The first step, and in some ways the most difficult along the upper Way, is the separation of the false from what is real; imagine what happens when someone you think is your friend is suddenly seen as always having been secretly set against you. The shock is overwhelming; and the part of you that felt your friend was a good one is rocked because you can see that your friend wasn’t the only one involved in this deception. You had been self-deceived… and now you can see this as being true, as unthinkable as it may be to the image one has of oneself as being implacable. Learn to consider the part of you that has revealed this truth as your true friend… even though its intervention in your life brings temporary confusion (and its suffering). But see this new kind of suffering… caused by being separated from what is false in you… as the beginning of the end of the pain born of being identified with a self that is the very source of all your confusion and its unconscious suffering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first step, and in some ways the most difficult along the upper Way, is the separation of the false from what is real; imagine what happens when someone you think is your friend is suddenly seen as always having been secretly set against you. The shock is overwhelming; and the part of you that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":232,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[672,1],"tags":[52,3008,3033,257,296,783],"class_list":["post-5805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-changetransformation","category-enlightenment-self-realization","tag-pain","tag-seeing-the-truth-of-yourself","tag-self-deception","tag-self-observation","tag-suffering","tag-unconscious-suffering"],"yoast_head":"\n