In a number of his talks Gabor Matte speaks about the need for an individual to move past their ego and become re-connected to their deep true essence as a human being. This essence tends to be lost as we grow out of our childhood because of the nature of our upbringing. Our parents were imbued with the old cultural stories of self-interest and separation and our educational system promotes this way of being as well. Our social culture, what I call the distraction culture, also promotes self-interest and separation from nature. As a result people grow up not really knowing that they’ve lost connection to their essence. And so it usually takes some series of crises in a person’s life, repeating patterns of behavior, repeating life experiences and crises in the world like the degradation of our oceans or devastating storms to begin to wake the ego up to the sense that perhaps it isn’t the only thing inside ourselves that is actually aware. Often one’s soul begins to speak as we grow older especially in middle age and as death begins to be seen in the distance we begin to wake up. Things like nightmares, body problems especially chronic ones, potentially even some form of disease will all be aspects of an attempt by one’s body and soul to get our ego’s attention about the lost connection to our essence. Certainly this reconnection isn’t an easy process for any individual. For those individuals who are most wounded, particularly those who haven’t been able to develop much ego strength, going into past wounding to recover one’s essence feels literally like dying. Depth psychology attempts to strengthen the individual’s ego so that it can withstand the difficult descent down into the depths of oneself to discover one’s essence. The strengthening of the ego also allows what might be called an observer ego to develop. The observer ego can begin to stand back from the individual’s life and start to see patterns of behaviour, repeating patterns of body symptoms, repeating patterns of dreams and then begin to understand that there is a connection between those patterns and ones feelings and one’s life. Now this isn’t for everybody. Another way to and through the doorway to one’s essence is with the imagination and creativity of art. Creativity seems to open the ego sufficiently so that space is created within oneself to begin to be able to perceive one’s inner and outer world differently. This new non-egoic space is where a new story or stories can be heard and worked with within us. In this space our lost true nature can be re-membered.

I’ve been thinking about creativity and energy for a while now. It seems to me that our cultures dominant stories of self-interest and separation from nature have a tendency to stop the flow of life energy or cause us to attempt to draw certain aspects of this energy inappropriately to ourselves. I was sitting in a parking lot a few weeks ago. I was there with my partner and we were talking about how in many respects our North American culture is creating more and more ugliness. We were looking out on an empty field which is surrounded by an industrial area. Certainly if one worked at it you could see beauty in the snow on the field and in some of the bits of grass poking up here and there through the snow. But in the main when one really looked out on this industrial area it was a reminder of the rape of this planet. We were also talking about how our heavily materialistic culture produces things that we consume that are quickly thrown away or are designed to become rapidly obsolete. As a result there is at a soul and heart level a felt deadness to this kind of matter. In fact to me it seems to literally draw the life force out of one and into itself. I think this really goes hand-in-hand with the whole aspect of self-interest and separation. The flow of creative energy from one’s essence is blocked, distorted and consumed.

So if we are focused on trying to get more for ourselves, consuming many objects that draw energy from us, then this circle will require us to consume even more. It becomes very hard for us to even begin to see that we are moving farther and farther away from our essence. And so the more we ignore the inner call of our essence the greater the psychic charge that is building in ourselves. And as I said this leads to all sorts of calamities in order to get our attention.

I think from what is happening to people and to our world it is quite evident that many people are not connected to their essence. If they were the world would not be going in the direction that it is. So if most people are not connected to their essence then as Gabor Matte suggests they become addicted to something to fill the emptiness that the loss of connection leaves. It is a dark hole that can never be filled by our present way of being. This pit can be frightening to contemplate. We can begin to see how our “modern” world has been built by individuals who are not connected to themselves in a deep way and answers why we are in the predicament that we are.

Samsara is the Sanskrit word for suffering. What corporations in particular and government in some instances have done is a brilliant selling of samsara to us as individuals. As one wise man put it, the brilliant selling of samsara and its barren distractions attempts to fill the emptiness that we all feel deep in ourselves when we are not connected to our true natures. When we are told that there is no real truth in the world and in ourselves, that truth is a lie, even that truth does not exist, this leaves us no choice but to become addicted to something to fill the void. And because we are addicted we will want our “preferred substance” be it power over others or ice cream to be there always and to have more and more of it over time. This creates human beings that are anxiety ridden, self-interested and separate from the natural cycles of the earth. And we suffer. Then the brilliant sellers of samsara tell us that this state of being is our “true” nature and the whole circle of the lie is complete. Yet consider that we are not addicts deep in ourselves and we are not to blame for not fully understanding this lie. But it is time that we woke up to what the lie is and what it does to our lives and to the planet.