Illusion
How immediate reward, control, and performance can narrow access to the true identity, from Chapter VI: I
Lastly, we will have a look at where and how our identity may hide from plain sight.
Echo Chamber
The unfortunate scenario is when a person prefers to do anything merely to feel happy — favouring short-term enjoyment without caring about deeper fulfilment. Neurologically, we could simplify this as being driven by immediate reward.
The person witnesses someone else dropping a wallet. There is a decision to be made — between giving it back (forgoing the money but strengthening moral values) and keeping it. For now, let the decision be free of other variables (such as starving children).
If the person decides to keep the wallet, the financial empowerment strengthens the illusions of power and control, and consequently of freedom, as it allows the money to be used for something desired. The spirit acknowledges this feeling of freedom via power as good, naturally strengthening the person’s way of decision-making. (I believe that on the other side there is always grace — as conscience or some other contra-dynamics, so the person has the possibility to choose.)
After a period of power-driven decisions, the person’s brain has probably already developed many bypasses around grace, while the spirit takes them as a necessary toll for the (illusion of) power and control. As a result, the person is not fully at ease, yet desires to feel good — free — seeking to secure their freedom.
The person’s spirit and mind are now in an echo chamber, reinforcing each other’s limited inputs alongside worldly stimuli. This constant reactivation of immediate-reward pathways — both exhausting and (to a limited extent) gratifying — enables the person to generate performed success and fulfilment, even while being forced to outpace grace or innate spirituality. The pattern strengthens, compelling the person to always make a choice — run faster, or drop it and experience the collapse of a value system built on lies. (Being naked is far from fun.)
Here I would like to draw attention to imagining this echo chamber without grace. I think it is important to understand that it is very difficult, if indeed possible, to break the inertia along the axis of spirituality (longing for love, freedom, true joy) — power (does not need to be obvious) — illusion of freedom and happiness. I assume that the brain would hardly allow it, as the brain cares first and foremost about survival, and the step of acknowledging the truth of living in an illusion — essentially giving up one’s value system, sabotaging both identity and the world map… You can imagine why the impenetrable restriction is inevitable for survival.
I wanted you to imagine the echo chamber without grace, not because I would undervalue the good in us. But because the brain has its own agenda, which serves to protect us from mental breakdown, since losing our identity and world map would cause severe uncertainty and distress. I wanted you to imagine the echo chamber in order to consider how much of our true freedom or faith would be possible without grace. I think we largely lack sufficient independent, self-sabotaging power to open ourselves and respond to outer guidance in order to break the echo. I am not saying it is not possible; just based on my reasoning alone, I assume that breaking the echo and stepping into the unknown in faith is the response of the will predominantly empowered by grace.
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Now our relief may come from realizing that even if we are in a state of limited awareness, when we are disabled by perpetuating our power-freedom inertia, it is God, the transcendence, which is persistently calling us. We may breathe out, embracing that the initiation belongs to the divine, within our limits of understanding. Should we find that we cannot decide to open ourselves by sheer effort alone, we can decide to respond to the call that is already present. The echo is then redeemed — rather than being locked in a closed loop, our spirit may experience release, with the mind reflecting the interaction between the spirit and the divine.
The Blind Spot
The million-dollar question then is — when our spirit, our core self, and all the divine are so amazing, why not reveal it directly — and there we are, no need for suffering. Acknowledging that perhaps no one knows the answer, I see a very natural logic behind it — because this is not a game of powers. This is respect for free will. The divine does not need to dominate us, for love is proposing, not forcing; and freedom cannot be forced either.
Thus, although our core self, the spirit, and the divine may seem hidden, it is not because they are absent or dormant, but because the main values of the divine — love and freedom — are not to be forced. Our spirit is always fully present and active, yet its origin and identity may be obscured to itself and our conscious mind in ways arising from several barriers — the historical burden (such as trauma or misguidance), the disordered appetites (inclining toward lower goods), the clouding (by passions or forgetfulness), or simply psychiatric or neurological issues. It can also happen that the story we live temporarily eclipses the spirit itself (e.g., fame), or that the spirit shrinks to the immediate situation (e.g., high stress).
Intermezzo: I hope you are surprised that I mentioned, in one breath, both self-induced and non-self-induced reasons. I did this on purpose. First, what matters is our stance, not our situation. Second, no one truly knows our stance — sometimes not even ourselves. Third, no one knows God’s stance or the workings of the divine.
In the state of unawareness, the spotlight of observing is primarily directed outward through the mind, toward thoughts, emotions, roles, or reactions — as the only true reality, not as something to be observed and questioned. Since the narrative (the mind) cannot turn back toward the observing (the spirit), we are basically becoming identified with our mind, buying into the mind-body story complex as absolute truth. We are giving the brain — our raw neurological pathways — much more space for leadership, where functioning tends to proceed automatically, without much depth, while our spirit is deluded by this simplified reality.
I believe the divine is touching us in ways we can perceive at the given moment, to balance our inertia, and, as a result, to remind us of our free will to reorient ourselves toward our core identity. I also believe that a divine call is always aligned with the strength of our inner structure to bear it — to neither tear it down nor cause distortions, such as inflation (I have such a spirit!), abstraction (gnosticism), or other misconceptions. The delay in realizing one’s spiritual nature is, in this context, not a failure but a protective mercy. Thus, while the veiling of the spirit serves to prevent the self from being wounded by a truth it cannot yet carry, it is up to us to be prepared — by our free decisions to accept the unknown.
Addiction
Despite my knowledge of spirituality and my spiritual identity, it was paradoxically just a little more than an empty story; in reality, my identity apparently existed as an automatic, calculated performance, with myself knocked out somewhere in the corner. If it was laziness, idleness, or objective unpreparedness, I cannot tell. However, I assume that for an extensive period of my life, my mind-body performance served its purpose in securing my mental functioning and survival. Unsurprisingly, an identity dependent on its reflection in others means persistent anxiety: constantly preparing what to say, calculating the right moment to act, or even anticipating situations to ensure readiness.
Ironically, this well-built mental substitute for true identity, which expects admiration as natural feedback for a rather superhuman performance, ultimately prefers solitude. The performance itself is so exhausting and stressful that solitude mitigates the fear of interaction, consequently reinforcing the sense of isolation.
Identity built on this tension is inevitably unsustainable, and when the body’s reserves are depleted, the brain enforces a non-negotiable shut-down — the collapse. In my case, it was an abrupt, terrifying rupture between the brain, which still rushed to survive while concussed in the void, and me, suddenly emerging, fragile, naked, and compelled to remain alive, for being is unconditional.
Yet my anxious identity remained firmly grasped by my brain, as losing identity — any identity — means extreme vulnerability (losing all pillars) and inevitable death (that is the brain’s story — valid from an evolutionary perspective). Hence, my brain has been desperately kicking ever since. One would conclude there is utterly no space for a new, unscripted existence.
Or perhaps, as you already assume, there is. Although that is already the story of healing.
