A Journey Into The Dark of Self

I was recently accused of being a hypocrite for some of my writing and the way it seems to contradict my personal philosophy and my religious beliefs. That accusation got me thinking about its validity and the potential for foundational basis as I made a painful self-assessment. After mulling it over for weeks, I arrived at the conclusion that it is true. I am a hypocrite, and it seems I am in very good company. While I am among some of the world’s elite as well as the infamous and the lowest of the low, my ever-prevalent cohorts in this misunderstood adjective are of no consequence - or consolation for that matter - to me. The fact is, everyone is a hypocrite to some degree or another. If you have ever even thought "that is so hypocritical" or so and so "is such a hypocrite" then you just sealed your fate as a member of the club. The trick is finding to what degree your hypocrisy runs and I will adress that later - I am just not ready to get to it yet – but I will and you won’t like it any more than I did. The up side to all of this is that every cloud has a silver lining, and this ominous super-cell is no exception. So don’t start chewing your Prozac /Valium pharm fresh salad yet because it’s always darkest before the dawn. Before I can even appear to justify myself by including anyone else in such a reviled category or before I can make any external assessments at all, I have to start within. We all have to start within – and it is a dark, frightening and lonely journey if you dare to make it honestly. The problem is that unless you are willing to be honest, face the dark of your personal Moria (borrowing a bit from one of my favorite books and movies), see what truly resides there, and confront it, you are merely conducting an exercise in useless personal political correctness. How do I know this you ask? I know this because I happen to be a master of useless political correctness. And, in the words of my personal hero Don Knotts, “let me clarify this”. We spend a lot of time and money on books, seminars and videos – not to mention in church – to further our quest for self-improvement; studying and underlining, highlighting and discussing topics and subject matter that while rich in potential usually is taken only to a level of appeasement of ego. In other words, we do enough to feel good about our efforts and our self but not enough to effect change at a core level. For example, I recently acquired and read the book “The Secret” which is very clear about what needs to take place in order for certain results to manifest. I read the book watched the video and put it to the test with positive results – it worked! The catch is that to consistently manifest the results you have to do more than just put it to the test – you have to assimilate the concept and consciously strive to actively live it every day - and that sucks! It requires a huge effort to create habits that will make living whatever principle you want to embody a bit easier to do on an ongoing basis – it’s a lot of hard work. So, we go through the motions, even preach the virtues of our undertaking and we do just enough to feel good and claim an acceptable degree of success. That is personal political correctness. To make matters worse, we delude ourselves by saying that we are “working on it” or taking it line upon line – precept on precept when we are full of shit - but it sounds good, it looks good and it feels good – so it must be good. The principle of line upon line – precept on precept is a true fundamental approach to understanding and a very wise one when applied honestly. In fact, it is the only way to achieve true understanding and consequently personal assimilation and manifestation of any philosophy, skill, virtue, or concept. The key is to apply it honestly and fully – to make the effort and brave the dark in order to discover the light. So, as I pondered these things with the sting of my hypocrisy burning a hole in my ego, I decided to face the dark and see what was really inside. Now I certainly don’t claim to have conquered my demons or the dark of my Moria – I merely started the journey. It started with a personal inventory. At first, I found myself discovering so many demons that didn’t have anything to do with my hypocrisy (the demon I wanted to face) that I started to become severely depressed. I realized quickly that it was good to take note and be aware of what else is in there for future reference but to become distracted is to become dead –so to speak – maybe literally (I don’t know and don’t care to find out). So with a new bit of handy information, I approached the dark again but this time to inventory only those things related to the demon I wanted to confront at the time. I learned a very interesting fact about our personal dark and demons with this exercise. Discovery #1 - No matter how many demons you may harbor, if you approach the dark with your focus on one, the others will leave you alone and it isn’t as scary in there. They don’t go away and they still have the effect they do on our daily lives, but they will leave you alone to face what you need to face while in the dark of your personal Moria, and frankly, I appreciate that about them. One more time – in I go to find my demon of hypocrisy and I didn’t have to venture very far. This brought me to another helpful discovery. Discovery #2 - When we approach the dark with intent and focus, the Universe, God, your higher self, (whatever your belief along those lines is), will actually bring what you are looking for, out for you to find. It is a simple matter of ask and ye shall receive. It works when you really want what you are asking for and especially so when it comes to self-discovery. The trick here is one’s intent – you can fool the people around you into believing you are about something and you can even fool yourself into accepting the notion at a superficial level. But we just can’t fool our higher self or God so unless we are sincere, we can pretend to ask all we want and what we will get is frustrated. Discovery #3 – when you hunt for demons, you will find demons; and all the attributes and occurrences of that demon will overwhelm you unless you approach it with love. That discovery came as the result of having my ass handed to me by Pin Head the Hypocrite because I went storming into the dark thinking I was some kind of medieval dragon slayer. So, I retreat, lick my wounds – ok bad analogy after the reference to my ass, but you know what I mean – and analyze my failure in search of another approach. The reason the dragon slayer approach doesn’t work as well is apparently because of simple concept - what we are “against” weakens us and what we are “for” strengthens us. So, in stead of storming in against the demon, it turns out that merely walking in with love in your heart for yourself and this demon you want to understand (not slay) - works better. I realize that love for a demon does not seem to make sense. So again, “let me clarify this”. Discovery #4 – relates directly to #3 as it turns out. Our demons are as afraid of us as we are of them. Think about what happens when you corner a frightened cat. It lashes out in self-defense, the damage it can inflict is substantial, and I have scars to prove it. However, if you approach the same cat with love in your heart and in the form of some treat, a calm demeanor and personal energy, you will pick the cat up and have it purring in your arms within minutes. I know this to be true because I have watched my wife do it with wild feral cats on several occasions. It took the incident with Pin Head and my ass to make the correlation though. So, what I learned is that if we approach our personal inventory with love and a calm energy, we will discover that Pin Head isn’t really Pin Head at all – its just a very frightened part of me that really wants to be found, held and healed. That is a lot easier to love than a demon now isn’t it. This brought me to discovery #5 – Our Demons are only demons while they are left to fester in the dark and their negative effect on our life is just a consequence of leaving them unattended and unhealed. So it appears that as long as I listen to my ego tell me to ignore my demons, that I’m fine and that they are a figment of my imagination etc. I am furthering the negative effect they have on my life when all I have to do is face and understand them. So, armed with new information, I make the trek back to the dark – this time with a calm energy and love – ok I thought it was love. It may come as no surprise that just being calm and thinking about cute puppies and how much you love whoever or whatever just doesn’t cut it. In order for the love part to work, and it is a vital part to the success (trust me I failed enough to this point to prove the theory) we need to have a sincere love for the very thing we will tend to resent. This means we need to love the demon and that just doesn’t seem to compute. But if we look at it from the angle of discovery #4 and 5, and we realize that it isn’t really a demon, it is just temporarily possessed by one in the dark, we can see that love isn’t that far fetched. The trick is losing the association with the demonic effect our wounded self has had on our lives and seeing that once we bring it to the light it will become a source of unfathomable strength. Here I go again. This time I have a calm energy and I see my objective as a challenge to meet with love so I can make the inventory and bring it into the light to heal. Simple enough - well, maybe not - but it is a very good start. This time I see my demon in another light and it isn’t scary or intimidating at all because I went looking for it, asked to have it shown to me and understand that it isn’t really a demon so I approach it with love. Now I see that yes I am a hypocrite in the technical sense of the word and the examples are just there for me to know and understand. As I take inventory, I find myself justifying things and I retreat to re-group and assess what went wrong. Discovery #6 – When we ask to see our weaknesses, we go looking for them and we confront them with love, they will be shown to us just as they are – true to life and form. At this point we have to be committed to accept what we see for what it is because the natural tendency of our ego will be to justify each and every scenario to “prove” to our self that we aren’t “broken”. If we fall for this ego tactic, we will be right back at personal political correctness and an exercise in appearances and futility. A simple example is my realization that I am hypocritical when it comes to what I say about my work ethic and what I actually do at times. As I saw the reality of this personal dichotomy, my ego immediately jumped in and massaged my mind with thoughts of justification and logic as to why the disparity exists. After a minute or two into my self-inventory on that issue, I was ready to move on to the next item and a few justified issues into it I somehow realized that I hadn’t truly embraced anything nor had I brought anything into the light. I had just made myself feel ok with what was there and that wasn’t what I was there for. So, in spite of being armed with all of the previous discoveries, I was still at ground zero – a bit closer to takeoff but still at ground zero. Thanks to discovery #6 and some help from a higher source, I gave it another go – this time consciously aware of any attempts at justification and more willing to see each inventory item for what it is and as it is presented to me initially. 5,4,3,2,1 ignition, blast-off! As the inventory items flowed, I made notes and chose to embrace them and be grateful for the opportunity to see them for what they are because by doing so I was becoming AWARE. I realized that I had just stumbled on to the next discovery. Discovery #7 – By becoming aware of our weaknesses in their true form and as they actually are, we become empowered with conscious choice and consequently the ability to convert our weaknesses into our strengths. As we honestly inventory each scenario associated with the demon or weakness at hand, we become aware of its reality and we are now in a position that we can no longer ignore or justify it. We have to choose each time we are presented with a scenario where each item applies whether or not we will allow it to continue a weakness or become a strength and a pillar in our character. Back to the example of my work ethic – when faced with a life scenario where the ability to slack off, take off early, engage in non-work related tasks etc., being now fully aware of that tendency as a result of my inventory sessions, I now have to make a conscious choice. With the awareness of the weakness square in my face, I get to choose one of two roads. Initially I had labeled my choices “the high road” and “the low road” but I soon realized that part of free-agency, choice and non-judgment is the fact that neither road is of any stature – merely a choice associated with a particular demon. This brought me to my next discovery. Discovery #8 – Choice point works at all ends of the equation. What I mean is that I can eliminate in this case the hypocrisy 2 ways. I can choose to engage in activities that are compatible with my claims of work ethic, make a weakness a strength, and eliminate the hypocrisy. I can also choose to change my statement regarding my position on the matter and eliminate the hypocrisy just the same. The danger here is that of falling into the justification vicious cycle, but the option is always there. Another thing I discovered is that anyone can justify anything – and we all do because it is so easy and it feels so good. Our ego loves justification and utterly detests facing demons so it will always require a lot more effort to brave the dark and return successfully than to go in and come out feeling warm and fuzzy. Discovery #9 – Success in confronting our demons feels a lot like being bestowed knighthood in the nude. A lot of power with a fair sense of vulnerability vs. the warm and fuzzy feeling of justification that makes us think we were successful. One of the virtues of the legendary Knights of the Round Table was humility in power and it is no different on our own quest for the grail of personal growth and enlightenment. So, here I am at this point of discovery feeling battle torn, tired, emotionally drained and like I could sleep for a year strait and yet somehow invigorated by the same process that chewed me up and spit me out so many times. As I look ahead, I realize I don’t have time to sleep because I have only looked at one of a myriad of demons. I also realize that the conversion process from weakness to strength is in the ongoing choices I make every day of my life. It just becomes a habit eventually allowing me to move to the next demon. Line upon line, precept on precept - one demon at a time. So, am I a master of demons? Nope - I’m not. But I sure feel better about how to approach them. Am I consistent in my approach? Not yet, but I’m working on it. Does that make me a hypocrite for stating my discoveries before I master them – I guess so – technically yes. But that brings us to a whole new topic – Judgment to be tackled another day. I have felt more fear inside myself than anywhere else on earth and I have seen ugliness I don’t care to share. I have shed more tears figuring this out over the past few weeks than I’m used to and I have found a dark place that my ego protects with its life that is draining mine. And yet I’m happier than I was yesterday, I love myself more than I did 3 weeks ago and I feel stronger than I did before I had my ass handed to me so many times. I’m actually looking forward to more of the same. Am I a hypocrite? Yes I am - We all are. But as long as we are actively changing that, the adjective is just a poison in our vocabulary that will only highlight judgment as it issues forth from our dark Moria and the sad realm of our ego. I say we love it, change it and move on. Peace & Love Dave Moreno