Image and Identity

It should go without saying, or should be obvious, and seen as a fact, that identity, ideology, and group belonging leads to division. Who I am, my ideology, and my group is opposed to your group. It is part and parcel of identity, ideology and group belonging for it to have, inherently, division. These things create division, feed division, and so create conflict and violence. It is the very basis of war and starvation.

Status and self-importance are part of this phenomenon. Putting some people up higher leaves others down lower; and then you have the countless justifications for this arrangement, all, get this, rooted in ideology. Religious, economic, political ideology all lead to coercion, division, conflict, war, violence.

And no one wants to accept these facts. We are secure in living this way, we think: In spite of the fact that it leads to insecurity, really; it leads to antagonism, deprivation, crisis. It is the crisis.

Thought interferes with clarity; thought is the image, the identity, the ideology, the countless years of things hammered into the psyche until they are repeated over and over again, mechanically, and become unconscious; we do it without knowing we're doing it; we are divided without knowing why, we are ruthless and don't know why.

Like robots programmed to behave a certain way, we continue to go to war, exploit, and become more and more self-important.

We respond with venom and hate, violence. Or we escape in ever more intricate fantasies, which are, ironically, the source of the problem in the first place.

We make up who we are, we fabricate it through thought, through these identities and collections of ideas and propaganda. And we do it willingly, without a second thought. We willingly breeze into our cages and remain there. And anyone trying to free us is attacked. We venture out of the cage but stay close to it to retreat back into it at the slightest sign of trouble.

We are doing it. We create the whole mess and we can end it.

We end it when we wake up and see it.

Sleep is what causes us to continue the crisis, the chaos, the misery.

The illusion of separateness, the illusion of labels and identities, the image which acts as a barrier stands between us and truth.

Seeing it, it dissolves, the lies crumble, time crumbles, the image is obliterated, and we see.