We are all involved in a struggle to become sure of ourselves, to be confident, to acquire something we call “faith in ourselves.”

But for all our huffing and puffing, we forget that we once knew faith, and we also forget to ask how it was that we came to lose it.

We have lived with fear and uncertainty all our lives, so how can we possibly remember when we stepped off the rock of faith and set ourselves adrift on the sea of knowledge?

On the other hand, how could we have resisted the temptation to “know” it all? To be as gods in our ability to unlock the secrets of the universe through our great knowledge? Was that not the sin of Adam, the original sin, to which each succeeding generation has given obeisance?

Surely, if we were to show the slightest inclination to rely wholeheartedly on our innate common sense, the persons closest to us, those supposedly with our interests most at heart, would soon lower the boom on us, insisting that we stuff our minds with knowledge and “make something” of ourselves, no matter what the cost in terms of worry and anxiety.

Now, as in the beginning, our secret reason for turning our backs on reality and common sense is our desire to know ourselves as God. The proud ego soon loses touch with natural promptings from within and begins to rely entirely on words, thoughts, and imagination for its sense of direction.

And until we are ready to give up our pride, the “I,” or ego-self, will find a false sense of security and hope in the ever-increasing activity of the mind, and only of the mind.

"Pride binds us to the futility of trying to know ourselves only through the process of thinking and imagining."

The more you fail (tricked by your own mind), the more your tricky imagination appeals to you and draws you into its intrigues. You lose yourself in intellectual knowing, and in doing so, you reject reality.

Colorful thoughts and imaginings draw you like a magnet into the dreamworld, where you can

escape the reality that would expose your guilt.

When you lose yourself in exciting, colorful dreams, you fail to see the drab meaninglessness of the existence you have so pridefully created for yourself. By its very nature, pride cannot and will not see its own folly, but must escape into thought stuff.

The search for greatness through knowledge is the very thing that makes us insecure to begin with—and it is the very thing we trust in order to “feel” secure! Our trust reinforces the ancient belief in knowledge; seducers become our teachers and our authorities, the creators of our “reality.”

They keep us alive in our sleep of death by dreaming up “new” knowledge, “new” techniques to reassure our faltering egos.