Being and Life Excerpt

The ego boundary plays a huge part in the increasing of one’s degree of realself. Looked at in its totality, one can say that the increasing of one’s degree of realself is actually a thinning and removing of one’s ego boundary, since the more one removes one’s ego boundary the more one becomes one’s realself. But this process is complex and difficult, mostly because the day-to-day world now mistakenly believes that the strong and healthy person has a strong ego boundary—which is not true.

This excerpt shows how ontological ideas, and by extension the ontological emotions that generate them, are not always accessible intellectually. Or at least they are not accessible to the person who is looking at them from a socialself perspective—many ideas first have to be experienced ontologically before they can be understood. (Note: This passage is from the thirteenth chapter, and a person definitely needs to read the information ahead of this excerpt to get a full understanding of these ideas.)

Chapter 13: The Ego Boundary and Its Thinning

Two Walled Towns

Several of the relationships that exist between the socialself, the increasing realself, and the thinning of the ego boundary can be illustrated by comparing the ontological beliefs held by the residents of two very old, imaginary towns. Both of these towns are surrounded by walls that have no gates or doors in them, and both of these walls are so high that no one within either town is able to look, shout, or climb over the top to the other side. The only difference between these two towns is that the wall surrounding one of them has many small windows in it, whereas the other wall has no openings whatsoever, not even the tiniest crack between its stones.

Immediately after the walls were built the people who were then living in the town without any windows in its wall were still aware what life was like outside. They could remember smelling the wildflowers in the meadows, seeing the deer running in the forests, and hearing the frogs croaking by the lake. But as new generations came and went within the town, the memory of what is outside the wall was slowly forgotten. And as the memory of what life is like on the outside faded, for those living within the wall the world became only that which lay within the thick and opaque wall surrounding their town.

Many generations later, the residents of this town now think that what exists within their wall is the whole world—all of life and reality—and that nothing of any importance exists on the other side of it. They have adjusted to their life within the wall, they believe that their life is normal and natural, and they are quite happy living out their lives in their walled town.

The people in the other town, on the other hand, have always been able to look out into the world and see all the life going on around them, by virtue of the small windows in their wall. They can smell the wildflowers, see the deer in the forests, and hear the frogs by the lake. They know without any doubt that they are living within a walled town, and they also know, again without any doubt, that their walled-in life is not all there is to life: they can see that true life is actually the life on the other side of their wall. For these people, the wall surrounding their town is not the unquestioned and natural fact of existence that the other town’s wall is for its residents, but rather it is a barrier that alienates them from the natural world and from what truly is Life. All they have to do is walk up to one of the windows and look outside to realize how imprisoned they are. By constantly seeing life going on outside their wall, their greatest desire is to remove the wall from around them and go out into it.

Obviously, the residents of the town with the opaque wall are socialself people, and the residents of the town with windows in its wall are increasing realself people. Though not mentioned, the people who live outside both walls are fully realized realself people.

As with the people in the town with the windowless wall, the socialself person has a wall around him, his ego boundary, that is so strong, impervious, and opaque that he is not aware of what life is like on the other side of it. The increasing realself person, on the other hand, thins his ego boundary when he shifts from his socialself to his realself. Because of this thinning, openings or “windows” develop in that boundary, and it is through these openings that he becomes aware of his realself, realself-to-realself relationships, the realself world, and realself life outside his socialself and his socialself world.

This walled-town analogy is useful in explaining several ontological ideas and relationships. For instance, in the day-to-day world now just about every bit of open space is taken up by socialself being and socialself life. At the same time, everyone who is now walking out of and away from that world and toward the realself world is assaulted by feelings of vulnerability, fear, and other powerful and painful emotions, from which a person naturally recoils. Given that socialself people are often happy, outgoing, and fully involved with the day-to-day world and the increasing realself person is often guarded, dissatisfied, and detached from that world, many residents of the socialself world believe that the increasing realself person lives in a small world and socialself people live in a world that is not only much larger, but is reality itself.

The error in this socialself world belief can be explained by considering the beliefs of the residents of the walled towns. The residents of the town with the opaque wall think that the world within their wall is very large, since it encompasses all of the known world and reality, even to the extent of “surrounding” everything that exists on the other side of it. To these residents, reality is that which exists within their wall, and therefore only a small, alienated sort of world, at best maybe something mystical, exists outside it.

To everyone who lives outside this town, however, the life inside it is seen for what it is: small, isolated, and alienated. All the people who live outside this town with its opaque wall can go to the mountains, the oceans, or the deserts and see that they themselves, and not the residents of this walled town, are living in the larger world, regardless of how much those residents believe they are.

Similarly, to be a socialself person now is to believe that the small and alienated world of socialself life—the socialself world—encompasses all of life and reality. But in exactly the same way that the residents of the opaque-walled town are wrong in thinking that the whole world exists within the wall encircling their town, socialself people are wrong in thinking that true being, Life, and Reality exist on their side of their ego boundaries. Socialself people are not aware of what exists on the other side of their ego boundaries, such as realself being, realself- to-realself relationships, and realself life, and so they are able to deceive themselves into thinking that there is nothing better than socialself being and socialself life.

This analogy can also be used to explain one of the many subtle changes of reference that takes place in increasing realself people. Some statements by increasing realself people that seem at first completely contradictory become consistent and logical once one becomes aware of how these people are perceiving their changing ontological states. For instance, here is a description of how ontological worlds, the ego boundary, and the self are understood in the socialself world, followed by how they are understood by an increasing realself person who is aware of the true structures of these three ontological entities. As we have seen, the residents of the town with the opaque wall think that the world within their wall is the whole world, or at least the much larger world, compared with whatever exists on the other side of it. Ontologically, they feel that they are on the convex and not the concave side of their wall, and they also feel, again ontologically, that whenever they walk along their wall they are walking around the outside perimeter of the smaller world on its other side. But if these people were to go outside their wall and look back at their town, they would see that its wall is actually concave on their town’s side and that their wall surrounds their town and isolates it from life. Before going to the other side of the wall they would have thought they were going into an inner, smaller world, but once they got there they would see that by going “inside” they have actually gone “outside.” They would see that the world they have stepped into is not only the larger world, which completely surrounds the little town they used to think was so large, but is in fact Reality.