I don't know yet.

This big fish, little fish thing is freaking everywhere. It really is just like racism or sexism. The unaware outnumber the aware so greatly that the unaware actually start to think they are aware just because they are a little more aware than those around them. Being more aware than the person standing next to you does not mean that you are actually aware. This really is a serious issue because no one, that I have met anyways, is actually aware. I have only read books written by aware individuals and most of them are dead now.

As Carl Jung says in his book The Undiscovered Self, "Most people confuse "self-knowledge" with knowledge of their conscious ego personalities. Anyone who has ego-consciousness at all takes it for granted that he knows himself. But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents. People measure their self-knowledge by what the average in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them."

Can you see the dilemma here? Most people I know do not even become aware of their own ego!

In reality this means there are billions of unaware individuals, but they will tell you that they are aware because they are more aware than those around them, or at least they think they are. I think education is another great place to find this phenomenon. I have a friend that used to live in this town that I live in now and it has a horrible public school system. The people here are a special kind of ignorant. I say this because the people running the school are in the most denial about their own ego and education. Anyways, she moved to a place where they do not have a horrible public school system. Please keep in mind that in my opinion all public education is bad, but that is part of the point. Her child obviously improved in the better public school. Grades went up, social activity increased, etc.

Her child was smart compared to the kids in the old school. He would actually read books and around here that makes one a superstar nerd. Arriving at the new school though, it turned out, there are bigger fish. Obvious right? Suddenly he was not so smart. Her child naturally adapted to the new school. He became smarter at the new school in comparison to the old one, but remember he is still in a public school.  Maybe for you it is the college you went to, the job you have, the way you raise your child, or whatever it is you do that is better than those around you. 

You see it is just like the ego. Going to the better school is like becoming aware of one’s ego, so to speak, but the issue is the school is the ego. You see, it is very likely now, that this child will live its whole life thinking how great that new public school was, not realizing all the lies being consumed by simply going to a public school. The ego lies to us in this exact same way. From my perspective this is a perfect reflection. This child went to a better school, got better, and is now "educated." In his mind, he is a big fish when he comes back to this small town, but really he is still just a small fish. It should be obvious the negative connotation with thinking one is a big fish when one is not.

The proper perspective is, at any given moment millions of neurons are firing in your brain, and only a small fraction of those are conscious thought. This means that thought is just like all the other senses. My eyes see less than 1% of the light right in front of my face. My ears hear less than 1% of all the sound passing through my body. My sense of touch does not even begin to explain the physical matter that it comes into contact with. My thoughts are less than 1% of the totality of what is going on in my mind. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. Critical to this is that just like sight is misleading, sound is misleading, and touch too, so is thought.

Many people get very defensive about this type of conversation. They have an emotional attachment to their public education, and we all have emotional attachment to our ego. Their ego cannot handle being labeled "uneducated." I dislike trying to make a list implying which learning experience is more important than another, we are all so different, and we are all in different places on the same journey so a list is useless. I do know this though, if one is ever going to become aware one must remove their emotional attachments to their own ideals. For instance, one will never become aware if they cannot even admit that their public education actually made them uneducated. Is it really that big of a deal? I find it quite easy to admit that I was born into this crazy society where I was taught a lot of lies, and because of that I have to relearn everything. The fact that as a child I was forced to go to public schools is no reflection on me, if anything it is a reflection on those who made me do it. If I were to maintain that my public education was actually an education, then that is a reflection on me. The only reason for the emotions at all is because the person is lying to his or her Self. This is how you see your ego. If you have an emotional response to your own thoughts, your ego is in play. If you have an emotional response to what someone else thinks, same thing. Emotions are a sense just like all the rest, incomplete more than not.

As I explained in my last post, living a lie is the cause of the worst suffering. One cannot ever become aware of their ego if they cannot even admit that their ego is wrong. Maybe that is the best way to say it. If you cannot admit that your whole life has been a lie, that in reality, you know next to nothing, you will always just be a small fish who thinks it’s big. Mystics call it humility; to me it is more like common sense. If my thinking is less than 1% of my totality, and all my life I thought my thinking was the totality….it’s probably time to admit that one doesn’t know much of anything.