A Total Surrender

The chances of recognizing the full extent of one's own unconscious conformity to the prejudices of the society in which you are raised are slim to none. Even the revolt against these standards is in all likelihood only another aspect of the same compulsion. It is the willingness of each to cling to the scripts (or anti-scripts) that reveals their exterior alignment with the world. That is the nature of enculturation. In this regard even those who profess to be spiritual are rarely spiritual. Perhaps there have been moments of awakening when they might catch a glimpse of just how ordinary their lives are, before falling back into routine.

The most important point in learning to dissociate yourself from your exterior self is that as this inner consciousness of the insufficiency of social prejudice begins to make itself known to you, that it becomes essential that we increasingly darken our discursive thoughts, discussions, and practises. In truth this shift to the interior self - the non-fabricated, true self - is always and solely the work of God. As a reminder, that is what distinguishes it from the exterior, false self, even though this false self may masquerade and present itself as a religious, interior self. You will never have to make any special effort to do this work of darkening your false self as - just as with love - this work is begun and carried on by the action of God and is primarily passive in nature. There will be some initial necessary cooperation with God in this. But eventually this passivity will become natural, so that recognizing the obstacles to relinquishing oneself to God are self-evident.

Cooperation with God is made up in not struggling to carry on or prove yourself in the acts of devotion that come with extinguishing your social self. And in particular in the end it has to do with setting aside even those constructed sacred habits that obstruct the more transcendent force of passive abandonment and absorption into God.