One major obstacle we face in living according to the truth is our identification with being inadequate, small, weak, and impotent. We believe that the true life is for big people, for people who are serious and capable. We sit around and wait for the deficient kid to disappear before we start living our life. Usually we’re not even aware of what is in our way. We cover up our core deficiency with all kinds of ideas: I’m not interested; it’s not the right time; it’s not the right situation; the other person is not letting me; I still need to have more experiences of this and that. All of these responses obscure our deep sense that we can’t hack it. Simple as that. We’re not up to it; we haven’t got what it takes. And we’re not truthful enough with ourselves to see that we’re just chicken. – Diamond Heart Book Five: Inexhaustible Mystery, ch.8
There is only one way that deficiency will dissolve and be resolved. It will not happen by having more experiences. It will not happen by having more insights. None of that will make it go away. The only way to loosen that knot is to live according to the truth. The resolution is the exact opposite of what everybody expects. If we refuse to live the truth until we resolve that deficiency, we’re in for a long wait—forever in fact. But if we start acting according to the truth that we know right now, the deficiency will dissolve on its own.
So, if you know that you are strong, what is the feeling of weakness? It’s a lie. If you experience yourself as solid will, what does impotence mean? It’s an emotional state. If you continue living your life as if you’re deficient, you’re living according to what is false, and your life supports the falsehood. Your actions support your false identity. But if you start living according to the truth, however limited it may be, you’re starting to support what is real in you. What is real in you is simply not deficient. – Diamond Heart Book Five: Inexhaustible Mystery, Ch. 8
The most important insight needed for a student to move from the deficient lack of support to the actual state of support is the recognition that the feeling of helplessness, of not knowing what to do to be oneself, is not an actual deficiency, nor a personal failing. It is rather, the recognition of a fundamental truth about the self, which is that we cannot do anything in order to be, for to be is not an activity. We can come to this understanding only through the cessation of intentional inner activity. At this point, not to know what to do is a matter of recognizing the natural state of affairs, for since there is nothing that we can do to be, then it is natural that we cannot know what to do. There is nothing to know because such knowledge is impossible. Nobody knows what to do to be, and the sooner we recognize this, the easier is our work on self-realization. In fact, feeling that we don’t know what to do to be ourselves is the beginning of the insight that we don’t need to do anything.
This fundamental insight underlies many advanced spiritual practices, such as those of surrender and “nondoing” meditation. We can arrive at this insight by exploring the question of support for identity, but it is another matter to remember and practice it. When we truly learn this fundamental truth, then we have become wise; for self-realization is now an effortless relaxation into the nature of who we are, and this is the presence of Being. Nothing more need be done; the transformation is a matter now of spontaneous unfoldment. – The Point of Existence: Transformation of Narcissism in Self-Realization, Ch. 25
Every time we feel a deficiency, a hole, a gap, there is a longing for that particular missing quality that resulted in the hole. But with that longing there is an additional subtle, underlying longing for the completeness, because each hole, each deficiency, makes you feel incomplete. So it is true that if there is a deficiency of love, for instance, you feel incomplete in your lack of love and you will long for the Love aspect. But you will also long for the completeness because the loss of Love destroyed the completeness. Likewise, the loss of Will destroys the completeness, the loss of Peace destroys the completeness, and so on.
I think it is a beautiful thing to recognize that the human soul has the potential to feel and be utterly complete. You see, the Brilliancy is our nature, the brilliance of who and what we are. That completeness, that contentment, that sort of complete deliciousness, happens by completely abiding in our nature, our Being, by not going out of ourselves. We find it by realizing presence itself. It is not found by trying to get pleasure or presence, or by trying to enjoy the presence. It is just being the presence. – A. H. Almaas,, Brilliancy: The Essence of Intelligence, Ch. 4