Roy Masters
You cannot overcome your environmental subjectivity, from which your fears and inferiorities rise, until you let yourself realize the root cause: making THINGS too important in order to feed your ego a sense of security and importance.
It is easy to recognize when your attitude is favorable toward God, because when the yearning for Truth is paramount, goals and things are naturally less important. And at this point all your manipulators lose their power which you have given them.
For this reason it is written in the Scriptures, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all else will be added to you.” And in another place it says concerning gain: “Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.”
(When your mind is on money, you can have a shock around your heart when you lose your wallet.) And in yet another place we read, “What does it profit a man that he gain the world and lose his soul (to the world)?”
To gratify yourself with any material thing, no matter how small, transfers the rapport (relationship) of your ego—your mind and your body—to the object of desire. It is this separation of your ego from your God center which causes guilt.
And the stubborn belief in what promises to deliver becomes the enslavement to what lies. The loss of the person or object reveals that enslavement, and you experience the familiar shock, guilt, anxiety and fear that spring from that loss. (This is the threat reaction syndrome from a non-threatening or non-existent danger.)
I can still recall the discomfort from buying a small gadget that fascinated me and that new car I thought I needed. The anxiety I felt was very well-founded.
So please be careful of your buying sprees. Be conscious that any time you buy ANYTHING, no matter how cheap and insignificant—even one single penny’s worth, if you buy it for luxury or for amusement, to give your ego a lift, you will notice first the tug of war with your conscience, then the excitement that hypnotically separates you from Reality and binds you to the thing.
"The stupid ego has, in a sense, a portable environment. It becomes the mad director of scenes and players for its private pleasure and glory. "
If you are a sensitive person, you can sense the meaning of the moment, and the effect of that awareness will be discipline. And you will walk away triumphant, feeling freer for each denial of lusts of the beastly ego self.
But in your lack of wisdom you will feel the aftermath of a growing anxiety. Anxiety also comes in the form of monthly payments and in great waves of boredom and futility as the novelty and newness wears off.
But here you can luxuriate again through recall, or by secretly resenting your spouse, the salesmen, or the object, as though it had cheated you. After all, it did appeal to you, and it did promise your ego a measure of happiness and satisfaction.
But it lied and cheated; it hurt more than it helped; it enslaved as it promised to set free. Your resentment and blame evoke and involve you with memories which so neatly keep you from seeing your fault.
Every sin experience leaves an impression in your head that is kept alive, recalled and reused later when you have nothing external to entertain or upset you.
A faulty attitude, then, is the secret cause behind most emotional states. Attitude does not actually cause the emotional response; it simply allows a transference of allegiance from Reason to environment.
And so each trauma fixes memories in your mind which are manipulated by your ego as a means of generating excitement for work or escape.
The stupid ego has, in a sense, a portable environment. It becomes the mad director of scenes and players for its private pleasure and glory.
People literally photograph your body and soul and pull you inside themselves. You become the plaything of a mad god in his private universe.