Every little thing

What if everything were provided for you? Absolutely everything. Well, here's the thing. It is. Every breath you take, every mouthful of food, every drop of drink. Every thought, every emotion, every great idea.
Even you. For you who did not create yourself have been created, and are part of all that has been created. You are - of course - the recipient of everything you receive. You are a vessel of that which flows through you as the temporary feels the eternal, if only for a moment; and another, and another.
So there is a never ending dance of life and change and death. And you get to experience the changing. And yet you can also get to sense the unchanging, poised as you are, a bridge between one and the other.
I mean, really, you couldn't make this up.

Why You Are Here - Briefly

"Why You Are Here - Briefly" has recently been published by O Books. 100+ bite-sized dialogues to prompt you on your journey through passion and purpose, meaning and mission, life and death.
This feels like a good place to say something about the book. People have asked how long it took to write? One answer is no time at all, because most of the dialogues came to me out of the blue. Walking idly through a park I would notice a dialogue pop into my awareness and scurry off to my PC. I got quite excited - probably overexcited - at the form, the short snappy dialogues, which was new to me.
But the title took ages to emerge. I struggled with bizarre titles like "Rimi and Klep" and later the more workmanlike - if prosaic - "Signposts for Searchers" and during this period, several years ago, approached a handful of publishers without a flicker of interest, so I left it to gather dust, so another answer to the how long did it take question is about seven years.
Once the title "Why You Are Here - Briefly" came to me I presented it to O Books who snapped it up. You can view a sample at Amazon.
I remain interested in simple formats that may prompt understanding and hope more will emerge.

In Summary - Living In Flow with Everything

What is life, real life: Living In Flow with Everything. And as you live in flow with everything the boundaries - that are only part of our paradigm - dissolve, and you start to see clearly what is. And what is that? Call it what you will, call it Isness, and you have moved away from it into labelling, but what else to do?
Just be? Let's go with connect. You cannot be yourself - the self we are attempting to describe - without connecting with it. And what is that self? We could say it is the greater self, not the fragment that most of us experience. But let us go further and say that it is not a fragment of the whole: it is the whole.
So who are you? The whole thing; which is not to say that the fragment is the whole - the fragment is only a fragment - it is to say that you are not merely that fragment. You are in the whole and the whole is in you: there is no difference here. In the sum of all things there is only the sum.
That tiny little self you have known, the one that blinks into and out of consciousness, and that in less than a century - much less - will be nothing, is the tiniest undulation. You, on the other hand, you are Living In Flow with Everything.

The Breath of Life

And so thoughts begin to turn to the next year. If you are still breathing, you are still in this game, this great and glorious game called life, where you get to be an aspect of it reflecting life back upon itself. And what is life? A process of change, for without change there is no life, and with change there is life. The change may feel comfortable or uncomfortable, it may feel like forward or backward movement. In any event it is life.
As well as the life that you observe, there is the life that is you, and they are really two aspects of the same, and as soon as you have the internal and the external you have the relation between the two: three in one, the divine trinity.
So there is no other, only your brother. And we are ...

The happening engine

When you notice that what is happening is just what is happening, and that there is an isness that is informing all that is happening, through - as it were - a happening engine, you can start to connect with something that is utterly amazing.
In the centre is the stillness and as you swirl closer you get stiller, if not dizzier, and where would you rather be? Come to that, would you rather not be?
However, pure being, or isness, gets occluded in the generality and specificity of doing and having. The melodrama of life. When you do, you aren't still. When you have, you aren't so free simply to be.
Being has nothing. Being is everything. To be or ...

The whole shmoodle

So there is something beyond that which we currently understand, our understanding may expand any time. We may reach for a connection with a deeper truth and we may allow it to reach us, it comes bidden. And alongside that arising awareness is a keener awareness of the mystery of everything, and that mystery is in everything, crinkling gently.
The thing is it is alive; the whole thing. And we are not separate from that life. We utterly depend on it. We are something that life flows through, we are vessels of life. Nothing more, nothing less. Yet it is even closer than being a vessel. And when we are done with this life, the consciousness that was here will have gone, and yet consciousness remains. We continue, without that sense of I. And you can embrace some of that now, and in that embrace you are embraced.
One life, world without end.

Great leaders are following something

First of all, I do not wish to be a leader. First: I wish to be a follower. What star, then, am I following? I aim to follow what I will call the divine star. The divine star stands for all that is glorious in creation, for what is unfolding, the best that is yet to come: it is potential in a nutshell.
The Christians among us will recognise the language Thy will be done: what is thy will? And what is thy will in each situation? Without attempting to sense thy will, asking for thy will to be done is a pious hope. Great spiritual leaders sense the divine will. Their only wish is to be in accord with it.
Let me go further and say that all leaders, certainly all great leaders, must be followers. What is it that they are following? They are following their vision. They see how things are not. They see how things can be, and they set off in that direction.
A great leader who is not following such a vision is merely contemplating, getting ready for the off. That leader may be waiting for the vision to come. But a leader who is leading others who does not have such a vision is bereft, and may lead their followers onto the rocks.
Get your vision. And if you haven’t yet got a vision, what are you waiting for?

Love is all around you

Can you get it? Love is all around you. It always was, is and shall be, and the only blockage was ... well, you and me. We tap into it sometimes because it is there waiting for us. What an extraordinary experience this being thing is. It's searching, searching for something, searching for love.
What else were you looking for?
And the love is in you. Look for it there, and there you will find it. And the love is all around you, let is launch itself upon you, ravishing your heart, as it would. It's waiting, waiting, right there.

Thy will be done

So the wish is that thy will be done. And this will transcends one's own will. It provides shape and circumstance to life, blessing one's being with glorious moments. It is provenance. It is leadership and it is being led, separation ends here.
Everything shifts from the self to the Self.
You can taste the difference. When your wish is to align your will with the divine will there is an endless stream of opportunities, and all of them are so aligned. There is so much, then, not to worry about. It is in the here and now, it is the here and now, it sustains everything; the all-in-all.

Really happening

So this is really happening, right? Really happening. For a short while anyway. And yet it feels like it is happening again and again, same old, same old. Have I come to this point before? How could I know?
Yet there is the strongest feeling that there is something that I don't know and that this whole thing is deeply familiar. A remembrance of things past, lived again. Half-experienced skirmishes with being. 
To what end? To no end. Some kind of giant circle. A spiral to nowhere. As I say, this is really happening, right?

The Symphony Proceeds

Alright, you are energy, I am energy, and energy is all there is. Energy expressed as consciousness, energy expressed as matter, oodles of energy. And yet there is awareness, awareness of the energy, and in that awareness there is separation, there is twoness, subject and object, self and matter, one and the other.
I see you and you see me, and this is a convenient construction obscuring a greater truth. There is but one in a guise and another disguise; that's you and me.
And so the whole symphony proceeds. Light and dark and everything inbetween. That's you and me too.

One's company, two's a crowd

When the self searches it discovers that what it thought was the self is not the self, and the self that it did not know heaves into view. But you cannot gain this new self without losing the other one: one's company, two's a crowd.
Losing one self and gaining another, yet not gaining; simply being. And in the being is everything. In truth, in reality, there is nothing that is not being, there is only being, the rest being a fanciful chimera.
All thinking, all doing, all having, has its source in being. And when the music stops, everything returns to being. So let us take a moment, there are so many, simply to be.

Three in one, One in three

In the whole is the truth of everything, then there engine room of creation, and then there is creation itself. The abstracted whole is perfectly still and unchanging. Creation itself is continuously vibrant and undulating. And then the engine room of creation connects one to the other. A glorious trinity.
God, soul, person; Father, son, Holy Spirit; and one we go.
And where, exactly, are you? In the alive part, sure. But also in the engine room. And at your core, you are in the abstracted whole. In the end, there is no separation. Welcome to the whole schmoodle.

Being our cake and eating it

We are deeply engaged in the process of reunification; or at least the illusion of the process of reunification. For we are already unified, and within this context we are also engaged in being separate with the blessing of the process of having it our own way. And that is deeply OK.
This is being our cake and eating it. Being separate and together, singing in unison and harmony: one song, for ever and ever. Dancing with life as the orchestra hums. It's all unfolding. And we wouldn't have it any other way.
For in the separation is all the variety one could want. So much choice. And in the unity is all the love one could ever want. So much feeling. And that is the way we are. What a ride!

Your self should know

What to do when you don't know? Ask yourself. Ask who? Ask yourself who you are asking. Ask yourself who you are being. The self is always available. On hand to provide dollops of wisdom. So what are you asking for?
This greatness is beyond your grasp. Actually it is ungraspable. It is in the moment. It is on your shoulder. Behind your ear. In your heart. Ever aware yet flickering into and out of awareness. Take a low breath and notice: can you feel it?
There is no gap there. There is no gap between you and universal consciousness. You do not sit outside its awareness. It was never not there, never not here. It's the simplest thing you could imagine: imagine that.

A bit of a set up

Well, here's the thing. So far as I know, I did not create myself. That makes me part of that-which-has-been-created, rather than the creator or that-which-creates, though on an ongoing basis it feels like I am creating. If I am merely part of that-which-has-been-created, then I have to say I am massively grateful, because this life, well life itself, is frankly amazing; I am beside myself with wonder.
Alternatively, I did create myself, in which case I may have been at this life thing for rather a long time. Do you ever get the feeling that you are going round the block, and round the block again, life after life. In this case, thank you, or whoever I was being for setting this whole thing up. I am beside myself with wonder (again).
And then maybe, both are true, depending on who I think of myself as being, and for that matter having been. Alternatively, we could try to imagine that neither are true. I have not been created and I did not create myself. I am just, well, beyond time. Part of the great dance of life with life. Hush, I hear music.

One for all

In the oneness is everything, and there is nothing that is not in the oneness, and there is nothing in the oneness that is not being. One and being are united in one being.
All is one, and the one is knowing itself. And you are the one. You are the one you have been searching for. Who else could it have been? And I am the one. I am the one I have been searching for. Who else?
And yet the self we are discovering is the self that is, was and will forever be. It is beyond the world of fragmentary beingness, it is not simply hither and thither, it simply is. So we want a little more depth.
Yet we can linger in the languid shallows, and many do, and depth may not appear to be so inviting, yet something resonates, and one notices the years going by, and there is something to do, to be, to realise, and in that realisation is everything.
That step, it's right here.

Knowing oneself

Of course, there is no me and you, meaning a separate me and you. There is only me and you meaning a together me and you; and there is more than this, for there is me and you and a together everything else.
"Are we together?" As they say in some places. Meaning do we understand one another, but what if we understand that there is no other. There is only the self, the whole self and nothing but the self. And what if, as we understand there is no other, we also understand that there is no self, meaning the sense-of-separate self; our separate identity, our own consciousness. There is nothing except for everything, that is the reality. How could any of it be different?
So we have come to this. We don't need to get that we are we - whatever we mean by that - and God is God, - whoever we mean by that - we need to get it that there is only ONE, not simply one God, one being which embraces us, not merely embraces us in the sense of wrapping God-like arms around us, but embraces us because it can do no other: it is one. How could it be otherwise? How could we be otherwise?

You, honestly

What is the truth? What is, that's the truth. Can we ever describe it? sort of: to describe it is to reduce it to words, and it is not words, so every description is nothing more than a cartoon.
Who is the truth? You are, you are being the truth, you are the truth. And the truth - or if you like being the truth - will set you free. You always were, you are and you always will be, until the end of time, and when is that?
Time is present while doing is happening. We see that doing brings life, of a sort, to being, and so we are. Without doing in some shape or form, time has come to an end. Being may be, but it is not persisting through time, we are outside of time. And of course we always were.
So let us live this truth of our being: we are here, we have turned up, we are engaging in something so utterly amazing that the gloriousness of it passes us by.

A place inside a tent

When the self searches for the self, it finds that it was the self searching. When the self searches for love, it finds that it is love. Nothing more or less.
So life is as you find it to be. So what is the self? A fiction. When you get right down to it there's no self: there's a breath, a wave, an undulation of the whole. A place inside a tent.  
What is there? Each imagined self imagining its separateness, and to that extent being separate, but that passes. In the end there's a circle, and you are right back where you started: Not being separate. Yet wasn't this whole helter-skelter thing something quite amazing. Mhmm, there goes life.

A taste of life (the search for the self continues)

That's the one. No-one else, just you, but can you find it? If it has the quality of continuance then, and we might as a shorthand reference call that the "continuing self", then it is not the stream of thoughts that pass across the screenplay of your mind, not those bubbling emotions that arise and subside, nor even the food that becomes your body. The continuing self is something else.
One way to look at it, not that you can actually look at it, is to notice that the seer is not the seenery (sic), in others words, you are not that which you see, or for that matter taste, smell or whatever, so perhaps you are the taster. But what is the taster? On closer inspection there is just the practice of tasting, an associated sensation and perhaps a thought like "That tastes OK". And then it passes, but what of the you that remains?
Suppose you can see the seer doing the seeing. Now that quality of seeing has dropped into the seenery too. And what is left? Nothing, and now you are getting close.

The tiny miracle of existence

Surrounded as we are by miracles, the greatest miracle of all is existence itself, the miracle of being. Though that merits amazement, there would be nothing to be amazed without the transcending miracle of being conscious.
Now we can be aware of being conscious. We can notice that. We can feel the life force that courses through everything. We can notice that we are a part of that. And in the knowing of no-separation is the glory of everything. Here we are and where are you?
None of this had to be. You did not have to be. And yet you are. Quite a revelation.

I'm only dancing

Like a drunk who has forgotten his true nature, that which is not quite itself grapples with that which is itself. Being befuddled, the drunk does not quite understand it. In stupor, the drunk has forgotten who he is: a strange and beautiful being beyond his current understanding; thank God.

So gradually - and there are so many years to do this - its sense of itself expands. The darker self gets to know the lighter self by becoming it. The little self encounters the greater self and gets to know it by becoming it. It becomes one.

The space it enters feels something that resembles like a light space, where nothing heavy remains, and all is light. And there it flies and is free. And there is the dance of life. And there was no darkness, only the blinking of your eyes. Now, shall we?

Let's talk about death

Having recently passed fifty, I have come to a stunning realisation: death - in the sense of passing out of this world - is coming, and is merely a matter of time. The personality known as Nigel Linacre won't last forever, no!
Well, that may seem obvious. But it turns out that the fear around death comes from resisting it, even being in denial about it: "It won't happen to me!" Denial causes great discomfort, release comes in acceptance.
In our youth death is easily and perhaps happily overlooked. but we are expected to be sad about death. But maybe that is just a learned response. True we could be sad about our loss. On the other hand, if we take the view that they have gone to a better place, we could be delighted for their gain: free at last! My own experience has been that I have become even closer to friends and family after they have gone. They have felt as close as my shoulder, so no sense of loss there.
There is something quite magical here: once you get that it is coming, it can become something of an adventure in prospect. And it sure as hell - sorry - sharpens your sense of being in this world: so much to do, so little time; this time around anyway, or maybe there isn't so much to do, maybe it was only ever a matter of being.
If you have only this one life - and as the personality you currently inhabit, it rather looks that way - what will you be while you are here? How gloriously will you manifest?
Death is hardwired into life and vice versa, and all change is both, and life is change and death is change. Your cells are constantly being born and dying, your thoughts are always being born and dying, and so you trudge.
And if this life is the great adventure, a greater adventure awaits.

Leadership in an uneasy age

As a leader, where are you walking? What is your purpose and how do you sense when you are acting on purpose?
Leadership isn't easy. It is more demanding than followership. By definition, you are charting unchartered territories, though others may have traversed similar terrains, and you may have traversed enough to know that there is always a way through, there just is.
As an amazing leader, you can sense the promised land. You know that the prmised land can be reached. As a spiritual leader, you know that the promised land is at hand. There is nowhere else to go but to find that you are already here. And as a teacher, you may enable others to experience that too. Hello, we have arrived.

Getting over death

If you are sitting comfortably, let's talk about death. While there's resistance to discussing death or even nodding to it's approach, not talking about it doesn't help.
Actually, one can't be sure consciousness does not continue beyond this lifetime. And as there is no point planning for nothing, the only eventuality worth planning for is the one where consciousness does indeed continue. What about that?
Buddhist belief that the mental-emotional state you are in after passing is very similar to the state you are in beforehand finds an echo in the Catholic absolution of sins. Move beyond what confines you: death is distinctly liberating. About as liberating as you can get.
The pain comes in not looking forward to it. Death involves moving beyond all fears, even those that have been clung to for a lifetime. And this would be true even for those who did not think there was anything to come.
However you look at it, this is the time to get your act together.

Change and the world changes with you

What if you could change yourself so that everything changes? It all looks the same. But it all feels different because you are different. Wouldn't that be absolutely amazing? And you know, you can do that. Going to a new place helps to do that. But you could change right where you are.
The only thing you can directly change is yourself. You have no other vehicle. Everything else changes because you have changed. Nothing can change when you don't.
So it has been said, be the change. And that is you: you are a swirling vortex of change. This is the path and there is no other way. Statis is not possible. Bye-bye Kansas.

The shadow and the life

The life you think you are having is but a shadow of the life you were born to lead, and your purpose is to come out of that shadow and into a fuller knowledge of yourself, which we will summarise as life in abundance. the way to know that glorious life is to experience it: there is no other way. Even though everyone's experience has subtle differences of trajectory: the way to experience it can now be made clear.
That way is not the provenance of any one religion or of atheism. It cannot be owned. It cannot be boxed without losing the essence of itself. It cannot be reduced to words, though they may point the way.
So let us start with some good news. The Good News is, the Good News is that you are not alone. You never were alone. There is one-who-walks-beside-you and that one-who-walks-beside-you was always beside you, is beside you now and will always be beside you, until the end of time.
This one beside you may apparently take many forms or remain formless. The form does not matter. But you can tune into this form in the here and now. There is absolutely nothing to prevent you from doing so, save the chimeras that even now are dissipating. Glory is all around you. You are glorious.

Will you walk a little further?

It isn't what you do. It isn't even how you do it. It is who you are. And you are becoming who you are. And how, exactly, does that happen? You come to realise who you are, and as you realise who you are, you come to experience it. There is no other way.
This is the way. This is life. And you are walking it. So come, walk a little further and experience even more of what you already know to be true. This is the place to be. How else would you have it?

Who are you, baby?

"I think therefore I am", said the much-admired French thinker Rene Descartes. But he could have said "I feel therefore I am", and avoided narrowing the focus of fellow philosophers ever since.
At the risk of sounding like a mystic, he could have simply saying that "I am", without focusing on any one particular sense. That would have been enough.
Or even more illuminating by remarking that "I notice that there is a thought and a thinker who is having the thought" and he could have got game set and match if he had noticed that there is not only a thought and a thoughtholder but there is also someone or something who is noticing the process. That's you, baby.

Purposefully on purpose

You cannot help yourself: you are born into this, you fly through it, and then it is no more; or rather you are no more in it. Actually, it carries on very nicely, so where are you?
Rejoicing in your temporary sojourn, gnashing your teeth that it is all so brief, or avoiding the question. But you know, you have to face it sooner or later; the here and why question, for without purpose there is only happenstance. Would you want to leave it until the last minute to discover what it was that you are here for?
A whole life lived off purpose is not so easy to explain. Or maybe you are hoping there will be no need to explain anything. Just banking on oblivion. But if you did live your life on purpose, what purpose would that be?
There's a time to live and a time to die, and this is the time to live.

The myths of your life

You are imagining all kinds of things: Telling yourself your story and then living it out. But it's hard to change the story, and anyway it's quite nice the way that it is. In my story, I am fighting demons only to discover they aren't really there. Then imagining they are within and saying hello to them here. In time, discovering they weren't really here either; just figments.
But it's hard not to be sucked back into the story, and even when you escape from one, there's another bigger story. In my bigger story, I am a Knight riding to the rescue of something. If there were no story, what would there be? Just what is: no interpretation, like the purest ice-cream with nothing added. Just a space to be glorious. For now, we are living the myth.
In my story, I am fighting demons only to discover that they aren't really there. Then imagining they are within and saying hello to them here. In time, discovering they weren't ...

The riddle of life and death

You cannot have life without death and you cannot have death without life. Destruction begets creation and creation begets destruction.
Each cell's death precedes another's birth, each new thought ushers out an old one, and each life has a beginning and an end.
With change there is death. Without change there is no life. For life is change. And therefore, life is death.
Yet, and yet, throughout all of this, as you pass through every fire, is you, glorious you. Thoughts come and go, your cells are born and die again and again, and yet you are, the core of you is. Mind changes, body dies, sprit remains, constantly recreating.
Of course everything changes, and the part of you that is changing is constantly being born and dying, but you bestride like a collosus.

Whole lotta soul

What is the soul? And can you encounter it? Let's proceed from what we know to what we are about to discover.
The part of you that you encounter in this life is a constant vortex of change, a shimmering shard of consciousness gliding through the world. At any moment in time it exhibits only some aspects of you.
Even looking at this life as a whole, it still manifests only a part of the totality that is you. However big you are currently being, you are only being a slice of the bigger cake.
You may regard the soul as being that part of you that has not incarnated into this life, or for that matter into any other life. It stands above the you who you are routinely experiencing. It knows you in this life, it knows you always. Now, here's the thing: you can get to know it. It's ready, what has to be present for you to be ready? And that's OK.

Life's a gift. Then you live

Another extraordinary year and more. So far as I know, I did not create the year, for I did not even create this life, which makes it a gift, and I am the receiver. Boy, am I grateful, for it has been great.
And you know what? Another one has started. A big, hunkering 2010 is approaching, and I sense it could be amazing, even more than this one. Wouldn't that be glorious?
It's taking shape already.As receivers of all of this gloriousness, how can we not live up to it, by giving, giving, giving. What else to do with it all? Keeping it is obviously impossible. Time is forever slipping through our fingers. Nothing can be held in this space. Give everything before it is snatched from you.
All one can do is love every moment. Love it and let it go in this dynamic, supercharged, light-electric world.

Oooh, it's alive

It really feels like the whole thing is alive. Not just every thing that surrounds us but the whole darn thing. One life surging around us. One life inside us.
A part of the whole discovering that it is not apart at all; nor even really a part; it never was. But separation had its own delectable joy and sorrow: The ups and downs of an exciting if not quite sustainable separation. So much drama along the way. It's fun making this up.

Objectifying the Self

What if you just feel good anyway? Suppose you can call up any negative feelings that you may have picked up along the way, and thank them! And as you thank them for having been there, you notice you feel good because you are experiencing thankfulness, the elixir of happiness. The negativity that you thought was in a negative feeling only existed in your response to it.
Now the negative feeling has apparently lost its power, because you - the subject in this little drama - have, as it were, objectified it. And as you objectify everything, mind, body and even spirit, you gain an awesome freedom to feel fabulous.
You are no longer wedded to who you thought you were, because you are discovering a little more of who you really are. It's enough to be, enough already.

Ready, steady, here

What if you were absolutely and completely and divinely protected every step of the way. If all of your life you were learning to make this faith walk, until you could make it effortlessly, for it is effortless.
Everything else requires effort: seeking and striving. Trusting requires just a little attunement. Surrendering to the moment is so easy that it can seem unreachable.
Viewed from a trusting perspective, life is soooo easy. Reach into the knowing. It's coming for you as soon as you are ready. Ready, steady, here.

There's something about leaders

Leaders stand for ... what was it? There's something about leaders. You may not know where you are, but you sense they know where they are.
And that is because they are deeply connected with the world around them. They sense the world's sufficiency and its insufficiency, and they respond.
You may not know where you are going, but you sense that they know where they are going. Whether or not they have made it known, you sense that they have a purpose. Otherwise, why would you follow a purposeless person, even or a moment?
And whether or not it is yet known by a soul, they know that there is a way. How do they know? Because there is always a way. There are as many ways as there are moments, and there is an infinity of those.

This and thatness

The Hindu sages have a saying: "I am that, you are that, this is that, and that is all there is". That's true as far as thatness goes, and it helps to understand that there is only one soup, and we are all in it.
However, as well as that - the object - there is this - the subject that is viewing the object. Philosophically speaking, we have the seer and the seen, or if you like, the seer, the seen and the process of seeing. In Christian terms, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
How can you apply this in the moment? When you see your hand, who do you sense yourself to be: the hand, the observer of the hand, the process? You can see yourself as the seer - this - and soften your attachment to the unseen, as you unclench your hand. Whatever you can see is not you. As the unseen seer, and with the greatest of respect to the Hindu sages, we could assert that: really, there is only this.

Loving the one who needs it most

How do you see yourself? You can love or not love the self that you see; your self-image.
But what if you are not the self that you see? What if, instead, you are the seer of the self. Now you can view that self-image and give it what it needs, which is usually love.
So when you aren't feeling good about your self-image, don't try to change it! Don't even try to change how you feel about it. Focus instead on your real self, the part of you that is beyond the ups and downs of the world.
And so the soul comes to love the ego: the human condition; a perfect marriage.