The Tyrant

There are two men living in one house. Your divine self shares your body and mind with a tyrant. The Divine Self, we'll call spirit and the tyrant we'll call ego. Spirit is there in you because spirit is everywhere. You contemplate the presence of the Holy Spirit. There are not two. In the quiet chambers of the heart, without the tyrant shouting in our head, we know that the Holy Spirit is the One Spirit. Paul the apostle hinted that we are "that same spirit". The false humility of the ego conjures up a personal spirit coexisting with the One Spirit. It implies that your spirit is separate from my spirit. This imaginary "little" spirit is just another projection of the ego. It's the ego's way of giving itself a spiritual identity. In the religious notion of heaven, the ego sees itself walking in paradise with all the creature comforts and none of the pain. We believe such notions because the tyrant ordered us to. If the tyrant doesn't endow itself with eternal life, it is doomed to vanish when the flesh vanishes. The one thing the tyrant, or the ego refuses to do is give up and die.

Who is this imposter on the throne? How did he usurp power from the Spirit? The Spirit is eternal, and omnipotent, yet this upstart dictator is controlling us. Why do we allow him to continue? Let me describe this tyrant in detail and contrast him with the nature of the One Spirit with the hope that the truth will set you free from him. The writer of Genesis explained how the tyrant came to power. Sadly, few have heard the tale. The problem is, it's the tyrant who's reading the story, and interpreting it. If the first two chapters of Genesis are seen as the rise and fall of the human race, or the birth of galaxies, the practical lesson is well buried. It was the divine inspiration of the writer to so deeply bury it in allegory. If the tyrant doesn't understand the lesson, perhaps it will remain intact for those who have ears to hear the deeper story. Jesus and the disciples spoke more plainly than the prophets of old. If religious tyrants felt threatened by an exhortation from Jesus, it was simple enough to water it down. The amazing story of Adam in the garden has not been understood and remains rich and powerful today. Here's a translation that puts the responsibility on you instead of allowing you to blame your deviant nature on Adam . . .

The tyrant awakes when the man falls asleep. If Whole Adam represents the spiritual identity, then when the Spiritual Self is in a trance, another self can arise. This self is only a dream state. There are many interpretations of the meaning of the literal text where she-Adam was taken out of he-Adam's side. But they all point to the same thing. Whether I say that Spirit saw it's reflection in form - or Divine Mind created a body to dwell in - or it was a repeat of the process where the invisible Lord put himself in a visible body of blood and bone - these are just metaphors on top of metaphors. What they all point to is the birth of the awareness of separation. In "I Am", there must be a distinction between I and Am. 'I' is the Father identity, 'Am' is the Mother identity. The male expression is born from the parent life-principle of imparting the seed of life. The female exists because her spiritual counterpart is the home where spirit dwells. All spirit - form unions create - 'That'. 'I am that I am' is the ground of Being that you call God. This is the essence of self awareness. There is an illusion that there are two, but there never is more than one. Creator and creation are one. Mind and manifestation are one. But it was inevitable that Adam would come out of the Divine womb. Then reproduction 'in the image' would repeat within creation. It is not good that man should be alone. That's why The One created a reflection of wholeness in the mirror - it was not good that God should be alone.

We consider the awesome power of Divine Being, but do we realize the awesome loneliness of a universe of One? It is in our divine nature to seek companionship, even though it's an eternal illusion. Deep inside, we sense that no matter how much creation we fill our days with, we are essentially alone. What I fellowship with is bits and pieces of myself that I pretend is 'you'. Even the 'me' that I've come to know as my-self is an illusion. My personality and physical skills are a collection of memories and habits that make up a temporal creature. This created self is the tyrant that I handed the crown and scepter to and have been subject to ever since.

The Tree of Life was the tree of Oneness. Life is whole and complete. It has no opposite. It wasn't the tree of life and death was it? Death is the opposite of birth, not life. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which we will henceforth call the Tree of Judgment, was the tree representing division, separation, duality. The man who was dreaming he was divided had no choice but to dine at the tree who's fruit brought knowledge of the pairs of opposites. It's significant that it wasn't he-Adam who talked with the voice in the tree, it was the part of him that was made into she-Adam. The divided being's mind was already in duality before the fruit was eaten. For us, seeing things as 'me and you', 'alive and dead', 'good and evil' is part of the role we are playing now. When we are beyond the realm of 'me and the world' and again fully comprehend the oneness of all, that tree will finally vanish.

When she-Adam was considering taking the fruit that was good for food, pleasant to the eyes and able to make one wise, she was suffering from the delusion that she didn't already have these things. So thinks the divided mind. If there is 'you and me' there must be 'mine and yours'. The belief that there is an insufficiency that must be remedied with something from 'out there' gives birth to the tyrant. After Adam's eyes were opened, and judgment began, the real fruits of division and false identity set in. The first result was self awareness. I am naked. I am lacking. I am poor, stupid or mean. There's no knowing how far back our own self assessment goes, but our appraisal of who and what we think we are is deeply rooted. Our capacities to perform are based on what we believe about our ego-identity. Now we hear from the tyrant within. "You can't teach others, you're uneducated. You can't minister, you fail too many times. You can't give, you can't afford to." And that's just in the realm of performance. Deeply rooted identification with a time-bound, limited creature who is on his way to the grave, convinces us that we are that dying creature and we need to fight to survive. The longer we journey, the more enslaved we become to the tyrant's lies. We're convinced that we are preserving our self, but it is the tyrant that wants to be preserved. The second result of the fruit of judgment is self preservation. Adam hid from the face of the Lord to save his skin. When the ego that has been ruling you is found out, it will stop at nothing to convince you that you can't live without it. Why are we reluctant to admit we make mistakes? Why do we feed the notion we are superior to others? Driven by the tyrant to inflate itself, we attempt to preserve an identity that is altogether false and empty as a clay mask. Man believes he is growing, evolving. Yet today he is all the more hypnotized in false identity. The more the feeling of lack grows, the more competitive he becomes and the less room he has for love and compassion. He slips farther and farther away from his Divine Self and reinforces the illusion of the self of accumulated substance.

Next, the ego-tyrant justifies his selfishness with all the excuses for why he must be aggressive, unyeilding and cold hearted. He says it's for survival. Proof that he believes he is the created ego withering like grass and has entirely separated from the eternal Spirit Self that has no need of anything and nothing to fear. When Adam is discovered, and uncovered in the bushes, he blames the part of himself that followed the voice of want. And that part of himself in turn blamed the voice. The third stage of self awareness is self defense. The only cause that can rightly be named as the source of all this misery is the belief in separation. This path of thorns and sweat was our privilege to experience and learn from. Now, we are discontent with the ego-tyrant and his endless wants. We realize we are possessed by our possessions, including the separate self we have made our own. Like all possessions, the self was never grand enough, so we were always attempting to add to it. You looked for a larger 'you' by adding a mate, or climbing the corporate ladder or climbing a mountain to include more titles and prestige to what it means to be you. You may have fell in the trap that more money and more things would satisfy your hunger to be complete. Like she-Adam, you sought something you had all along. You were, are and ever shall be whole and complete.

Of course, the tyrant will have none of this wholeness talk. If you are whole and complete, you no longer need the tyrant. You don't need a personal identity if you identify with the Whole-I-Spirit. The return path to the Spirit Self is a tearing away of all the flesh that the false self has created. To be free of the knowledge of good and evil, we have to surrender the good half along with the evil. Every step of the way the tyrant is filling you with fear of what you are giving up. Few are successful in becoming nothing as the Master advised. We have to live with some judgments, but how accepting can we be? A prerequisite is to see the utter nothingness of the tyrant himself and of all that is attached to that imposter. You are not giving up possessions, because you never owned anything. You are not giving up title, position, prestige, power or anything else the tyrant convinced you was real. It was all an illusion built on the pretence of a separated state of being. You don't have to oppose the tyrant when you realize he doesn't exist. Once we grasp the truth that there never was any lack or anything to be desired either for food, pleasure or to make one wise, we can begin to let go of all the illusions of substance we've been seeking.

What you have beyond the role-playing of ego-tyrants is as infinitely precious as it is secure. The Spirit Self that had no beginning and will have no end, is the eternal life force of the reality of Being. When I say Being, I mean the verb, not the noun as in a human being. Being is what I am doing, not what I am. The universe is just Being. Life is just Being. That which you call God - is. Don't entertain what God is. Now you've turned Being into a noun. The nouns are created things. God is (end of story). If we wish to return home we must focus on our state of being and not the state of our affairs. Let the world move through it's seasons and remain unattached to the ups and downs. Our condition couldn't be more secure and stable. We are the one and only Spirit that is lacking in nothing and has nothing to fear because it can't be touched or changed by anything. We have named the characteristics of the tyrant: Fearful, demanding, self-centered, divided and is time-bound and anxious. What are the attributes of the Spirit Self? Tranquil, allowing, flexible, faithful, includes all and suppresses none, versatile, nurturing and has all eternity to experience life.