, in that we don’t have to attain it in the same way that we don’t have to “attain” our body; we just have to recognize that we can’t avoid having it. We always remain naturally abiding in our true nature, which is spontaneously present without any effort on our part whatsoever, whether we know it or not. Our true nature conceals itself by immersing itself in us as a kind of camouflage, while at the same time it reveals itself through us. Once we recognize and become more familiar with the primordially pure, spacious mirror-like nature that has been our ever-present condition from the very beginning, we then are able to simply rest and abide in and as that, realizing that we already have in our possession that for which we are looking. Recognizing and opening to our true nature allows it to address us with its inherent richness, which is our true and rightful inheritance.

The nature of the mind is likened to the spaciousness of the sky, in the sense that we can’t really see the transparent, spacelike sky as a thing, for there is nothing (“no-thing”) to see except a state of openness which itself cannot be seen as an object. In a sense we recognize our true nature when we recognize that there is no-thing to recognize. Our true nature is not an object to be recognized just as we are not a subject recognizing it. Like space, our true nature is not identifiable, as it cannot be illustrated within a conceptual framework. Our true nature is like the element of space in that space is the most fundamental of all the elements, in that it is the element out of which all the other elements arise and into which they are absorbed, while space itself exists beyond all arising and ceasing. Our true nature is also like space in that it has no center (in that its center is everywhere), no circumference, no edge, no end, and no extremes. One view of space is to maintain that the skin is the boundary of ourselves, which would make the space within us the separate self and the space without us the space which separates the separate selves. But when we see that space as a whole is the very ground of existence in which we are all contained, then space is recognized to not separate us, but rather, it unites us.

Our situation is also like those children’s puzzles where we attempt to find the “hidden” faces. The concealed faces are actually staring us in the face, hidden in plain sight, we just have to recognize them. In the same way, our true nature is literally staring us in the face, we just haven’t recognized it; only the slightest shift in focus is needed in order to see it. The only thing to do, once we become acquainted with our true nature, is to not get distracted and fall back to sleep, which is easier said than done. Recognizing our true nature is not difficult, in the same way that momentarily becoming lucid in a dream is not hard; the challenging part is to be able to stabilize this realization and not fall back to sleep and get reabsorbed back into the forms of the dream. This is where the discipline of spiritual practice comes in, for the essence of any genuine spiritual practice of whatever tradition is to become familiar with and establish ourselves in our true nature, whereby we recognize everything that arises as its expression. Just as when we are in a dream, everything that arises within the dream is contained within and permeated by the fabric of the dream; everything that arises in this universe never strays from our true nature, in the same way that the reflections in the mirror never slide off the face of the mirror. Every moment is literally infused with our true nature, in the same way that water is saturated by wetness, and the waves of the ocean always remain within the domain of the ocean. Recognizing the nature of our situation, we are then able to alchemically transform whatever is happening in each moment into a “lucidity stimulator” that helps to wake us up to the dreamlike nature of reality even further. The greater the darkness of wetiko, the more energy is available for its liberation. The fetters that bind us become transformed into the very means of liberation, and the energies released can be utilized for this purpose. When we integrate this realization, wetiko self-liberates, and can do us no harm, like a thief entering an empty house .

Everything, and every state of consciousness we can ever experience, from the most debased to the most exalted, is, in fact, a manifestation of our true nature, in the same way that sesame oil permeates and is found throughout every part of a sesame seed. It’s not that thoughts are something “bad” that we have to get rid of; we simply need to recognize their empty nature and not unconsciously identify with them. In the same way that the reflections are the manifestation of the mirror, thoughts are themselves the expression of our true nature. Just as the rays of the sun are not separate from the sun, and the waves of the ocean are not separate from the ocean, but are rather, its unmediated expression, thoughts in our mind, instead of obscuring our true nature, are its very expression. Once we recognize this, thoughts cease to be problematic in any way, as they effortlessly self-liberate into their own empty nature in, of, and by themselves. Then, instead of being created by our thoughts, we can play with them such that we can create with them. If we think it is impossible to recognize our true nature, then we simply need to rest directly in that which thinks it impossible to recognize, and “that is it.” Our true nature can never be obscured, just as the clouds in the sky on one level seemingly obscure the sun, but from the sun’s point of view, it is always radiantly shining, even on the cloudiest of days.