We fall for lies because we want to be told what can't possibly be true.
This formulation came to me recently. Shouldn't be much of a surprise why lies might come into focus these days….
The only way I know of to gain traction with what troubles me/us is to find how my own expectations and the projections they feed set up the conditions for that trouble to appear as an external force.
This is completely alien to the so-called active mind-set that seeks out enemies and then ways to vanquish them. From within that paradigm none of what I have to say here makes any sense. From within this other paradigm trying to convince anyone that they are wrong and should agree with me doesn't make any sense.
What follows exists on the other side of a line. The leap required to get there cannot be imposed on anyone. No insistence on "The Facts!" or demands that we "Be Reasonable!" will get anyone across.
We fall for lies because we want to be told what can't possibly be true.
When we sit with this formulation we find ways to proceed. We're no longer stuck. We find agency. Not the pseudo-agency of the Man-of-action.
What we call action in the common form is already a sign of failure, of capitulation. It is a reaction taken in anger, out of frustration. Our organism knows this. There is always going to be a drag on its momentum.
Our heart is not in it. At least not without a tremendous expenditure of energy aimed at working us up into a state. A state of enthusiasm? Enthusiasm: filled with the breath of the gods. Put it that way and it doesn't seem to line up with our common experience. Revved to a frenzy over a sports team or corralled into a rage by the latest demagogue; we can hardly equate that with any divine inhalation….
We exist in a chronic state of exhaustion and we are plagued by an inability to see how our conditioned reactions keep us from recovery. Even "Blaming Ego!" ends up creating another externalized enemy-within. We get caught up in games as that clever little devil, Ego finds ways to cloak its shenanigans in ever-more disguised striving.
The heuristics we need to navigate this complexity are here for us to use. The key sign of camouflaged Ego is always betrayed by the essential striving underlying all its demands. Instead of girding our selves to try harder, to "Get our hearts into the fight!" Listening to those buried hesitations not only saves us the trauma of another Ego-driven machination. It begins to release the energy buried in our striving.
