The Glass House

The sense of personality, of personal identity, does carry weight, but how real, how permanent is it? Is it not possible that the self is but a reflection in Awareness of sensations in a body, and subsequent concepts and opinions about those sensations?

With further refinement and sensibilities, further contours and subtleties develop. Now we have a full blown personality with opinions, preferences, sensitives, and hurts.

With a personality and concepts fully developed, our image of self takes on a solidity that cannot be justified. It cannot establish itself in any permanent way. So we must defend it, this paper tiger in a glass house. It looks real, but is as fragile as wind.

This fragility is betrayed by our willingness to defend it. Are we not willing to defend it to our actual death? The image has taken on life as its own. We will kill to defend it.

The willingness to defend this image to the point of death reveals the security it falsely provides. This something so ephemeral, so unreal, and yet so precious we are willing to die for it!

Giving up that false self is the only real death we can ever experience. The prison of the conceptual house can be seen through, but the guts to do so are directed at defense, "at all cost."