Uncommon Sense
Chapter 7 & 8 Seize the Sword to be resurrected.
Uncommon sense is the result of a deeply personal search for truth. This journey is not without but within. To take this journey requires courage because what you are going to come face to face with, is more powerful than you could have ever imagined: you. It’s you against you. The search for truth is journey to answer a very basic question “who am I”.
In order to truly cultivate an Uncommon Sense we have to do the one thing that we may have spent our entire lives trying not to do, to let go of the ideal self, the person you think you are. The ideal self is the reflected “I”, the one we see reflected back at us from others. The reflected “I” is not real it is a shadow of the real thing. Without an awakening we believe that, this I that is reflected back, is real and without enlightenment we have no way to know it is not. In fact we believe this so completely that we will kill for it and die for it. We will spend our entire lives trying to protect, what is in fact a fleeting illusion, a thing to be pursued and never attained. In this way, we come to be strangers to ourselves and only know our reflection. We become embedded in the world beyond the looking glass, a matrix that we accept as reality. We dwell in this dream for so long that we find what is real strange and foreign to us.
When you came into the world your consciousness was not fully formed. The consciousness has to evolve in the field of time. A child is first becomes aware of what is outside of him. Our senses get information from outside. The mother’s breast is outside, the smell of her is outside, the taste of milk is outside. As you grow you become aware of your own body but this too is outside and it belongs to the world outside. When you were hungry, you felt the body; you ate and your need was satisfied then the awareness of the body goes away, until next time. You were given a name and this name was reflected back to you. What you become aware of is really what is reflected not who you are. You do not know what is making the reflection because you are not aware of who you are. You are only aware of others and what they think about you. If someone smiles in appreciation and you get hugs and kisses the body responds by feeling good therefore this you equate with feeling good about yourself, and vice versa. Now your identity forms itself based on what is reflected back at you and thus the ideal self is born.
The reflected “I”. This “I “ is not a real being. It is a program (/in NS a program refer to a collection of beliefs, states (attitudes) and behavioral patterns which have been compiled into an executable routine to “run” in a certain context or setting, where it can perform both automatic and interactive tasks with certain cues and so negotiate a benefit from the product of that interaction)/. It is a role that you have assumed from role-playing that comes complete with images, beliefs, smells, tastes, sounds and you can touch it. You learn the role from mirroring and matching others in your environment. There is a system of rewards and punishments in place to reinforce the role. There is an entire matrix, an ecosystem of shared beliefs and behaviors that create a socially constructed reality in which you now find yourself embedded. All you know is what others think about you or what is reflected back to you. Since this is your reality then the purpose of your existence is to feed this ideal self. You feed the need because you need to feed. The need you feed is a kind of hunger to feel something, feel loved, feel like you are in love, feel rich, feel important, feel special, feel appreciated, feel relaxed, feel worthwhile. Instinctively you believe that if you can feel it then it’s real. The reflected “I”, it is what you see of yourself when you look outside and what people reflect back to you.
Almost everything you learn to do, you do because you are trying to manipulate what is reflected back to you. You do that because it will determine how you feel. Since you believe how you feel matters then what people think about you become all that matters. Then you are locked in a loop. You are chasing the shadow of a thing and never coming face to face with the thing itself. It leads to a path of inevitable surprise. It doesn’t matter how many times you do it you are always surprised at the outcome. What you expect is unreasonable and irrational and you are at a complete loss as to understand why. You take the same action over and over and each time is expecting of a different result. You feel powerless to do anything about this. You then need relief from this sense of powerlessness and the loop begins again.
As your experience grows or the complexity in your mind increases however you reach a point where your consciousness develops where it is compelled to evolve. This is where you start to realize that the mime in the mirror cannot tell you who you are. You start to realize that there is something inherently wrong with your perception of reality.
The mind has a built in mechanism for evolving from the reflected “I” into an authentic “I”. It has a natural way to find itself. It starts the process by making the Call to begin adventure of the search for truth. It is a journey to discover what is making the reflection and thus find the answer to the question of “who am I.” No one can make you let go of the reflected “I”. Ironically it is your attachment to this delusion that is the source of all your suffering and it is the thing that keeps you from the path to your own becoming. The search for truth is journey to answer a very basic question “who am I”.
There is an authentic self and a reflected self. One is real and the other is a delusion. Discipline is the bridge between what is and what can be. Discipline requires courage. Courage is the quality of mind that enables one to face danger, fear, or vicissitudes with self-possession, confidence, and resolution. A vicissitude is a sudden or unexpected change or shift often encountered in one’s life, activities, or surroundings. Courage is a quality of mind, a quality that comes from an Uncommon Sense. Hebetude is something that while not inherent to human nature we inherit it and it is a propensity in human nature. Hebetude is a word that means mental sluggishness, inactivity, and apathy. If ignorance is the root of human suffering then hebetude is the soil. Human beings will go to any lengths to “not” do something. The only known cure for hebetude is discipline. Discipline is absolutely necessary for human progress. The only way to stop mimicking and to start being is to develop a discipline. You have to practice all that you do. You practiced very hard to do what you do now. The bad news is that it will take a lot of work to stop doing what doesn’t work and to start doing something else. The good news is that since you now know that you can be really great at something, after all you are are great at mimicking and feeding the ego, then you are almost guaranteed that if you make the effort you will be fantastic at being and living. The transformational power of spirituality is not about another world, it is about your relationship with yourself. It is a natural process to answer the question of who you are and a method for discovering the authentic self.
Uncommon Sense is a sense of things based on a more in-depth perception of that which is common to our experience. You are what is most common in your experience of life. You already possess the process to evolve your perception. You simply have to allow it to happen. If you think you can you are right. If you think you cannot then you are also right. But if you allow then you may discover that you are wrong and have been your whole life. Therefore it all comes down to one thing. What are you going to do with what you now know.
