Chi Wei

This writing will introduce the concept of essence or the essential nature of the life energy as it is expressed through the human being.

It is our understanding that the natural essential nature of the human being as a sentient life form is compassionate, intelligent, and creative. This essential nature, however, is something that we are taught to regard as base and carnal by a society that views the environment as hostile. In our response as a society to environmental conditions, both natural and social, we tend toward reacting with hostility as well. There is a war on poverty, on pests and weeds, a war on disease and viruses and bacteria in general, a war on drugs, a war on "terrorism" which involves a tremendous amount of collateral casualties, torture, and seeming random incarceration. There is a war on homelessness, a war on crime, a war on hunger, and the list continues.

Each of these wars has massive funding behind it despite the fact that no one is winning any of these them. One way to look at the scenario is this:  A Texas rancher visits one of his pastures one morning and discovers that an ant colony has built a huge ant hill in the middle of it. He procures a stick of dynamite, sticks it in the center of the hill, lights the fuse, and walks away as it is blown to smithereens. The very next morning he revisits his work and discovers that surviving the ants have been scattered and have created three hills in the same pasture. The rancher than goes to procure three sticks of dynamite.

Obviously, this sounds absurd, however is it not what we as a society practice everyday? We are creating super "germs" that do not respond to antibiotics. We are creating bacteria that our children and grandchildren will be left to deal with in the future. And now we are paying taxes and spending huge amounts of money to fund research to create anti virus drugs to accomplish the same end. Many of us feel that killing terrorists is a good idea, though we do not seem to realize that for each one we kill, there are brothers, cousins, fathers, even sisters become our enemies. It is only logical that we cannot kill all of them, there will always be more.

A.H. Almaas writes, "When a baby is born, it is pretty much all essence or pure being. As the infant grows, the personality starts developing through interactions with the environment, especially the parents. Since most parents are identified with their personalities and not with their essence, they do not recognize or encourage the essence of the child. After a few years essence is forgotten, and instead of essence, there is now personality. The child and, later, the adult believes this structure is its true self."

"Essence was there in the beginning, and it is still there. Although it was not seen, not recognized, and was even rejected and hurt in many ways, it is still there. In order to protect itself, it has gone underground, undercover. The cover is the personality."

What Almaas has written is that the essential nature of the human organism, when rejected by trusted parents, teachers, and later religion, even law enforcement, becomes background rather than identity. The personality, or ego, split mind, or conditioned self becomes prominent. This conditioned self becomes the structure the individual identifies with.

Personality is a fragile shell, more often than not vulnerable, defensive, and dependent on outside factors for satisfaction. The personality or ego is not a real entity, it is not alive like your body is. Convincing the ego that the body is "evil" or the "desires of the flesh" need to be suppressed is quite easy. The ego, or split mind persona, thrives on identification, attachment, justification, projection, and all manner of mischief, thereby causing emotional issues and suffering.

The split mind must remain constantly active, initiating incessant streams of thoughts in the form of judgments, commentary, divisions, and designations. This ceaseless barrage of thought is what meditation is purported to relieve. Many find practicing meditation helpful, though it is doubtful that the true state of meditation is reached if they are identified with their ego. Meditation is actually the natural mental process when the mind and body are not separated and the being is oriented in the present moment and identified with its essential nature.

The essence, in contrast to the split mind, is immutable. The essence is never threatened and never defensive. As Almaas suggests, essence is still there, it can hardly be absent, the organism would not be alive. However, the conscious awareness of the individual is not identified with the essence, or the body/mind entity; the conscious awareness of the individual is identified with the fragile ego.

It may be early to introduce this concept, however, the creation of the ego, or the conditioning of the organism is according to certain principles. Those principles are identified by many Western spiritual disciplines as the "seven deadly sins". It might be pointed out that the word "sin" refers to missing the mark, as in archery, or missing the bulls eye. It might even be profitable to point out that "deadly" in this case refers to the misdirection of attention and life energy into the past and future. To the essence, life is in the present and the past is dead, the future a dream. To the split mind persona the past and future are everything, and the strategies to live in these two nonexistent realms are both complex and intricate.

To the mind/body entity, or the essential nature, living in present moment awareness is life in a realm that many mystics call the "kingdom of happiness", the "kingdom of heaven", or the "kingdom of god". Many who seek this realm are seeking from a perspective of egoic conscious awareness, or from the reference of their conditioned nature. They will study, practice, and devote themselves to all manner of sacrifice, rites and rituals, and endless searching for the very life essence that was always present. The mere act of seeking or searching, learning and practicing, moves the individual farther and farther away from the "goal".