21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T W E N T Y - O N E L E V E L S

examination. The starting point to realising our pleasure is acceptance and honesty. We do not need to be afraid of who we really are — we need to be able to tell ourselves and others where our true pleasures lie. To really bring this home we might say: I am my pleasure; I am the object of my pleasure. Our self and genuine pleasure are intimately linked. Knowing yourself is the only way to know pleasure and the only way to satisfy it. Also, it must be the starting point for genuine compassion.

So our societies have a confused view of things, thinking that pleasure is some kind of self-indulgent added extra to life rather than central to it. In this we are denying our true motivations and thinking that we live our lives primarily as rational beings rather than embodied and emotional, pleasure-driven persons. The economy of descendancy that harmonises the aspirations of spirit with soulfulness, recognises that we are embodied persons, understands genuine pleasure and seeks its fulfilment within interbeing and compassion.

Psychologists still talk in terms of us having an ego, even while they believe that people don’t have a soul or a consciousness. Ego is a healthy thing up to a point, giving us a necessary determination and assertiveness to cope with life. But too much ego — and our narcissistic, individualist culture very much celebrates ego — can have bad effects. So, it might be asked, does ego actually stand in the way of us achieving that broader and wiser approach to life — the eudaimonia that I’m advocating here? A lot of spiritual teaching is about changing our own inner attitude to the world such that our

97