Chapter 03 - Viagnostic

Our perceptions fill in the cracks in the walls that delineate our world, but our beliefs form the maps we read to navigate through life. Many of these beliefs are unspoken assumptions we make without knowing that we have made them. They operate beneath what we consciously think we know as unquestioned truths that we fail to challenge like the flawless reasoning we unwisely declare in our partitioned minds. While we rely on our preconceived notions derived from our prior experience to shape our judgments and make critical decisions, they also trap us like unsuspecting test subjects running through a multidimensional maze unaware of its true depth. Hence, if we cannot expand our consciousness outside of ourselves, our stories cannot evolve to be our own. We become characters in a story already written for us, or worse, a story we mistakenly think we are writing and directing.

We are engaged in a game we do not know we are playing. This is not a game of chance or a competitive tournament, but a diversion from our illusions that assures us of our unconstrained awareness and that dismisses the faults in our understanding. We partake in a virtual recreational space that abandons our deeper search for significance and replaces it with uninhibited entertainment and professional preoccupation as we aim to secure a higher rung on our social ladder. While the elasticity of our beliefs can accommodate other important aspects of life, most of our convictions block our intimate access to the sincere and untainted meaning we seek in our lives. And the more tenacious they appear, the more fragile we are because like an almost imperceptible gust of wind breezing through a house of cards, it is the most invisibly subtle event that can tear down the wall frame of our reality if that alleged reality is not founded on a vigilant openness to the truth.

However, the more we examine our existence, the more intricate we realize that it is. While there is an elegant simplicity that we assume underlies the density of life, there is a mutually supporting relationship between the complexity it unveils and the analysis it invites; this relationship creates a conundrum where the more we attempt to oversimplify or categorize our understanding of our world, the more complicated it becomes. If we want to break free of this tendency, we need to let the convoluted events we encounter grow into discernible patterns to be understood rather than try to dissect them into worthless pieces that tell us nothing on their own. Otherwise, reality becomes overwhelming the more we perceive the necessity to know or control everything in our narrowly defined universe that constantly changes and expands despite our best efforts to contain it. Even the useful tools we manage to carve out of our inventiveness must originate from and integrate with the environment to which we adapt to at least appear that we rule our own lives.

Life is undoubtedly a perplexing voyage through space and time, but its difficulties vary based on our individual sets of circumstances as well as on our inclination to identify and grasp the multiple dimensions of reality that define the boundaries of our being as we seek stability in our chaotic world. Our consciousness lives in a labyrinth whose perception is guided by what we think we know rather than by what we do not comprehend. This poses a major dilemma because we cannot become aware of what we believe we already understand. Since we are generally uncomfortable with what does make sense to us, we need a foundation or a narrative to give us the faith we require to deal with the unknown. Unfortunately, as the self seeks that elementary story of the truth, it is steadily fed a succession of tales to survive endlessly circular tracks of assumptions that repeatedly return us back to ourselves because we too are a kind of fallacy. We are not who we think we are or in control of what we think that might be, but we are seduced by the possibilities of our powers and lured into an elaborate grid of cerebral roadways that can either illuminate a hopeful path to discovery or trap us in a maddening web of addiction. This largely depends on what we learn to pursue in life. Do we follow the commonly established course of others, or chase the oddly familiar scent of something unknown? Do we only crave the calm of our uniformity, or are we eager to break the silence of our routine? But more importantly, do we act on what we think we want, or search for what we truly need?

It is natural that we all seek to attain some value, but many of us struggle to uncover what that really means. We fumble through life in search of this indeterminate appeal to our spirit that tends to depart from our base nature every time we try to define it. For instance, when many of us insistently hunt for the success of stature and wealth as our core desire, we leave behind a trail of destructive consumption that suppresses the forethought we have to conserve, sow or restore. This easily occurs when we are devoured by an obsession with dominance as leaders or followers and where meaning is restricted to our superiority or the delusional threat of others. Such fixation inflames us with a hunger to drive the story for the sake of the story or for the sake of a belief and neglects why the narrative is required. The story serves to find the truth, not to validate what we already believe it is. Like the self, it becomes a means to its own end where the purpose of the journey is clouded by our misguided sense of its destination and where the roles we play are confused with our essence. We are not the characters we portray as much as our characters help us depict and express who we really are.

We conjured up stories and identities to overcome our boredom, justify our importance or explain the trajectory of our lives, but some of us remain unappeased. We are encumbered by restlessness and an insatiable thirst to find a stage on which to unveil our potential. Since it is the fundamental recognition of being stranded on an island of consciousness that generates misery and drags us into the prison of our dissatisfaction, many of us unconsciously seek blissful ignorance over feelings of being confined, caged or controlled that trigger fear and discontent. But despite our cultural submissiveness, we do not want the world to dictate our lives. Hence, we like to assume the path we take is always our own even if we generally elect to trace that of another as we follow in the footsteps of our ancestors. It is inherent to finding meaning in the stories we live.

However, in order for us to direct some minimal course of our journey, we must comprehend at least three things about the labyrinth of our minds that separates our souls from our bodies and that ignites the search for their unity. The first thing we need to appreciate is that the goal is not simply to find its exit. It is actually to recognize who we really are in the process of roaming through its partially lit corridors. Secondly, we cannot understand its intent until we realize that we ourselves represent the labyrinth, and we are only trapped in it by letting our assumptions play against us. Finally, we should refrain from limiting the possibilities of our discovery to one plane of consciousness. It is important that we perceive it as being composed of many layers if we wish to escape our own psychic incarceration and resist being indoctrinated by others.

THE MULTIPLE LAYERS OF THE NARRATIVE

History carries forward stories from ancient cultures regarding higher levels of awareness and states of being, but most of us live as if there is simply one plane of existence and one corresponding storyline to follow. We may even accept the presence of multiple planes, but we tend to treat them as being beyond our reach at least until we die. But while some among us believe we can bypass this barrier through deep meditative practices with chanting and prayer or through drug-induced religious experiences with awe-inspiring effects, none of this speaks to the multiple layers of the viagnostic narrative as another key assumption. Although few of us consciously function along all of these layers, we are capable of perceiving the world on multiple levels that unveil the greater narrative of life. It is this depth and expansion of awareness that permits us to derive meaning from our sentient existence.

Our stories operate on multiple levels of meaning with or without our awareness, but their evolution does depend on our consciousness, which ranges from not knowing that we are in a labyrinth to realizing the multifarious nature of our fates. Each level of awareness enables us to derive the meaning that corresponds to a particular layer of the viagnostic narrative. But there are three distinct tiers we need to relate to one another in order to appreciate their significance. In the first tier, our story is prescribed to us and this is demonstrated immediately in every moment of being so immersed in playing our parts in the story that we assume it is real. We follow the script and recite our lines believing that we are the people we play. We live life like a movie we have seen before as if we basically know what is going to happen or what is likely to occur. The second tier reveals itself when we realize that we are merely playing a part or choosing a role in a story intertwined with many other roles and stories. We see the script as one we can change and believe we have the autonomy to change the direction of our story or influence others. It is only partially true because we do not realize that we are playing the equivalent of a video game. The parameters are set for us to compete and compare, but we never realize where the limits are set. Since this model of the world is so complex, we are convinced it is a contest that some of us believe we can win while others believe that it is rigged for us to lose. The final tier reflects an implicit knowledge that the role or roles we play are part of a larger narrative beyond our own and those of others. It is this awareness that enables us to see the truth behind our fictional stories, which are designed to trick us into believing that we are more aware than we really are.

We are only able to attain enlightenment when we function simultaneously on all three levels to let our stories fit into a greater story, and it is up to us to navigate our narrative towards the universal truth as we tune to the same frequency across all layers of our consciousness. It stops being a competitive game and begins to resemble playing a piece of music to dance in synchrony with life. When we are engaged in this integrated state, it affords us the opportunity to live a true viagnostic narrative, where we can instinctively shift from one level to another. In the first level, we act unwittingly where we simply become our roles in life without escaping the drama in which we work and play. In the second, we act intentionally with the knowledge that it is a game in which we pretend to play in order to achieve our goals, which can include wanting to perform on stage or in a film. But on the third plane of awareness and tier of our story, we act genuinely in that we know it is an act, but we participate like we are performing in a theatre with the purpose of living life to know life. All three tiers respectively represent the deferential, influential and existential ways in which we live through our stories, but it is entirely up to each of us to determine which levels of awareness we can or wish to sustain.

FOLLOWING THE DEFERENTIAL PATH OF LIFE

The first and most common level of awareness relates to the deferential layer of the narrative. This layer expresses the critical struggle to survive or to serve the function of life, which seeks pleasure and endures pain long enough to ensure its continuity. All stories at this level involve the gathering, consumption, production and transferring of resources as part of the fundamental process of living. Some of us might treat this as a sacrificial layer as well in that most stories involve one generation sacrificing for the next. This very much supports the traditional cycle of life, where sacrifices are made to preserve the family bloodline and the communal gene pool.

Since this is an elementary level of the narrative, it is seen as following the deferential path of life that is laid out for us biologically and ecologically as well as culturally, which includes both religious and secular traditions of living. There is a kind of simplicity to this layer where the focus is on perpetuating a pleasant and secure existence in response to a rough and unstable reality that is always waiting to disturb the balance we seek in a magical world that is full of excitement and free of paralyzing terror and misfortune. It is the natural dream of all children that we secretly hope to realize as adults.

However, this layer may also be treated as superficial insofar as we live on the surface of life, and do not feel the need to question or study it. Questioning is reserved for the judgment of others. It is not fake or pretentious, but rather a legitimate ignorance of ourselves accompanied by an overt rejection of introspection and any preoccupation with worldly matters. Instead, our concerns are proximate in nature, especially as they relate to basic needs and relationships. But it is deferential because it reflects both a submissive and respectful approach towards life in that there is an appreciation for living. As the base layer of existence, it also encompasses all of our experience with memories that can be both comforting and traumatic as we recall the adventure of our lives.

This deferential life conveys an overall reverence for the greater power of the universe as seen in the forces of nature, which some of us believe is the omnipotence of God. Although it is generally an unquestioning state, it is contrastingly accepting of the world because it is a life of submission, which removes the need for questioning as long as life affords us the opportunities to be fulfilled by its simple pleasures. This even extends to general submission to authority as long as that authority facilitates a fair distribution of wealth. This layer can remain adequately undisturbed if these basic conditions are met, which explains why many of us will easily embrace conventional practices in living an adequate life.

The narrative at this level speaks to those of us who just want to live. We naturally seek to be at peace with our surroundings, and we voluntarily comply with legally enforceable rules and conform to social norms in order to gain the mutual benefits of group cohesion. There is no need to question things unless we routinely fail to prosper from these societal arrangements or we no longer have the minimum reassurance of a reasonably equitable and just system because others are able to break with traditions and contracts, both personally and professionally, without consequence. But even if we see early and prolonged signs of corruption and waywardness, as long as we experience the basic welfare and liberty to which we believe we are entitled, the general tendency is not to think about life since life already keeps us quite preoccupied, and questioning it only disrupts the peace and harmony of following the painted path. We are also inclined to show deference to a pre-established or customary way of life, especially one that promotes a communal sense of living. For many of us, adhering to a set course is perceived as a form of freedom because it eliminates any obligation to examine it. It seems that we instinctually grasp the irony of how thinking freely can enmesh us in unresolvable analysis about why we do what we do and risk adding confusion or doubt to our lives.

Being deferential is a simpler way to live, but the danger for those of us who are only aware at this level is that we are easily influenced regardless of our intelligence. We are not necessarily good or bad, but we can be persuaded to do good or bad deeds because we always believe our actions are committed justly, or excused as being habitually normal. There is also a propensity for placing diligence and respect in high regard and publicly praising the expression of such values, which seems hypocritical given what transpires behind closed doors may not reflect these applauded and celebrated qualities. Many of us, but far more than most would like to admit, could be persuaded with unsurprisingly little effort to be secretly disloyal because we have hidden desires that can be exploited, and the possible exposure of our contradictory beliefs and actions can lead us to demonize those who know or cause us to know the truth. The implied security we attain from conformity comes at the cost of wants we consciously suppress and tendencies we unconsciously inhibit. But if promises made at this level of our narrative end with our expectations being relatively unmet compared to what is repressed or sacrificed, then we might plunge into the dark waters of someone else’s sordid story to find alternative means of meeting our needs using the disparagement of others as a justification. If we do not find ourselves advancing with the herd, if we do not feel on par with others and if we cannot secure a higher standing for our offspring, then we stop following our preprogrammed narrative, and we come face-to-face with the person we no longer recognize in the mirror. We each become a self-appointed judge of our social sphere while withdrawing to a shell of our former self.

As the world we inhabit becomes more technologically integrated to the point of manifesting a fictional universe, we are gradually drawn into a simulated existence where we become the movie rather than partaking in the stage play. Our lives are acted out for us as they are morphed into a virtual experience. The physical struggle that made living our traditional narrative purely at the deferential level has given way to an artificially independent life that has almost imperceptibly diminished our capacity to have a genuine story to tell. Our consciousness is confronted with a crisis of faith in its discernment of reality, and it is obliged to hide its true will in the fantasy of its influences.

A DETERMINED SELF IN SEARCH OF INFLUENTIAL VALUE

At the second level of our awareness, there is a transition from the basic drive to live to an ambition or determination to gain power over ourselves, others and/or the world. The struggle to survive transforms into a struggle to influence in a very progressive manner. This is the influential layer of the narrative, where our roles are perceived as a means to an end because we are primarily concerned with having an impact or being effective in some way. The story revolves around what is accomplished from the point of view of the agent. It often turns intensely competitive, which can shift the focus of this awareness to our relative position in the world. Convincing claims and rationalizations are provided for the choices we make and the actions we take, but they are ultimately geared towards bettering our circumstances. The deferential layer is still operating above the influential stratum as our most basic and explicit motivation, but it predominantly reveals the necessity of our actions and not our deeper desires behind what we do because our stories want to be about more than just surviving and living.

Those of us who function at this level are neither better nor worse than those who operate primarily along the first. We simply dream of escaping a repetitive existence and fantasize about some expression of impact. This implies that some of us would be equally satisfied with the illusion of advancement that only sees the foot that moves forward and never the other that steps back. Nevertheless, a line of progression is drawn away from an undesirable life to define a story whose outcome has yet to be determined as obstacles present themselves and derail our plans. While we are always faced with limits, obstructions only materialize when we choose a destination because until a goal is defined, there is nothing to achieve and no impediment to overcome.

Awareness of the influential layer of our story tends to persuade us to believe that we have a greater consciousness of life than those tied to a deferential existence, but this can be grossly misjudged if we are not cognizant of functioning on both levels. When we operate within the influential domain, we are prompted to be ambitious in some way and there is an expectation to have a much more striking impact on the world that involves taking on the most difficult challenges that require a significant investment of time and resources. However, the basic needs of life do not disappear when we profess to have higher aspirations, which is why we cannot avoid life-altering decisions and compromises that regularly test our physical, emotional and moral health. We may even find ourselves unable to cope with basic realities while attempting to surpass the boundaries of an ordinary existence because we lack the self-awareness to see how our blind pursuits can interfere with making the best of the lives we are afforded. Sometimes, we do not see how much we are blessed or fail to appreciate the influence we already have or had on the world because we are fixated on preconceived notions of achievement, which may include the problems we have solved but overlook the ones we managed to prevent. Once again, our assumptions and expectations become barriers to our broader consciousness. This is beautifully demonstrated in the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life [3], where the lead character George Bailey has the great fortune to discover the impact he has had on so many people he has helped and appreciate the people who have made his life worth living. He is unknowingly granted the opportunity to realize this just when he reaches the point of fundamentally questioning the relevance of his life. The impact we have along with the good we create can be found in a determined self in search of influential value through every action we take and every relationship we nurture.

Many of us who venture into this layer fall into either one of two mindsets. There are those of us who seek the opportunity to take advantage of others who follow the rules or traditions of life to enrich our own fortunes. We are generally consumed by a desire for power that drives us to be extremely persuasive or charismatic, and we may even lie, cheat and/or apply intimidation tactics at some point to accomplish this with the constant risk of causing harm to others. This means that we will tend towards being very superficial in that we pretend to be something we are not to meet a purely self-serving interest unlike those of us who mimic behaviour as a form of adherence. While many of us who behave in this ostentatious manner manage to remain convincing and maintain our deception, given enough time, we will eventually be caught or swindled by someone else playing the same game. However, the other mindset is aspirational in nature and very much focused on achieving something great. Those of us in this camp seem to have our lives call out to us to make our mark on the world, whether it is through a technological breakthrough or a political movement. We are, like the first group, attached to a need for power whether it is to be used for the good of others or to meet our own goals. The difference is that there is a sense of going against the odds that makes success infinitely more significant than playing the odds. This can range from trying to captivate the most unattainable mate to challenging or changing the paths of other people’s lives. It can involve getting our potential partners to notice us or to see us differently, or perhaps finding an audience and building a demand for the products and services we offer. It is all about determining a way or creating a new means to an old end that either generates a specific and growing appeal or changes an aspect of our known universe.

Not surprisingly, many of us fail to achieve a desired outcome or an outcome of any significance. We enter into this realm of possibility only to feel stunted or inadequate as individuals. This is exacerbated by popular culture that divides us into winners and losers, where there are very few winners and the losers are those who try but fail repeatedly. The rest of us are followers as the promoters of narrowly defined success or the insignificant who neither follow nor attempt to compete in the arenas of our socially determined evaluation. Unfortunately, this leads us to either misguidedly strive for the things that do not matter to us or to kill our aspirations as our will is diminished to the point where we return to the deferential layer and endure a truly superficial life for those of us who were never taught the difference between humility and humiliation.

Failure can be a blessing if it helps us to confront the arrogance and pettiness of the human ego. Unfortunately, success or the desperation to sustain success leads us down a dark alley of immoral acts or to the tragic conclusions of self-inflicted harm, or worse, harm to everyone else. The real tragedy lies with our whole culture where our dispassionate response to negative outcomes reveals our belief that responsibility rests only with a failed agent and not the rest of the community. We do not accept or share in the blame for the outcome of events or actions of others, and by extension, we treat the lack of overt desire to initiate efforts towards socially recognized ambitions as evidence of worthlessness. This is what drives so many of us to engage in inconsequential behaviour that contributes very little as we develop stories reflective of a largely unconscious society.

However, some of us also seek to challenge ourselves in ways that are not deemed relevant by a society that defends and encourages hierarchies, especially when our behaviour seems to dismiss or disrespect our place in the socioeconomic echelons of our civilization, where worth is measured by how many steps we climb or descend. Setting goals that ignore the socially accepted order of our value is considered heresy primarily because the vast majority of us work so diligently and sometimes unscrupulously to attain our relative rank. While many among us do not seem driven or ambitious because we simply want to live, we find equally as many who are compelled to succeed at something due to a debilitating fear of failure. Nevertheless, there are those among us who are striving for something deeper, something that cannot be satisfied by merely living or achieving success. It is an entirely different sense of awareness that brings the possibility of life in much closer contact with the inevitability of death, and incites the existential angst of complete consciousness that finds the rift between meaningfulness and meaninglessness because in that rift lies an indeterminate significance. It is in this fissure where our will frees itself from the programming that suppresses it, and it is here where the self begins to grasp the sense of depth to life.

THE EXISTENTIAL MEANING OF A GREATER WILL

Most of us avoid asking profound questions because we fear a weighty sense of emptiness pulling us down and waiting to engulf us. And yet some of us fortunately or unfortunately seem to dive into the abyss sensing something unseen or intangible that houses the universal truth, but which is only accessible through the viagnostic narrative if we can transcend our deepest fears and darkest impulses. We are drawn simultaneously away and towards this apparently unapproachable void, which we intuitively know is not truly empty except in the way that we physically comprehend the nature of being. We can feel its presence in the silence of our thoughts, but it is not like seeing ghosts or talking to the dead. It is like realizing that we are all asleep or dreaming through the course of our lives and engaging reality in a lost or forgotten state. This is because life is broadcasting to us the need to wake up or stay awake long enough to recognize what we already know before the transmission of its underlying message is jammed once again and we unwittingly return to our programmed existence.

The familiar, but less common tendency to focus on a deeper meaning to life ascends from the strange awareness of our own consciousness. This is not simply the experience of being self-aware and behaving like conscious observers. It requires us to stimulate and exercise our mental capacity for discerning the basis of our thoughts and feelings in order to unleash our will rather than fight our disposition or mistakenly assume our behaviour is the result of our volition. This means that we can contemplate our contemplations and interpret our interpretations. It is the meta-consciousness of our consciousness, and there is no end to the degrees of cognitive oversight we can apply. However, this faculty does expose us to the risk of being stuck in a maddening and counterproductive process from which there is no valuable insight to uncover. It is not the quantity, but the quality of our awareness that determines the outcome of our explorations and examinations. Hence, when we honestly question our lives, we open ourselves up to a higher or deeper awareness of existence. Instead of losing our way as most of us fear, we find our path in the essential meaning of our stories.

This purity of consciousness, which some of us discover, falls within the existential layer of the narrative. It is here where we truly derive meaning by tapping into our essence. The more sincerely we approach the universal truth, the more genuine the meaning we attain. This requires a substantial personal commitment to greater principles that often translate to physical and emotional costs depending on the cultural maturity of our adopted societies. To suffer through life without knowing why we suffer is to suffer without meaning or without knowing what we can do to compensate for its inevitability. But when we willingly suffer, it is done with purpose like when we make sacrifices for our loved ones. Suffering fits hand in glove with principle when it reveals a greater truth. For instance, we may never appreciate the true meaning of love without enduring the agony of our loss or the sentence of our devotion. It is the undesired gift offered by our anguish when our actions are pure, and which we only receive after our pain subsides and we experience an irreversible change. It is through this enlightened state of transformation that we integrate all three layers of meaning that accompany our narratives. Our interpretation of pain changes as we directly perceive the significance of our actions measured against the personal consequences we tolerate. The genuine understanding and application of the principles we learn overshadow any benefit that we may also personally hope to gain. When we see how the outcomes of our spiritually motivated actions have little bearing on the choices we make, we begin to realize the existential meaning of a greater will.

However, this does not mean that we have to suffer to find meaning. We encounter meaningful things in our interactions with our environment and with others such as our partners and our children. We have a capacity for appreciation that ensures this without having to undergo heartbreak and misfortune in our lives. Yet tragedy does serve to strengthen a principled life as we foster a deeper relationship with the world, with others and with the self. For many of us, it may seem like a dangerous place to be if we do not have or are unable to develop the fortitude to see it through and realize what it truly means. But for those of us who find the courage and resilience to withstand it, we are blessed with experiencing a profoundly spiritual awakening. When we can access the deepest layer of meaning in our narrative where our encounters with the superficial convert into an awareness of the false self, we can finally strip away our blind pretensions and comparative identities to manifest the essence of who we knew we were as children.

There are undoubtedly charlatans among us who pretend or presume to have achieved a higher existential consciousness than the rest of us, but who really operate at the influential level by drawing in the disenchanted and disenfranchised from the deferential class of the living. When we cannot see beyond the fleeting gratification we gain from convincing or fooling others as we deliberately or unknowingly denigrate them enough to promote our own false sense of superiority, our own stories become as contrived as our manipulations and only ever become footnotes in the tragedies suffered by those who were sincere in pursuing meaningful narratives. Personal insignificance serves as our punishment the more we fear it or try to bypass the realities of life through dominance, escapism and a variety of socially condoned and rejected addictions. This includes disguising ourselves within a culturally or spiritually enlightened hierarchy as we engage in mindfulness exercises or any activity that projects our alleged maturity as an affirmative sign of our higher well-being. And while we may have much to gain from meditation and traditional practices like yoga, which have observable psychophysical health benefits and can act as conduits for our spiritual freedom, we cannot live our lives and progress our stories forward by remaining in meditative states. Our stories will ultimately need to grow out of our shame or conceit so that we may be afforded the opportunity to unlearn what we misunderstood, to remember what we have forgotten and to discover for what and for whom we are willing to struggle. Meaning is not found in our quest to appear perfect, but in actualizing our potential hidden in the dark chasm of our imperfections, individually and collectively, as a profound expression of the truth.

BUILDING UPON THE NEXT

Descending to the depth of our narratives may involve asking why something happens or why we behave the way that we do and these questions could extend to the metaphysical basis or purpose of our existence, but there is nothing more fundamental to us than asking what really matters in the end. Although at times we risk being caught in the paralysis of our own recursive thoughts, it is in contemplating what genuinely matters that facilitates our approach to the universal truth because, at that level, it all converges onto the same truth we encounter throughout our lives and in every aspect of our lives. But this requires that we challenge our untouchable assumptions about life and question who we really are with the willingness to dive into the murky regions of our precious selves since most of our narratives are cover stories for the realities we do not want to face about ourselves and the lives we live. Depth is about reaching into the truth from which we are not exempt, and this can only be achieved individually through our own self-reflected awareness as we stare into the pond of life where all consciousness meets.

However, the self should not be confused with our essence. Instead, we should think of the self as being more like a conduit or an opening to the passage that leads to our essence. This means that while it may enable us to attain enlightenment, it also acts as a perceptual barrier that blocks the entrance to our awakening. The self is the determining factor in how we will perceive the stories we live and how we will convey their meaning. The self serves as the main character of our narrative whose meaning is described across three significant layers of life, and each layer represents a different level of consciousness tied to a different type of motivation and associated struggle. Hence, depending on the struggle we recognize and the character we choose to play, our narrative will take on different qualities of meaning. Many of us line ourselves up with only one layer, but some of us develop our stories along all levels of the viagnostic narrative with each layer building upon the next to attain a fully acknowledged life. How far, wide, high or deep we take this is contingent upon our inner sensitivity to the symbolic demonstrations of the outer world and the opportunities afforded to us through the relationships we are able to form with others and with nature. The external realm provides the raw materials for our inner province to shape into innumerable depictions of the invisible truth from which we pluck the fruits of our essence.

Many of us feel a constant need to escape because we are trapped inside ourselves like being submerged in freezing water trying to break through a sheet of ice to get to the surface. But beneath us is the uncertain answer to the unasked question of who we really are, and until we ask it, we will not realize that we are native to this cold, dark sea and equipped with gills that obtain life-affirming meaning from the fluid stories through which we swim. What we fear may seem to come from the outside, but we internalize almost everything to the point that we cannot distinguish between what is real and what is imagined or interpreted. Life is already complicated without adding more layers of reality that only exist in our minds, and this becomes increasingly dangerous the more of us share the same type of delusions. Our stories need us to extract their significance, but they only offer us the truth we are willing to explore and accept. Since much of that truth is tucked away in our inner nature entangled in our experiences and their unquestioned interpretations, we can never break away from our troubles. We are the enigma of our own lives and our narratives generate the jigsaw puzzle pieces we require to fit our mysterious elements together.

Our minds are not mazes to escape, but networks of corridors with mounted paintings on every wall for us to peruse and learn about who we really are against the background of life. These paintings are created based on signals from our surroundings, which we indirectly and often poorly receive. Over time, we overlay the pictures we acquire onto one another and distort their images to reflect any convenient notion of the truth or manufactured identity that protects against the madness of our own minds caught in the seductive beauty and inevitable cruelty of a sentient existence. We also redraw the maps of our world to accommodate the defenses we build to separate us from our perceived threats. A mind that is focused on escape looks for an exit and never sees an entrance. This is why we do not understand the labyrinth of our consciousness. We hurry to pass through it like life itself to get some reward at the end or rather before the end, which is to find some kind of salvation before we die.

Our psychic web is a journey because it grows with our experience. The cluster of events on the outside become stories on the inside as we attempt to weave them into a single integrated narrative in one all-encompassing world. When we realize that, it becomes clear that we can only solve this unsettling mystery by going through the process of discovery. There is neither a physical place or state to reach nor something material to attain. Instead, it is what we learn and express through how we live, and this will occur no earlier or later than when it needs to occur just as our stories must unfold in their own unique ways to represent some element of the truth. The narrative is the means through which this transpires; this makes appreciating all of its components important, which includes knowing the characters, their roles, their intentions and actions, and the lessons to be drawn from their outcomes. Our stories are the keys to unlocking the doors that open our lives because they are also the ones that close them. Every misaligned expectation with our experience signals distrust, and every gratifying seduction invites betrayal. We are caught in the uncertainty of an indeterminate existence that generates infinite paths and layers of narratives within which we must find our own.