by A H Almaas
Second, when we think that practice means changing our inner condition instead of letting it change itself, we are taking an orientation toward ourselves that is inherently very different from that of our True Nature. In other words, by siding with this inner activity, we disconnect from our True Nature. Our True Nature is simply there-ness. So, by being internally active, we dissociate, we become something different than what we are, we leave our place of abiding. In some sense, we abandon our self, our nature, to become this active entity that is always trying to change itself.
And so we don’t allow our experience to reveal its nature. That’s because we take the view that there is something to accomplish. We think, “Realization is a result dependent on a cause, and that cause is my own effort. If I do such and such, this result will happen.”
But that contradicts the reality that realization is what you already are, that you cannot accomplish yourself, you cannot go after yourself. You cannot change what is happening now so that you become yourself. You are already yourself; you just need to relax into it. When that happens, you recognize your True Nature.
THE TRAP OF INNER ACTIVITY
We have seen that this inner activity, which is the primary obstacle to being our True Nature, has many manifestations, which are various forms of resistance, control, and defensiveness. And we have also looked at various behaviors that are aimed specifically at changing our experience—attempts to conform to an ideal—rather than just letting ourselves be. All these behaviors imply self-rejection. All of them work against the natural revelation of our True Nature in all its luminosity.
We have also seen how inner and outer activity are related. Remember the peach? When you discover that it is rotten, you can either just put it away or you can put it away with a lot of internal activity going on. You may already recognize from your own experience that whenever we engage in an external activity, an inner activity usually goes along with it. Even when we are just sitting, continuous activity is almost always going on. We experience this mostly as incessant thinking, planning, trying to figure things out. But what we are doing is more fundamental than just being immersed in thoughts; we are in an energetic movement in which the dynamism of Being becomes contracted and dissociated. There is hesitation and a kind of inner stuttering. This inner busyness is what we mean by ego activity—an inner activity with a mental flavor and an agitated energetic quality. It lacks the smooth, spontaneous, effortless flow that is the manifestation of Being.
IDENTIFYING THE POWER BEHIND OBSESSIVE ACTIVITY
Let’s go a step further, now, and observe what is at work when this kind of activity intensifies and becomes habitual. You may have observed, for example, that when you are feeling insecure, when your desire to reach a particular state or outcome intensifies, or when you challenge the inner activity directly, the activity begins to take on a feverish quality. It can become quite rapid, incessant, even obsessive. You may even feel that you can’t stop it—it is an energy that runs on its own, always thinking, doing, planning. This can occur as you engage in various efforts to get to a place other than where you actually are, including:
Making explicit, repeated attempts to improve yourself in a particular area of your outer life
Pushing yourself to create or maintain a specific inner state that you have hypothesized as desirable
Striving to be different according to an ideal, an idea, a memory, a comparison with others, or a spiritual instruction
Struggling to stop a particular feeling or thought from arising
Experiencing continuous, rapid, agitated thinking, planning, and emotional activity around a particular topic or person
Being driven toward a specific goal with increasing effort applied to achieve it
Feeling constant dissatisfaction with yourself and a sense of failure or insufficiency
When one or more of these patterns begins to dominate your experience, it becomes possible to recognize something very important that you may not have seen before—something that can transform your inner state: the intensity of the experience itself can begin to expose the central energy that powers this obsessive, driven inner activity.
We have seen that the most effective motivation for our practice is kindness, which is compassionate in the sense that it is helpful, but which also has a quality of appreciativeness, a lovingness that reflects the energy of True Nature as it manifests its possibilities. We can see that the natural flow of our experience is fueled by love. In contrast, ego activity—especially when it gets obsessive—reveals an energy powering it that is very different in nature. If we observe carefully, we discover that the incessant, obsessive attempt to change ourselves, to improve ourselves, to be something different, is actually powered by self-hatred.
This may be difficult or painful to consider, but think about how much we criticize ourselves, judge ourselves, attack ourselves, reject ourselves, push and pull ourselves. What is behind it? Why would we want to be so violent toward ourselves?
If we keep examining our behavior, we will recognize at some point that what we are doing constantly in our inner activity is a form of violence. We may call it the activity of the superego or use some other term to describe it, but it is violence just the same. We can tell that it is violent because it hurts, it divides us inside, and it is constantly attacking the very nature of who we are.
The more we see the violence, the more we come to realize that it won’t stop until we are willing to recognize a particular truth that most of the time we don’t want to see. Some of us are aware of it, some are not. Either way, we probably don’t want to believe it, but the truth is that we would not treat ourselves this way unless somewhere deep inside, we hated ourselves. The hatred may be obscure, may be hidden, but it is operating inside us as that inner destructive energy, the source of the violence that powers these painful behaviors.
RECOGNIZING HATRED
If we are not yet certain that hatred is the fuel, the driving force, we can ask ourselves, “How could I reject myself if I didn’t have that kind of heartless disregard for who I am? How could I reject my experience—try to push it away, resist it, twist it, and manipulate it—if somewhere in me I didn’t have an unfeeling, heartless energy that is not attuned, not sensitive, to the effects of that rejection?”
To absorb this recognition in a way that will help you to understand it better, take a moment to consider what we have discovered so far in the chapters that have led up to this point. Much of the work we have been doing is to support our understanding of the nature and the effects of various types of negative reactions to our experience. Manipulation, control, resistance, defensiveness, judgment, comparison, rejection—all of these are our attempts to get rid of experiences that we don’t want. From this perspective, we will be able to see that hatred is the ultimate expression of all our negative reactions, and in fact, is the root of these behaviors.
So how do we identify that hatred in ourselves? Often it will not be obvious, but you will find that it is easiest to recognize when you feel the quality of obsessiveness. That’s because when hatred is present, obsession is also present—our consciousness is consumed with the object of our hatred. Let’s say that somebody has emotionally wounded you. You will probably find yourself obsessing, thinking, “What am I going to do? How am I going to get that person?” All kinds of images go through your mind, and you can’t stop trying to figure out the most damaging thing you could do to that person or to imagine the worst thing that could happen to them. Or maybe you keep obsessing about fairness, justice, and retribution in the situation. If you look underneath all those thoughts and schemes, what you will find is hatred.
We tend to want to use other terms for what we are feeling because we are more comfortable with them. We might say, “I feel a lot of aggression toward that person,” “I can’t stand him,” or even “I’m really angry with her.” Or you might put a more positive spin on it and say, “Well, it’s my responsibility to protect others from getti
ng wounded in the same way I was.” Those things may be true, but when you are obsessive, the issue really is one of hatred.
And if we see this as the hatred that powers the inner activity fundamental to ego, then it is evident that it is actually hatred of life—the uncontrollable, dynamic flow of life. In the realm of inner work, this hatred is directed toward our own experience, toward ourselves. So, we need to recognize and understand our hatred, see its manifestations, and see how it acts to try to change our experience. When you say that you want to reject your experience, change it, or make it better, the inner impulse is actually to obliterate it, to destroy it, to make it not be there, because it is not wanted.
Before we try to understand what this hatred actually is, it’s important to be aware of how we are influenced by the way hatred is generally viewed in our society. Almost everyone has been taught that hatred is bad, wrong, or evil—something to be avoided because it harms others and ourselves. But as we have seen, being with ourselves as we are requires a more open and accepting attitude toward all of our experience. This is not a matter of endorsing any particular way of being, feeling, or acting. It is a matter of encouraging exploration. So, accepting our self-hatred in the truest sense doesn’t mean that we are saying that it is good or right; it just means that we can be with it and explore it without judgment, trusting that whatever we need to see and understand about it will be revealed through the wisdom of our True Nature.
DISCERNING WHAT HATRED IS
So what is hatred? If we try to see what is behind it, we will notice that hatred is an attempt to remove difficulties. Hatred is an attempt to get back at what hurts us, what obstructs us, what prevents us from getting what we want. It is an effort to remove the impediment, the frustration, and the source of that frustration. So hatred is inherently vengeful, but it is also an attempt to redress the situation. You want to balance things out, and you think that will happen only if you can remove the source that hurt you.
Obviously this experience of hatred and vengefulness operates between individuals and between societies, but here our focus is on how it operates inside us. Hatred is an energy we unleash on any experience that we consider to be a source of frustration.
So when we don’t like or accept what is arising within us—whether it is anger or sadness or weakness or deficiency, or even a positive feeling such as love or kindness—we want to destroy it because we feel that it is objectionable. But the deeper issue is this: Because such an experience or feeling is objectionable, we conclude that it is preventing us from being happy, from having what we want. We tell ourselves, “This experience is not what I want, so I am not happy because of it; it is my enemy. I am therefore going to obliterate it.” And how do you obliterate it? You hate it. Hatred is the most effective thing that ego has come up with to obliterate the enemy.
History has demonstrated what we have also discovered internally to be true: Hatred is a particular energy that can destroy because it doesn’t have heart, it doesn’t have love, it doesn’t have the sensitivity and the attunement of kindness and gentleness. It is a very effective instrument of destruction. But it is effective at the expense of our sensitivity, at the expense of our attunement, at the expense of our awareness and consciousness. It obliterates by removing sensitivity. So it tends to diminish and limit our awareness, to flatten it.
THE MYTH OF EGO ANNIHILATION
We can see this loss of awareness in the way hatred arises in the context of our inner work. As we go deeper in our inner practice, we begin to recognize that what stands in the way of our spiritual realization are our ego manifestations—our issues, our contractions, our resistances, our conflicts, our identifications—in short, our ego-self. We have learned enough to recognize that it is the self that is keeping us from simply being. Now our hatred manifests as an attempt to destroy that self—and we think that doing so is serving a spiritual truth!
Because so many spiritual teachers have said that the way to realization is to annihilate the ego, and that ego death is the answer to all our problems, we may not have examined yet the implications of this teaching. What does ego death mean? It usually means to us, “Eliminate the ego; annihilate it. Destroy the self, because for us, as spiritual seekers, it is the enemy.”
What do we do with an enemy that is in the way? We do whatever we can to take the enemy out, to get it out of the way so we can reach the nirvana that we want. We are looking for the final release, because we believe that once the impediment is gone—once the contractions are gone, the frustrations are gone, the issues are gone, the ignorance is gone, the ego is gone, the self is gone—then we will be happy, we will be enlightened, we will be at peace.
Here we are seeing a specific expression of the same tendency that is there all the time—the desire to obliterate whatever we don’t like in our experience or about ourselves. When that tendency is extreme, people consciously hate themselves to the point of depression or even suicide. But inherent in all ego activity—whether we’re dealing with daily challenges, a serious psychological crisis, or our spiritual practice—is a subtle hatred driving the inner activity that is always attempting to bring about happiness and “the final release.”
Think about it. Why do we want to change ourselves? To feel good, to feel better, to finally be at rest. Consider all the movies that focus on eliminating the bad guys or getting revenge. What happens when the hero finally kills the bad guy or puts him in jail? Peace and relaxation. But it is only at the end of the movie, in the last couple of minutes, that the hero can stop all his incessant activity and finally rest. The whole movie is about getting to the point where he can just let go and relax—put his feet up and drink a beer. Before that, he is obsessed with the enemy: “I have to get rid of him. I have to finish what I set out to do; otherwise, I can’t have any peace.” This is the perfect expression of our inner conviction about how we arrive at peace and rest.
We see this engrained throughout human society. For example, when I listen to the news and hear about so many murders, rapes, and abuses, I notice that it’s often the family of the victim who is most emphatic that the person who committed the crime get the maximum punishment, even when that is the death penalty. The family members openly say, “We want satisfaction,” and the law supports that—society itself supports their position.
The idea that if we are wronged, we are completely justified in our desire to hurt the other, to get back at and punish that person has been institutionalized in our society. Even nice, ordinary people say, “I can’t rest until I get satisfaction. That man murdered my child, so I have to put him behind bars or in the electric chair. Only then will I be satisfied.” I always wonder why that is satisfying. Where is the satisfaction in killing somebody else or hurting them as much as possible?
We think that it will be satisfying because that is what our hatred wants. It is our hatred in action. The only way we believe we can live at peace with ourselves is by eliminating whatever it is that hurt us, whatever caused us misfortune, because we want to get back to that peace of mind, to that nirvana. We want to get rid of it, forget about it, relax, and go on with our lives.
So, hatred is pandemic, it is everywhere. We hate others when we feel wronged or frustrated. And what we feel toward others, we inevitably feel toward ourselves. Why is that? If we hate someone else, we are hating the fact that they have hurt, humiliated, or frustrated us. We want to annihilate them so that we will no longer experience these feelings. This means that we actually hate our own feelings that we believe are caused by that person. So hating an object reflects the fact that we hate the feelings that object engenders in us, and hence we hate ourselves.
At a deeper place, hatred implies self-hatred because hatred itself already reflects a duality: There is me and the other or me and what I hate, which is bound to be a duality within the self as well. Since in truth we are not a duality—we are an expression of the beingness of everything—if we hate anything, we are dividing ourselves, our awareness; we are
hating part of our own consciousness. And we are separating ourselves from the oneness of our nature. It cannot be any other way.
DISCOVERING HATRED
As we become more aware of the issues related to hatred of others and hatred of self, we pass through many stages and recognitions. It is only at the deeper stages of inner practice that we come to recognize that we hate ourselves explicitly. See if you can identify where you are and what is true for you in relation to the following statements. Some are sequential, and some overlap.
I am disregarding or shutting someone out for slighting me, but do not believe that I actually hate him.
My thoughts about not acknowledging this person are becoming obsessive, and I recognize that I actually do hate him.
I recognize my hatred for this person, but do not recognize that in hating him, I am also hating myself.
I cannot see my self-hatred in explicit ways, but I can notice my tendency to reject myself, judge myself, attack myself, criticize myself, and try to modify, change, and improve myself.
I notice that my inner activity has become obsessive; that I can’t stop rejecting, judging, criticizing, and trying to change and improve myself.
I am aware of the particular struggles I face, and I still believe that I am justified in my efforts to change myself; that it is the primary means to achieving my peace of mind.
I begin to recognize that a primary result of my inner activity is that a certain feverish inner state is maintained, and that dynamic feels unstoppable.
I see the incessant activity of my ego as the central impediment to my peace. It is my enemy; I wish I could get rid of it. I believe that my spiritual practice can help me eliminate my ego so I can be free.
I get so frustrated with my constant agitation, with the fact that I am always doing something to myself. I can’t do anything to stop that, so I can never settle down and have peace.