‘The gates of Hell are locked from the inside.’ C. S. Lewis– I had written the exact same words only the other night: ‘The doors of ego are locked from the inside,’ meaning, you cannot change someone else’s ego, ONLY YOUR OWN.

‘Dying to Self, that’s how we’re born to eternal life.’ says the Prayer of St. Francis. That’s our ticket out of our ego; OUT OF OUR HELL. We can so totally find our way back to the Garden in time for this generation’s children to fully enjoy, for this generation’s adults to fully embrace, and for the generations of good souls who have suffered and died before to finally achieve release and dance and sing and frolic among the Stars forevermore.

Our earthly sojourn is all about finding the doorway out of the ego (ego is a veil which keeps the soul in darkness, enervating and suffocating it).

Plants follow the Sun as it tracks across the sky. They grow taller in their season, as they ‘reach’ for the Source. Our daily purpose is to be conscious of the Source, to reach for it, to be always cognizant of the ‘direction’ in which the Source lay…to be conscious of it. That’s the ‘moral compass’ we are all gifted with.

To do this properly, one must endeavour to be conscious of right NOW. That is the ‘sine wave’ our consciousness must centre around, as we oscillate between ego and outward consciousness. ‘Now’ transcends thought/thinking, for while you are paying attention to your thoughts, while you are translating consciousness into words (in your head), you are in ego-mode. You have phased somewhat outside of the NOW.

Outside of the NOW can only be understood as being either ‘in the past’ (where your mind renews energies/rekindles emotions of Past events, or, in the future (where your mind ‘creates’ energies/emotions out of things that have not, and may not, ever happen).

If I am truly conscious and not just ‘lost in my own thoughts’, I already know what is happening and am already engaged with what to do about it. I need not put my knowing into words/thoughts.

The danger is, as we age, we tend to live out more of our lives inside our homes and inside our heads. We surmise what people are thinking without asking them. We often tell them what they should do about this or that, with good intentions most of the time, without taking the time to full understand what they are going through. We have our politicians running around claiming ‘Canadians want this, or Canadians want that’…but they are so busy talking I don’t know when they actually have had the time to really listen.

We expect people to be accountable to us for what they do and some of us even feel we have to account for ourselves to others, when we do not. WE NEED ONLY ACCOUNT TO OURSELVES, for ourselves.

We have come full-circle.

I began with an observation by C.S. Lewis, and how that speaks to my observations about ego. On Being/All From One – One In All explores the ego and all of its ramifications.

On the outside, beyond the ego-conscious, there is the Light of All Creation; on the inside, there is only the darkness of ignorance, fear/anxiety, or, alternatively regret, coming of the attachment to forms when the only ‘permanence’, form-wise, in Life or in Light, is ‘Change.’

While we are ‘earthbound’ we take on a ‘human form’ that is always changing. We can’t wait to grow up when we are little and afterwards spend big money (if we have any) to keep from getting old too fast. We try not to think about death along the way. All of this is wasted effort and resources, since our human form is bound for the grave. We insanely wile our time away trying to win at a game we know we will lose.

We know we must one day cross the River Styx. The River Styx is the veil providing separation, consciousness-wise, between our inner and outer worlds. It separates the tripartite human spirit (Mind-Heart-Soul) into two ‘world perspectives’: the world of inner consciousness, ‘self-consciousness’, and the world beyond the consciousness of self.

The River Styx is the threshold we must cross to return home again. To cross, we must first open the door and then step through.

That door is locked from the inside.

Only you can open the door. No one else can do that for you; in fact, when they try, pushing as hard as they might, you will either ignore them (not answer the knock) or tell them to ‘go away.’

You will not open the door unless your ego sees something of value in opening the door. When that happens, it is not the door that leads away from ego you are opening, because ego wants to open that door.

That door leads deeper into your ego. Ego’s doors, both of them, open from the inside ONLY.

No one else can open that door. They make it harder for you to open, when they try.

p.s. This is the secret of the effectiveness of fear-based governing. Neo-liberalism appears to rely on human ego’s response to keep us in line; spying upon one another, wary of one another, perpetually at odds with one another; divided, as our liberties continue to erode in the name of our security, to the point where we will one day, in a generation or two, permit our government to be as fascist and totalitarian in deed, if not in name, as China’s and Russia’s.

We much prefer to think of ourselves as ‘democratic’, but we are hard pressed to accord one another the same respect we expect from our governments. As citizens, we must, by our example, show the bozos in Question Period how to comport themselves. In terms of democracy, the citizens ‘reap what they sow’. If we citizens do not engage in the democratic process, patterned upon the Swiss cantons, say, democracy will not engage us.

We need to keep the Golden Rule first and foremost in our hearts and minds. Do that, and, Presto! Heart and Mind are reconciled and together they can do no wrong.

Heart and Mind reconciled. The mind reconciled with the heart has found the door that leads to Creation and the Light.