Mental Mafia

I’ve heard it said that the closer you get to God, the harder the Devil will work to keep you from his Glory. My direct experience is that the mind can work in much the same way as you dig deeper into Self Inquiry. And just as the mafia has friends in high places and no one leaves “the family”, the mental mob leader does not surrender its tyrannical reign without a fight. Indeed as you peel away the layers of self illusion, or perhaps the illusion of self itSelf, it is not uncommon for the road of your journey to seam impassable. With each glimpse of your True Nature the gangster boss will shoot bullets over your head to dissuade you from going further. For some, these attacks of the egoic mind may appear as physical weakness, fear, rage or even boredom if that proves a successful hook to take you off task.

Have you ever noticed that when you embark on a new adventure, that there can be aspects of your “old life” that seem to want to call you back into the same rutted groove? Some version of “no one wants to be left behind”, not our old friends and especially not the mind who has devoted its illusory career keeping you in the dark.

The mind may pretend to walk beside you as you climb the hill, but only because it holds out hope that somehow it can obtain an even higher place of power once it reaches the summit. Even well meaning seekers may find themselves seduced by seeing the wake of the Truth and mistakingly think that they are cybernetically steering the boat. In role play arenas we call it “God Modding” and we establish rules to prevent characters to power play in this fashion because frankly it ruins the game. The Machiavellian mind likes to pretend that it is omnipotent instead of a pawn in the lila of space and time and the tendancy to see itself as a powerful instrument of Grace only bolsters the false sense of authorship.

Indeed when the mind truly sees that there is no “better you” in the Final Understanding, it may try and convince you that Truth is not all it was cracked up to be and easily turns your attention away from further seeking.

I expected my practice to pick up the pace of pestilence as more and more of the lies have come into the light and no longer haunt my thought waves. The redneck guru that I am blessed to share my life with, has a simple way of bringing common sense to the drama (dharma) so that not even my stubborn “logic” can deny the deceit. Had it not been for his gentle and steadfast reminders, the epic melt down this week would have had me believing that I was “beyond hope” or otherwise mortally flawed.

Through bullets or blandish, the mind succeeds at brainwashing you to believe in the learned state of helplessness (separation) that it has constructed. It takes not only curiosity, but courage to stand up to the kingpin of the mafia mind, and if you are fortune it helps to have a friend to remind you that it is always darkest before the dawn.