The Importance Of Killing Off Self-Importance

Tom Wright

What every single person on earth does, is to make other people wrong for the intentions that they imagined were behind acts that were done. Actual acts often happen, they are what is real. But the degree of significance that is assigned to that act, the meaning that is assigned to that act, and the degree of upset attached to the "wrongness" of that act, is something we all, every single one of us make up entirely.

For instance, something could be said, and to an outside observer, there would be nothing that seemed out of the ordinary, or upsetting, about what was said. Yet, to the person receiving the communication, it could be very upsetting. This upset is not something that is a characteristic transmitted by the communication necessarily, but more of a trigger to what's already going on with the person receiving the communication. For instance, a man could go up to a woman and simply say, "I would welcome your help" and mean nothing more and nothing less than that, in actuality. And yet, to the woman receiving the statement, if she was already upset at the man, she could react intensely negative, and might believe in her perceptions that he was yelling at her, or being disrespectful. Even when he had no intention in the world to be either disrespectful or was even yelling at all. With the point being, that no matter what is said, we make up the meaning of our receiving it. In other words, we make it all up, period, with nothing, no thing left out of that equation, ever.

And the thing that few people do, something I have made it my life practice to do, is to voice that "stupid" stuff we make up, because I believe by doing so freedom is gained. Freedom from the energetic attachment we have to holding onto those beliefs about the meaning that we have received from the words or acts of others in the first place. I have noticed that simply to reveal the actual words and character of this meaning making machinery is insanely irritating to most people, despite the fact that it is myself I am telling upon. I suppose this might be due to the fact that people recognize their own meaning making machinery in my showing of my own, which by the way, means nothing to me. I don't care about what I make up, I know it is nonsense, and I have a very clear understanding of the absolute distinction between fantasy, judgments, complaints, and then the reality of what actually happened. People will say that they can't communicate like that right now, or that they "don’t want to know" about what I made up, or that it is inappropriate or abusive to tell that much truth about things. To this I say, no, it most definitely is not. What the way of life of "tell the truth now, tell the truth later" is, is the route to freedom, to all of our freedom. Freedom from being attached to the "circus" of meanings, implications, insults, arrogance, and the most debilitating energy sucking circus of them all; self-importance.

Self-importance requires that we make stuff up that is insulting to us, whether it really was intended to be or not. Self-importance requires that events in our lives feel upsetting, whether they are upsetting to anyone else or not. In fact, self-importance is that thing inside us that has us feel that "everybody else" would feel the way we do if the same thing "happened" to them, as a justification for the way we feel! As if any way we felt needed to be "justified" in the first place. That justification in and of itself, is our signal that as humans, there are many feelings we feel are "wrong" to feel. Or that someone with our self-important self-image, just wouldn't feel that way! Even as we feel that way. And even when "what happened" is more a function of "what we made up about what happened" than "what actually happened" at all! If you notice, authentic feelings never make the statement, "well, anyone else would feel this way." Authentic feelings are just that, authentic, real, and at the core of who and what we are. Self-important feelings are at the core of who we believe we are and fear that the world does not. Self-important feelings are a shoring up of a personality that does not, in reality, even exist. It does not exist (except in our imaginations) because it is the "small I" that society has hammered into us as representing "who we are" when in truth, in reality, at our core, we are anything but that entirely made up personality. For instance, I was given a name. But am I that name? No, of course not. Not any more than the name "apple" makes any difference to the fruit that grows on what we call an apple tree.

Yet I feel, in my feelings, that if you call out that name, that's who responds to it. And yes, because I believe that, and because I respond to that name, it appears in our beliefs that I am in fact, Tom. And in many ways, I am. But just because I was given a name, that doesn't change the essential nature of who and what I am, any more than the previous example changed the fruit because of the name you give to it. In fact, our language often changes the names of things, and still that only changes the names of things, not the thing in and of itself, because the names and meanings we give to things, are merely representative of our minds, often revealing more of our judgments about things, than anything real about the thing itself. We do this with whole races of people all the time, changing their names, as if that changing determined who and what they actually are. For instance, people of color are simply people, period. No different from anyone else in any way whatsoever, or different from any other person of the human race on earth, bar none. And yet the name switching we do about them is simply juggling around our prejudices about people of color, and not changing anything essential about them at all; because in truth, there is really only one race on the planet: the human one. If we had originally started at this essential truth about any group of people who either looked or acted different than what we were used to seeing, no name switching would have been necessary in the first place. With that essential truth being, we make it all up anyway. And, that we are all powerful, spiritual, creative beings, regardless of what on the surface, any of us appear to be, again, bar nothing.

So, we make it all up. I have to face this meaning making machinery every day of my life, when people, whoever they are, make things up about me. Yes, what they think is none of my business, even when what they think pertains to me. Yet it is my business when what they make up affects our relationship. And it does! And because I am still within the belief that relationships are important to me, especially the relationships I have with family, loved ones, and friends, I make the effort to deal with this meaning making machinery so that our relationships go smoothly. And do not think that just because what people make up about me is mostly inaccurate, that I think that I do not have to do anything inside of myself in order to be a better person, or to be better with others. In fact, all that I do is exactly aligned with doing exactly that. It's called growing.

With the irony being, that I can't do anything about what anyone makes up about me at all. And they make everything up. I go along doing my best to recognize my own meaning making machinery, and that really seems to be the best I can do. And I truly strive to do my best, day by day by day, whether or not anyone else recognizes that truth of what every single one of us does, or not, or whether or not anyone chooses to react negatively to being shown the truth, to having their own meaning making machinery revealed by my own revelations of the silliness we all throw into that circus ring. I for one, would prefer to live with the truth of all that I am with those who I love, than to make believe that I am something that I am not; perfect, totally nice thought oriented, or somehow better than anyone else. And I would also prefer to not make believe that the ugly truth side of our humanity does not exist, for every single one of us, because I know that without the darkness, the light that the truly astounding gifts of our awareness and life itself would not seem so bright. The goal then, is to strive to shine as much of that light as I can, everywhere that I can, regardless of anyone else's "understanding" of what I am doing. To shine it on the darkness of self-importance that every one of us has within us, and to put forth the possibility of living in the exact opposite of that darkness, the light of love. Love, for all of us.