The ego reacts the same way to all objects in its field of perception: sizing up, analysing, judging everyone and everything, in order to categorise things as either safe or unsafe, friend or foe. Whatever you deem safe becomes attractive and desirable, a potential object of love, something to be possessed. Those objects deemed to be a threat, a potential source of pain, become unattractive and undesirable, something to be avoided. But regardless of the ego’s verdict, regardless of whether you feel attracted or repulsed by any given object, the mere act of such analysis and judgement already narrows your perspective, derailing you from the natural flow of creation, now, where both love and pain take place.

So long as you pick and choose what pain you’re willing to face, so long as you pick and choose which objects are safe enough to love, you will remain alone, chained to your ego, locked in the solitary confinement of ‘me’. Through the unwillingness to honestly face objects of pain, you also ensure a much deeper existential separation, severance and isolation from self and Source: the original, unconditional pain which precedes that of any object, the Weltschmerz described earlier in this chapter. Similarly, through the unwillingness to embrace all objects in creation with open arms of love, you’ll never experience the full connection, melting, and becoming one with Source and your own deeper self.

But don’t worry. With ego at the helm, the human condition is inherently unbalanced, and that lack of equilibrium can only lead to change. Through that change we will all, sooner or later, recognise our true nature, our true infinity. It is inevitable.

Through ego we are born into pain, not love. In fact, this is the reason we crave love in the first place. Through ego we’re inherently severed from self, soul, Source, everything. We forget. The whole game of human life is founded upon this fundamental rule. But it’s precisely through the unbearable agony of a broken heart and human ego-pain, it’s precisely through the frustration and inner incompleteness of human ego-love, that we’re driven forward…