THE BIRTH, GROWTH AND MALEVOLENCE OF SELF IMPORTANCE

Adam and Eve were in paradise. They had free run of the place. There was plenty of food around and the climate was like Maui. They didn’t even have to bother with clothes. Their consciousness was like Coming Attractions of Heaven except all the time. They were in God. God was in them, complete and total integration.
There was only one rule “Don’t eat the fruit from the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”[1]. The reason for this rule was that the fruit contained forbidden knowledge. That is an unusual name for a tree and when living in a state of total integration with their environment it is likely that Adam and Eve didn’t even have a concept or word for opposites. They probably viewed things rather like the Taoists do as different ends of the same continuum.
I’m doubtful whether they even had a concept of rules. They probably didn’t much discriminate between the blandishments of the snake and the pronouncements of God. Living in paradise all of them including the serpent were probably used to doing pretty much whatever they felt like doing.
Why would God forbid them any knowledge at all? Because he knew that “a little knowledge is dangerous”. The knowledge in that fruit was manifestly inconsistent with the overall harmony of the place.
So once they munched that apple their perceptions became incompatible with the ongoing smooth operation of paradise. The very first thing they did was stitch themselves a fig leaf couture implying that they saw themselves for the first time as naked individuals. Previously they saw themselves as an aspect of paradise.
What was this knowledge that was so powerful as to make their perceptions incompatible with their continued ability to function in paradise? There is really only one answer and that answer is the pronoun “I”.
“I” makes some beings more important than others. “I” makes a distinction where previously there was integration. “I” leads to greed and rhymes with my.
So they had to go where they were confronted with Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You know food, shelter, clothing, company, safety, childcare, healthcare and so forth.[2]
For better or worse they succeeded. The worse part is their success reinforced their belief in “I”. This was the genesis (ok pun intended) of self importance.
Of course, this passage has been interpreted as original sin. To me Jesus is all about redemption and this guilt by association thing generation after generation does not make sense. The notion that most of us believe in “I” and spend most of our energy defending what amounts to an illusion is worse than original sin. In conventional theology original sin can be erased by baptism and a confession of faith.
Personally I think that this is far too easy. In my experience nothing great occurs without prodigious effort. Replacing our false “I” with a self image more consistent with creation (and the miraculous creatures we are) is a task requiring balance, detachment, persistence, courage, and judgment of the highest order. This insight is neither new nor original.
Perhaps the world’s first self help book was written over two thousand years ago. Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras is the seminal book on Yoga and the basis for Raja and Hatha Yoga two of the traditional eight branches of Yoga. Yoga and sutras are both Sanskrit words. Yoga is usually translated to English as yoke or union (with the divine). Sutras are usually translated as verses and come from the root meaning to sew as in sutures. In one of the sutras Pantanjali attempts to state the causes of human suffering: “Ignorance, egotism, desire, and the entrapped existence in the physical...”[3]
The Buddha asked his Bidhus (students) the following question: “If you light a lamp tonight then extinguish it and relight it the following night is the flame the same?”
The implication is that our “I” flickers like a flame and varies from moment to moment. Buddha taught that “I” is an illusion and that illusion is a source of evil.[4]
Confucius is quoted as discussing “mental fasting” with his principle disciple Yen Hui.
Yen Hui asked Confucius, “May I hear about mental fasting?”

Confucius replied, “You unify your will: hear with the mind instead of the ears; hear with the energy instead of the mind. Hearing stops at the ears, the mind stops at contact, but energy is that which is empty and responsive to others. The Way (Tao) gathers in emptiness; emptiness is mental fasting.

Yen Hui said, “The reason I haven’t been able to master this is because I consider myself really me. If I could master this, “I” would not exist. Could that be called mental fasting?”

Confucius said, “That’s all there is to it.”[5]
Jesus told the following parable. When you are invited to a marriage feast do not sit in the place of honor for if someone of a higher status comes your host will have to ask you to move. This will be embarrassing for everyone.
Rather sit in the lowest place so your host can come and ask you to move to a more prominent place and you will be honored. “For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”[6]
Latif Ahmad the Sufi taught:

Man is like a swimmer who is fully dressed and hampered every moment by his clinging clothes. He must know why he cannot swim before steps can be taken to make it possible.

It is no solution for him to have the impression that he is swimming properly; for this may make him feel better and prevent him from arriving at the further bank of the river.

Such men and women drown.[7]

In this story regular people are the swimmers. They don’t realize that they are encumbered by their clothes which are: self as symbol, self importance, egotism, “I”, or false I.
If the regular people have the impression that they are swimming, they will have false confidence and drown.
The impression that they are swimming is a metaphor for success in the physical world. This is counter-productive. We don’t know what we don’t know. In other words, we don’t know that our clothes (self importance) are encumbering us, which is, interfering with our spiritual growth. If we accept success in the material world as all there is we don’t look for more. Such men and women drown.
Virtually everyone who is a success in the material world has a self importance problem which is a belief in their self image manifesting in the intellectual center.[8] Drown means our spiritual potential has been wasted. The mustard seed returns to our creator, the source of our awareness, like every drop of water returns to the sea. The mustard seed is the only eternal aspect of us with which we are born.
Our physical selves dissipate and return to the earth from where we came. Without prodigious effort on our part resulting in energetic growth in the emotional center, the unique miraculous manifestation of our individual selves dissipates as well. Such men and women drown.
Carlos Castaneda quotes his teacher as believing self importance is the nemesis of mankind. “This is most obvious in our endless worry about the presentation of the self, about whether or not we are admired, or liked, or acknowledged.”[9] His argument is most of our energy is consumed upholding our self importance.
This is the precise reason such men and women drown. If we are consuming our energy upholding our self importance, we are not using it to aggregate in our emotional center.
It is also why Jesus was so insistent on the value of humility.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”[10]
“Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.”[11]
“Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.”[12]
To summarize original sin was in fact, Adam and Eve’s perceptions once they internalized the pronoun “I”. The growth of self importance is the expanding success of the global materialistic world. The malevolence is that the energy required to sustain our “I” is diverted from its proper work coalescing in the emotional center.
Jesus’ solution is to be humble. If we could do this it would solve the problem but, most of us need more specific instructions.
What this amounts to is a deliberate dismantling of your own ego. I found my magic eight ball and it says “the signs are not propitious”. The significance of this is that the deliberate deconstruction of your own “I” can be psychically and potentially physically dangerous. To reiterate in different words the exercises in What’s in It for Me probably won’t hurt anyone. Deliberately destabilizing your own ego could result in job loss, divorce, psychotic episodes, addictions, depression and/or suicide if not handled properly. This should only be attempted gradually with the assistance of an evolved human being.
Of course, executing this maneuver successfully could result in a re-direction of your growth to more closely resemble that which was intended for three brain beings. Success involves serving creation in this life. It also involves evolving and being subject to fewer physical laws while retaining the unique miraculous aspects of you in tact in the next.
Since I’m now frightened for you we better put destabilizing your ego on hold, at least until I tell you about various common dysfunctions of the three centers that I have not yet mentioned. These problems can be an obstacle to shrinking our old self or creating a new one because they also divert energy. Invariably they also make us unhappy.
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[1] Genesis 2:17
[2] Genesis 3:24
.[3] Yoga Sutras
Self importance is a synonym for egotism and the subject of this chapter. Let’s not miss “entrapped existence in the physical”. This implies that we have the capacity to manifest in another form of matter. Since our brief lesson on relativity theory we know that E=MC2 implies two forms of matter, energy and mass or in Jesus’ terms spirit and flesh.
Multiple simultaneous manifestations (being two places at the same time) are common in Yogic literature but usually considered a distraction. cf. Autobiography of a Yogi Satchadananda
[4] Life and Teachings of The Buddha
[5] Vitality, Energy, Spirit A Taoist Sourcebook Translated and edited by Thomas Cleary. Shambala Publications Inc. Boston/London 1991 p. 19 Thomas Cleary is a spectacular translator. He gets it. At pages5-7 he advises that this passage was taken from Chang-Tzu or Book of Master Chang a historical person (ca. 369-286 BC). On page 7 Cleary states, “Mental fasting is identified with “emptiness” which is defined in terms of transcendence of the ego and detachment from conceptual knowledge.” (and internal dialogue?)
[6] Luke 14; 7-11 Quoted passage verse 11. Jesus’ teachings contain many warnings to avoid pride and embrace humility. There is an energetic reason for this. Read on.
[7] Idries Shah, The Way of the Sufi
Sufism is the mystical branch of Islam. Their thought is as sophisticated as any I have encountered and fascinating due to their penchant for multiple levels of meaning. Their Jihad is an internal one against the false “I”. Their general orientation is toward individual evolution and by extension to that of humanity.
[8] Mark 10: 21-25 verse 25 “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
[9] Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming HarperCollins N.Y.,N.Y. 1993
[10] Mathew 5:3
[11] Mathew 5:5
[12] Mathew 18:4 and many more