The Art of Breaking Character

1 :: (The fabled ‘surrender to God’): You do not need to know what you are surrendering to – God, the infinite, the Source, Brahman. In fact, you cannot know. No image or concept will scratch at the surface of the reality. The effect (and the magic) is in the surrendering – in the creation of a kind of void internally where the ego once lived. To flat out deny that there is an experience to be had here is the most obvious sign that one has not yet learned the internal magic of surrender that allows the deeper truths of existence burst into view.

2 :: (“Higher Dimensions”) Why is it valid for the mathematician to postulate higher dimensions by the logic of the symbols on his page, whereas it is invalid for the spiritual seeker to postulate them from direct experience?

3 :: (Dreams) Every night, the subconscious weaves together stories of symbols that, if we can discern the shape of the relations between them, will enlighten us as to the resolutions needed for our mind to undistort and evolve. That people do not take greater advantage of this is astounding.

4 :: (Self-Acceptance) Self-acceptance might seem like a vague, or rather simple matter. “I accept myself, I accept myself, I accept myself” – say it enough times in the mirror and the feeling will stick, supposedly. I have tried it and it does not work until I dug deeper and looked at all the specific things I did not yet accept about myself. In practice, self-acceptance is achieved by an accumulation of small acceptances: of our sexuality, our capacity to love, to grieve, to play, to be aggressive, to be hurtful. What we accept, we integrate, and what we integrate becomes a healthy part of us.

5 :: (The Inner Child): In adulthood we are often drawn towards that which life took from us in our childhood, or rather, that which we deemed it necessary to abandon. The traits and energies in others that we find especially compelling are often calling us to reclaim what was once lost, to reintegrate our lost playfulness, creativity, wonder, unabashed emotionality, capacity for healthy anger, spontaneity, silliness, enthusiasm – but now taken back up into the adult we have become. When we find these things in others, we are tantalised: for we are excited by what we unconsciously perceive as our own latent potential.

6 :: (Mixed Motives) It is often very difficult to deduce the motivations for our actions until much later. Do I share the extent of my childhood trauma with you because I feel it will shed some light on your path, or because i have an aching unmet longing to have my own story of suffering witnessed? Likely both. Do I flaunt my sexuality because I believe it is good for others to have their triggers revealed to them, or because I have unconsciously learned to rebalance my low self-worth by garnering sexual attention from the eyes of others? Likely both. Am I generous because I care instinctively about others, or because I am afraid of other people thinking I am a bad person and so must force an image of heroism and altruism down their throat at every opportunity? Likely both.

Our motives become purified as we walk the spiritual path, as we undergo the art of breaking character. But whilst they remain mixed we should be as forgiving and compassionate as possible towards both ourselves and others.

7 :: (Honesty) Honesty is good not because “God says so” or because it is an inviolable moral principle that we must adhere to simply out of duty – nor because dishonesty is inherently sinful or counterproductive. Honesty is good (=moral = loving = wise) because it is an act of collaboration: “I will be transparent with you because we are on the same team in the fight against unconsciousness.”

8 :: (Selfishness) We must attack the problem of selfishness directly: not with judgement, but with wisdom. Selfishness is damaging to both the individual and the collective. It works for no one in the long run. It has only a sheen of rationality, and only from a certain distance. The zoom in, or the zoom out, both reveal the incoherence of it.

9 :: (Resistance to Breaking Character) My Dad is uninterested in enlightenment because (in part) he imagines total acceptance of experience to be a complete flattening of experience – a kind of perpetual numbing, a spiritual tranquilizer. My dad does not understand paradox – and has not yet felt the incontrastable bliss of God, “the love that has no opposite”.

10 :: (Untangling Emotional Constellations) Emotions interact with each other in ways far more complicated than we would have ever predicted. We feel shame about our anger. We feel grief about how much aggression we received. We feel afraid of our anger, and we are angry at those who we consider to have made us feel afraid and ashamed. And perhaps strangest of all, we feel fear of our own fear, giving rise to the fabled anxiety. And so: the easiest, safest and smoothest way to begin breaking character and releasing the weight of the past from our present may simply be to create the safest space possible (eg. trip sitter, favourite calming music, in the bath, on the bed, under the covers, whatever it takes…) and say words to the effect of “yes, I am ready to release control of my experience, whatever past needs to resolve itself in me presently please do so. I welcome the release.”