Chapter 11: Uncovering the Crevice in Our Awareness

Each of us at some point in our lives, if not at multiple points, suffers a disquieting break from the tolerable norms of our reality. Whether it is tragic loss, invasive harm or intimate betrayal that may traumatically breach the emotive citadel of our minds, we discover that the world is no longer what it seemed to be or fails to behave in the manner in which we were taught to believe it would. Lured onto the narrow ledge of our circumstances, we face the imminent collapse of our belief system and way of life. We begin to apprehend that the lives we have led and the associated values we have supported may not align with who we really are. Moreover, we realize that we cannot articulate who we are and what we want because we do not possess the vocabulary we need to verbalize exactly what is missing or why we cannot flow with the current of life without considerable effort and unease. And as our energy depletes faster than we can replenish it, we concede our aimless and futile struggle that is reminiscent of a recurring nightmare where our legs become progressively heavier until we cannot move any further and ultimately feel powerless in our capacity to outrun the stealthy beast that hunts us.

When confronted with this mental siege, some of us find partial comfort in accepting a darker narrative about the world or about the people around us to externalize the cause of our undesired state and collective history. While many of us tend to internalize our problems as disorders, disabilities or deficiencies where we briefly or indefinitely perceive ourselves as the lone source of this weakness we sense in our confidence, our acquired addiction to blame and its attached guilt eliminate the possibility of faultless events. Regardless of whether we blame our own selves or the rest of the universe, we are afflicted with a moral sickness, where someone must always be responsible for a negative outcome. We have difficulty accepting the idea that things, especially unfavourable things, can simply transpire without attributing blame to a consciously sole cause. And although much of what does occur around us involves innumerable factors that we neither understand nor control as individuals or as societies, we deny ourselves the freedom to exist without the spectre of culpability hanging over our heads.

If we could just unlearn these tendencies and dispel with this absolute and singular sense of accountability, we might refrain from unconsciously engaging in self-deception, which we routinely apply to redirect responsibility to others and postpone any far-reaching investigation into ourselves. However, these purposeful distortions of our perceived reality, disguised as bits of wisdom, serve to deceive us into accepting the white lies of our long held beliefs about the practices we follow in order to deny the deeper truth found in the dark emptiness of a sentient existence that awaits us all. Most of us have an innermost acquaintance with this feeling, which we probably recognize from our childhood when we imagined monsters lurking in the night ready to devour us in pursuit of our meaningless annihilation. All lifeforms eventfully succumb to the deaths they evade. Yet as self-conscious beings, we learn to circumvent the great void and ward off evil spirits through the stories and rituals that our families and communities frequently recited to convince us that we would be granted safe passage through our cosmic journey. But this was contingent upon how well we behaved in accordance with the expectations of an omnipresent being or a phantom organization that has us all individually under constant moral surveillance.

Although our narratives narrowly and tentatively give us a measure of tranquility, the deeper question of meaning remains unanswered. It sits silently in the shadows of our consciousness while we are distracted by the daily preoccupations of our livelihoods and the boisterous discourse over our relative self-importance that have inspired countless self-serving beliefs that we mix and match as we casually drop them into our sociocultural shopping carts. With a litany of philosophies on life available to us, we can choose and modify any of them to align with our personal branding and social identity. There is not a single stone left unturned when it comes to finding an outlook that we can overlay onto our thoughts to interpret life in a way that reinforces the attitudes we already have towards the world, other people and ourselves. We are so inundated by an endless array of misinformation that seems almost naturally packaged to market a dangerous set of fallacies used to rescue us from immediate suffering only to perpetuate the kind of life that we do not really want. But these hypnotic thoughts masquerading as consciously crafted opinions endure because we obtain an acceptable degree of what we desire that is enough to simply not question anything below the surface of our portrayed maturity.

The power of a belief is more important than its validity because it helps to frame our world so that we feel sufficiently confident to maneuver within it, especially when the truth is not easily accessible. Beliefs fill the gaps in our perceived reality and augment our body of knowledge so that we are not perturbed by any anomalies that may challenge our mental map of the known universe. But while beliefs are necessary, they are also precarious. They expectedly consist of many mistruths and inconsistencies, and they should be questioned when they reach the limit of their value. Although we can undoubtedly extend their cultural life expectancy through persuasive rationalizations to climb to the summit of their verity, we will only ultimately descend into the pit of our own deception and ignorance, where we undergo the disheartening, but essential experience of disillusionment. It is the process of uncovering the crevice in our awareness needed for our narrative to detach from others and their stories enough to become our own.

THE CREVICE OF THE NARRATIVE

The crevice is a reminder of the illusion and falsehood of our beliefs. It represents the moment when we come to realize what we had believed so categorically and everlastingly might not really be true and why we hopelessly struggle to change our seemingly unbreakable patterns. We unveil the extent of our entrenched programming that runs our lives and prevents us from actualizing who we really are. However, the crevice also signifies the deeply hidden fear of the great unknown that many of us ultimately try to avoid. It is the terror we associate with falling into the darkness of imperceptible stimuli and ceasing to exist, or worse, being trapped forever in meaninglessness and with no freedom from or control over anything. Nevertheless, the third phase of the viagnostic narrative is about discovering and confronting this obscure gap in our fundamental awareness of life. The crevice of the narrative is the inevitable part of our story that we cannot fill or cross until we acknowledge its existence. This is where we reluctantly face the illusion of our contrived lives. And it is here where we must make a critical decision either to plunge forward into a foreign region of reality and of the psyche to attain what we cannot guarantee will result in a resolute expression of who we genuinely are, or to slide back to the familiar womb of our fictitious security and assigned identity.

We think of this as the conflicted phase because our entire frame of reality comes into question and we find ourselves in dispute with others and particularly with ourselves as our experience challenges our own delusions about the world and how we define the self. Our exposure to duplicity or treachery frequently precedes this fracture in our worldview with our anxiety turning into outward rage or implosive isolation. We do not want to move forwards or backwards, fearful of stepping on another mnemonic landmine that triggers the tremors of our darkest moments. We are afraid to attack, but too ashamed to retreat. Pride and cowardice collide with no residual humility to see beyond our predicament where we are in the centre of nowhere, or where we are anywhere except where we really want to be. For some, this approaches the state of being suicidal. Our hope to escape suffering, or to spark the drive needed to alleviate the sensation of suffering, is drained from our metaphorical hearts. We feel that our spirit is broken or absent, and we find ourselves inert in the vacuum of a soulless death.

It is common for us to mistakenly think that when we reach the crevice, it is because we are somehow dysfunctional. Something is wrong with us, and we are not able to keep up with the rest of the world. But that only occurs when we are unable to realize that most other people are having the exact same difficulty and unable to admit this to anyone as well. We are afraid to acknowledge our sense of incongruence with life and society, where our constantly emerging reality no longer aligns with our instilled expectations. It is built into our nature as an overprotective safety measure to inhibit us from contemplating the great leap across the deep chasm, where the risk of our interminable irrelevance awaits. Consequently, many of us return to the current repeatedly because it is easier to go with the flow and keep ourselves preoccupied. And while that is what we all must do to live, it is not enough to develop our story and unearth the true meaning of our existence.

We cannot be taught how to endure the emptiness of life because it is something that we have to experience in the moment as a chance occurrence to confront it. It is like trying to prepare or train for a sudden and unexpected brush with death. We experience the great void with nothing in that instance to fill it, whether it is facing the loss of a loved one, the end of a significant relationship or a dramatic change in our livelihood. And like contemplating the prospect of dying, we come to either see the inherent value of life or question its purpose, especially when our whole worldview enters into an unpleasant state of complete doubt. Many of us find the courage to rebuild and start over again. And although a rediscovered trust in the possibilities of the universe can sometimes elicit this mettle, genuine meaning only arises if we come to terms with what reality is urging us to understand. By expanding our consciousness, we find the insight needed to decode a more profound narrative to develop beyond being a basic chronicle of our pain, grief and disappointment, or even a memoir of our joys and achievements.

Many of us are locked in the current indefinitely to make it to or through the crevice because the crevice only represents our death as it does to most living creatures. But death can be expressed in a number of different forms. The most basic and direct is tied to our mortality. We biologically die and we are physically absent from the stories of others as our own narrative comes to end. Another form exists as unconsciousness. We may remain physically alive, but we roam the earth without our own spirit. We either lose or never fully acquire self-awareness. Our lives become completely programmed, and we are morally unresponsive to our own actions. Some of us are seemingly born this way or have it immediately instilled in us, but the rest of us may experience a third form of death, where we fall into the crevice and figuratively lose our minds. This is death by temporary or perpetual insanity. Our sense of self is split from the so-called real world because we continually contend with an extremely uncooperative reality that eventually leads us to believe that it is outside of our control and we are completely incapable of influencing it or we exist separately from it and live in a world of our own. This affliction affects an increasing number of us who interact with a simulated environment that mimics reality and yet buffers us from it. Some of us may even feel that it is personally monitoring our individual lives and interfering with our wishes, but it is only the underlying narrative of life known to our repressed souls trying to push us through the crevice so that we may awaken from the current and realize our true path.

However, this is the great fear among us who begin to detach ourselves from the world. We can become too isolated from life while too removed from the shadowy memories of our traumas. We hide in the cracks of our beliefs and latch onto accepted patterns of behaviour that draw attention away from perceptions we do not share with others. For some of us, we simply cannot find a way to live in a fabricated world in the company of those who are unaware or never bother to question it or only do so when they are unhappy for an extended duration. A few of us will challenge our adopted culture to broaden our awareness in order to see both the positive and the negative rather than filter out one or the other, and we do this by learning how to unplug from the world without complete detachment.

We have the capacity to see that there is a greater story, or at least to recognize that the story we are living is a fallacy. But for reasons that are not always clear, many of us can neither return to the current nor see past the crevice. We remain in limbo. We are caught in a hollow purgatory for the falsely accused already suffering from unwarranted abuse and unable to find the escape hatch. Yet the crevice is not there to evoke terror or hostility. Despite the immense difficulty that so many of us experience during this part of the viagnostic narrative, the crevice is the universal gift of awareness. The disillusionment we undergo can turn tragedy into an opportunity for enlightenment and finding the developmental springboard we need to ascend from this existential fissure and close the gap in our global outlook on life. We do not have to travel far to achieve this. We do not have to travel at all. The answer lies within us, but it requires that we let ourselves sink into the darkness of its depth. We have to let go and submit to its reality by learning to trust nature and the universe when we are most inclined to believe that it has failed us and we cannot endure its humiliation any further.

THE PASSAGE TO ENLIGHTENMENT

It is not uncommon for us to convert our undisclosed fears into personal assaults against a very impersonal world. We are not unlike wild animals forced to lash out in defense when we are trapped in a corner with no easy means of escape. When we are prevented from fleeing our own predicaments, we redirect the energy locked deep inside our apprehension to attack anyone and anything we associate with disturbing the uninvited guests that inconspicuously occupy hidden rooms in the abandoned estate of our conscience. Our conscience is the part of us that discerns what is right or wrong whether it is regarding ethics or truth in general. And these cerebral trespassers represent revelations of the incongruence in our belief, perception and reason as they relate to the claims we make about the world, the views of ourselves and the real outcomes of our actions coupled with their underlying intents. As we become aware of the limited choices we have and opportunities we can find in the situations we face, we also illuminate the conflicts in our values that cause tension in our integrity. This culminates with a moral crisis, where we can no longer ignore, dismiss or evade the inconsistencies between our beliefs and our realities, or between our words and our true feelings. Many of us will blame the world for why it does not align with our expectations or engage in self-deprecation as punishment for not meeting absurd ideals entrenched in our culture. Some of us even divide into and alter between distinct egos or pass through different versions of our continuous sense of self over time and changing conditions, while a proportionately small number of us will debase anyone who we need to harm or kill in an ultimate attempt to rid anything in our environment that surfaces our mental discord.

However, all of our tendencies and habits only temporarily ease the pressure we feel. We may change our circumstances or rationalize our decisions to the extent that we hold conveniently shifting viewpoints that favour our circumstances, but we never find stability except in our delusions. Our propensity to keep moving has less to do with alignment than with overlooking our misalignment because to stop or remain still is to risk being awakened to this cosmic dissention. Even the decontextualized practice of meditation, which can free us from rumination, can also be used to distract us from the deeper awareness of the world and ourselves that we need to be enlightened in some transformative way. Often we block our consciousness through the misperceived experience of higher awareness resulting from misconceptions we form during or prior to its pursuit. For instance, some of us assume that we will or can achieve a single state of mind that will terminate the need for any additional understanding of life. This is an inherent belief in some mythical or mathematical answer to all of our mentally preoccupying questions that offers the simplest and most profound metaphysical explanation for everything. Thus, we come to the false conclusion that when we attain this, we become wholly aware and all things fall into place. No further effort is required since we have fundamentally changed and elevated our consciousness to its supreme point. While this might be a hope shared by many of us, it is also a view of life that ensures that we will never be truly enlightened.

We cannot reach this level of awareness until we have fully faced the infinite abyss. It is not enough to stand on its edge and look down from the precipice to the bottomless pit beneath us all. We have to leap into this existential canyon of sentient history to discover what we genuinely are and what society prevents us from ever knowing. We have to confront our unease and park our assumptions to enter into uncharted space. It is here that we cross the familiar boundaries of what we know and challenge what we firmly believe in order to address both our ignorance and presumption. Enlightenment is not an instantaneous state. It is a learning process, and the essential ingredient to its continuity lies in applying its expanding repertoire of interrelated insights as a seamless part of living. But its basic attainment begins by letting ourselves depart from the current of our ways. This means we have to be prepared to lose something we think we want in order to gain something we actually need.

Unfortunately, many of us will not sacrifice what is necessary to enter into this phase of our narrative because we do not know what this stage or the next will bring. This is why we frequently wait for the desperate anticipation of losing everything or something indispensable to finally decide to act. We are adverse to risk, and thus, our willingness to make a huge investment is tied to our certainty in what we believe. While there are many things we may claim to be true, our decisions and actions reflect the degree of confidence we have in the internal workings of the universe; this includes our own nature and the purpose of our lives, which we intuitively knew as children but quickly forgot as we were pulled into the collective human struggle. The crevice is the rift that forms between what we have become and what we already were. And when we confront the great void, it is our inner self reminding us to return to our essence by rediscovering it or regaining its lost memory. When we were born, we had it but we did not yet know the world. Then we come to know the world and our innermost knowledge slips away. Moreover, being surrounded by others suffering from the same renounced amnesia suppresses this native understanding and we become blind to a sacred truth. We cannot see the order of things above or beneath the chaos that serves to move us into alignment. This subjects us to constant doses of anxiety since we remain fixated on interpreting the primordial cleft as a trap set for the ego rather than an opening for the spirit.

However, if we are fortunate enough to realize what we have lost, then we may come to our darkest point in order to light our path forward and elucidate its meaning. When we realize that this misalignment we sense is only within ourselves and by extension with others, we revisit the possibility of change and that possibility is the hope to know life by living it. It is in the crevice where we learn to restore faith not just in ourselves or in others, but in the universe where the potential of life is left open and the opportunity to transcend materializes like uncovering a hidden trail through a densely wooded forest. The crevice may be the site of our disillusionment, but it is also where we find the passage to enlightenment and come to test our confidence in the guiding principles of life. It is here where we resume developing the remainder of our narrative and complete our conscious journey through the inner and outer realms of existence to see the universal truth for what it truly is.

A CHANGE IN PERSPECTIVE

Perceiving things in ways that we had not previously considered that expands our understanding of our environment and of ourselves is what we mean by gaining perspective. This does not necessarily assume that we attain awareness or knowledge, but it does arouse more insight if we steadily pose hypothetical questions and attempt to observe the world with greater breadth and depth. With each insightful view we form, there is a moment of awakening that pulses through our experience as a perpetual flow of enlightenment. We achieve this by seeing a relevant relationship left unseen or by recognizing concurrently that there are different levels of meaning associated with the exact same thing; for instance, a dove is seen both as a bird and as a symbol of love or of peace. The value of perspective is demonstrated by a change in how we look at or approach the world. This includes how we shift in our space by altering the direction we are facing like when we are standing in a room, and how we may reframe that space altogether such as repurposing that room for business or entertainment. We are constantly moving into and out of focus as we chase the motivated interest we have in our states of mind and in our surroundings, but we are at times blessed with flashes of clarity that also fade in and out of our consciousness as we refocus or become distracted.

To gain perspective involves a process of freeing our inherent capacity to notice things already in existence as well as to contemplate the possibility of events that could transpire before they arise, especially when an idea crosses the boundary of what is possible and is treated as an absurdity through the orthodox lens of our society. However, if we fail to question the beliefs we inherit or regard them as the indisputable truth, we will become complacent and assume we know everything we need to know. We will return and submit shortsightedly to the current of life and redraw the universe to misperceive our own misalignment as alignment with reality. Complacency strangles the spirit of life, and much like conformity, it is a predominantly unconscious surrendering of our will to a nature that is not carved in stone. While our ability to adapt is necessary to survive in the camouflaged jungle of our civilization, we do not need to lose who we are in the process. Yet during adolescence, we are groomed to become cogs in an economic cycle that supports our livelihoods and may lead us to relinquish our own stories to partake in a narrative without personal relevance. Consequently, it becomes vital to our sanity that we maintain perspective and not get caught in the mistruths of our society, which are proclaimed as incontestable laws that we cannot challenge or influence. Such beliefs only encourage and justify our tendency towards fallacy and fantasy. To accept things as they are is to recognize their actuality, but to accept things as absolute and unchanging is to invite death to a dinner party or to the launch of a new initiative. It will be over before it starts.

It is not unusual to believe that there is nothing we can do about a particular situation when we are unable to identify and obtain the available resources needed to influence the conditions we encounter. It would be foolish to think we could shape reality without introducing something new to that situation. But when viewed more widely and over time, we know that nothing is fixed. Even deeply ingrained patterns or habits that seem inevitable can and will eventually alter in some form or cease to express themselves entirely. The fundamental physics of our world may set basic boundaries for what to expect, but we should not confuse the probability of something occurring with the possibility of something changing. We may learn to predict future events accurately and consistently based on our current knowledge of past events and their interrelationships with the aid of any relevant information available about present conditions, but we cannot negate the possibility of things because we never have all of the information required to witness the consequences of things seemingly big or small. Circumstances can change before we have time to anticipate events and/or to take action, and there are always unknowns that we do not know exist or hidden effects we cannot see. This is why things often appear when we least expect them.

Our conception of change itself is also deceptive. In relation to time, we often do not have the patience or the continued presence to note gradual changes such as those illustrated in nature, and we do not have the direct ability to consciously capture events that occur too quickly to be perceived such as rapidly moving picture frames during a film screening. Many changes are imperceptible to us, and some are not discernable because we would have to witness two parallel versions of the same universe where in one we are present and interacting with it, and in the other we only observe events where we were absent or never existed. While the world would undoubtedly go on with or without us, we could see the specific impact we had or would have had, which includes averting a negative outcome from occurring.  If we were not present and did not act in that moment when it was required, then an unwanted event could have occurred. Many of us do not think of this as change, but much of what we do fits into this kind of scenario, and yet we place so little value on this precisely because we are focused on seeking identifiable change to validate our existence and preferably with the greatest direct effect that leans in our overall favour.

Much of our conceptual blindness is tied to the stress of unceasing urgency and the allure of liberating technology. As immediate convenience and instant gratification become the norm, we are drawn further away from the process through which we derive meaning in life that cannot be hurried. The certainty we hold in foreseeable outcomes only promotes false security as we evade a naturally chaotic reality by superficially replacing it with an artificially stable environment. We unwittingly sacrifice the fundamental change we need for overplayed constancy that suppresses our ability to see the hidden order in disorder and the underlying path to alignment in our misalignment. Chaos is relative to our own proximate conditions and misalignment represents our sense of alienation from the world to which we belong. We typically look to the outside world to remedy our undesired circumstances, but the answers we seek reside within us all and it essentially begins with a change in perspective that serves to rebuild our relationship with the totality of existence.

AN UNQUESTIONED BELIEF IN THE SELF

Many of us make a simple distinction between the body that enables us to live and the mind we associate with our awareness or that part of us that thinks and knows. Over time, we have increasingly examined the sentient psyche across a multitude of academic disciplines founded on a history of cultural and philosophical perspectives, where it has been described in relation to ego identity, intellectual function and spiritual ascension. And while the primordial mystery of consciousness remains a subject of much debate, we recognize it as an intuitively self-evident part of complex life. Hence, whether we believe living organisms are what give rise to consciousness or we view them as receivers for an already present consciousness, each of us experiences this spirited condition and our interaction with one another as conscious entities amplifies its significance. This is a very intimate and socially responsive phenomenon, which seems to give birth to the notion of self.

This construct of the self as our sense of identity is attached to a unique participant in our shared universe with a distinct perception of itself as an innately and culturally defined individual. The self-awareness we possess as socially interactive individuals induces a very compelling feeling of separateness that instantaneously converts us into segregated bodies in the world. It is so persuasive that it permeates the cultures of our modernizing societies, where an unquestioned belief in the self is implanted. But this illusory partition of existence contributes to the persistence of the crevice as an impasse within our narrative. The more we try to divide ourselves into special and distinguished creatures regardless of our allegedly dominant or subjugated status, the wider the chasm becomes to traverse and the more we isolate or detach ourselves from our innermost truth. Our struggle lies with realizing that we are a conduit to the meaning of life and not its end goal. We are just actors playing roles that express parts of who we are but they are not to be confused with the essence of what we are.

If the greatest barrier to the truth is our own selves or rather our perception of the self, then we are an obstruction to our own enlightenment. One reason for this is that we are not fundamentally designed to seek truth as a priority. It is a secondary function to the primary purpose of living. We learn and seek out what is necessary to make something of our lives. If our professions require us to seek truth, it tends to be restricted to a narrow spectrum of reality. Therefore, if we want to realize a viagnostic existence, we have to extend the domain of the truth to the moral principles and practices of life that includes seeing ourselves as inseparable bits an integrated system. The self is not equivalent to a living body with a misperceived independence from its environment. Instead, it is a manifestation of the intricate nature of life, the cosmos and the truth itself.

Our beliefs, which revolve around the self or the ego at their collective centre, are expressions of our working model designed to address the anxieties that emerge from our self-awareness as we respond to the cutthroat conditions of our biophysical and socioeconomic wilderness. Behind our beliefs, we hide our fantasies and traumas that unconsciously and sometimes deliberately mould our adopted philosophies and cultures. These beliefs almost indispensably secure our construct of the self as an existentially free agent endowed with liberties regardless whether or not we are empowered in one set of circumstances or another to exercise our professed freedom of choice. They are concealed reactions to our ingrained fears of suppression and the external exertion of control over our lives, which includes the denial of our needs and their fulfilment. While a few may manage to bypass these instilled terrors to glance at the greater truth, the vast majority of us are barely aware of these influences or we deny them altogether based on our compelling arguments or long-lasting traditions. To question our beliefs is to question ourselves, and to question ourselves is to ultimately question everything. By reserving a deceitfully solitary seat in the universe, we have barricaded ourselves from the truth.

Sometimes, we merely need to see the ego as the illusion of self for it to dissolve and unveil the verity that exists in front of our eyes. In the film The Matrix [11], the initially reticent hero named Neo intuitively knows that there is some critical information hidden from his awareness, and it is through his search to answer the question of what is the Matrix that he is given the opportunity to see the world for what it really is. The choice offered to him is between remaining in the false comfort of an unconsciously imprisoned existence and being set free from mental enslavement to appreciate a horrific reality that no deeply conditioned mind will want to believe is true. That horror is what many of us find in the crevice. It is where we come to the realization that nothing is what it seems, including our perception of ourselves, and that our lives are part of an all-encompassing sham sustained by many commonly held beliefs. Some of us will go as far as to resist violently the disclosure of such truth because it would be comparable to building a new dwelling strenuously by hand only to witness it burn down suddenly after completing its construction. We are too invested to let go of our beliefs, especially of ourselves.

Arguably, our technologically dependent and globalized society has gradually enslaved our minds and indirectly our bodies by falsely elevating the ego to the peak of its own assumed importance and at the expense of the deeper significance embedded in the narrative of life. In order to benefit from this godly mirage, we must contribute to its illusion and pay homage to its invisible ruler. However, while the narrative may require a lead role to drive the plot, that role holds little value without its relationships with other roles. The function of the genuine self is to provide perspective, and through its perspective, the story unfolds. There is a symbiosis between the self and the story because the story must pass through us to convey its meaning. But if the ego becomes the narrative, then the point of the narrative is lost. Since the story is not actually about us individually and the misbelief in the self as ego clouds the mistruth in our beliefs, we become the principal hindrances to the meaning we seek and the literary slayers of our own stories, which many of us risk failing to bring to their profound conclusions.

OUR INCOMPLETE STORY

The great void is what the simmering ego in all of us tries to avoid because this existential vacuum reveals the illusory self through its emptiness. Hence, the ego persuades our minds to enclose the boundary of the crevice from our awareness. But the more we evade its hollow presence, the greater its cavity enlarges and the more the ego inflates as it fabricates reality and dilutes the truth to preserve its own illusion; the ego remains indistinguishable from the self as long as it is treated as a wholly separate existence. However, if we successfully gain perspective, our consciousness will deepen, ascend and expand our sense of self to be a distinct extension of the world out of which we become and into which we enter to perform on its great stage. We learn to decode the mysteries of the universe by resuming our biotic performance, and in the process, the chaos that once triggered our unease dissolves into an orderly pattern that we can foresee as we step into the arena to participate in the game of life.

Our basic challenge is that we do not grasp the bigger picture or the whole of our story that leaves us feeling unbalanced or unstable. But the world only appears to be broken. We are not detecting cosmic disorder, but the fissures in our conception of our environment and others as well as our own construct of self. It is merely our perception of the world that is fragmented, and this is compounded by the gaps in everyone else’s perceptions. We should be mending the cuts and tears in our mental models by resetting our perspective rather than patching them with delusions to stabilize our experience enough to seem consistent and congruent. We rely on our misalignment to indicate how incomplete our comprehension of the world remains. All things align at some level, and our task is to see beyond what we already understand and to test the validity of what we know. It is not a matter of being right or wrong, but to broaden the range of conditions in which we can comprehend the universe of our experience. And as many of us discover, the boundaries of the unknown expand faster than our knowledge can swell. In other words, the more we know, the more we realize the less we know. For every puzzle we solve, we uncover a new treasure of mysteries to drive our search for answers.

This teaches us that our story cannot be buried underneath the discovery of these answers, but in the pursuit itself and in the practice of how we live life. By widening our perspective, we can evoke insight and give birth to wisdom. And when we finally expose the fiction of our ego, we can embrace the vacant darkness of the truth to see its guiding light. Although we are enveloped by delusion and deceit generated by our shared egocentricity, the awakening of the true self is the critical step in finding our path and completing our narrative. We achieve this by releasing our attachment to the ego that elicits its own hunger for validation and by expanding our consciousness to gain our freedom. The more ways we can see, the less confined we become. And the less confined we are, the more we realize the unfinished business of our incomplete story. That means actualizing what we already are instead of being trapped in a programmed life that dictates who we are. The crevice may represent the underbelly of the real world that we do not wish to see, but without it, we can never find the meaning we seek. The enlightened mind exposes its own illusion in order to get a glance at its essence. We can escape that which we are not, but we cannot get outside of something we are. We can only transcend our original design, and the true self is one that extends beyond itself and beyond the ego. If we misunderstand this, we will misunderstand everything else.