True self

As we struggle through life and sense the shortcomings of our relationships to this person or to that person, or to our work or a particular activity, one of our blinding errors is the idea that ‘I am related to that person or event.’ For instance, suppose I'm married. The usual way we think of marriage is, ‘I am married to him.’ But as long as I say, ‘I am married to him,’ there are two of us, and in true self there cannot be two. True self knows no separation. It may look like me being married to him, but true self—call it the infinite energy potential—knows no separation. True self forms into different shapes, but essentially it remains one self, one energy potential. When I say I am married to you, or I own a Toyota, or I have four children, in everyday language that is so. But we need to see that it's not the real truth. In fact, I am not married to somebody or something; I am that person, I am that thing. The true self knows no separation.

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In any situation, our devotion should be not to the other person per se, but to the true self. Of course the other person embodies the true self, yet there is a distinction. If we are involved in a group, our relationship is not to the group, but to the true self of the group. By the ‘true self’, I'm not talking about some mystical ghost that floats above. True self is nothing at all; and yet it's the only thing that should dominate our life; it is the only Master.

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Now, this may sound idealistic and remote; yet every five minutes we get a chance to work with it. For example, the interchange with someone who irritates us; the little encounter that goes sour, when we feel they should ‘know better’; the irritation when my daughter says she'll telephone—and she forgets. What is the true self in all of these incidents? Usually we can't see the true self; we can see only how we miss it. We can be aware of irritability, annoyance, impatience. And such thoughts we can label. We can patiently do that; we can experience the tension the thoughts generate. In other words, we can experience what we put between ourselves and our true self. When such careful practice is put first in our life, we serve the Master—and then we grow in knowledge of what must be done.