the life motivation to act and be was not very far behind.
Alas, the day you doubted yourself and believed that the
selfish world was right, the moment you were tempted to do
what was wrong, you fell away from that gracious way of
moving and being and could not get back to where you were.
Your nature adapted and you found yourself obliged to
follow where you should not go. You also found that you
needed to be motivated like an animal or you could not
move. Your identity became a displaced, corrupted one, and
the body that developed around it became more and more
animal than human.
       You found yourself needing excitement to grow in the
only way you knew how–like a beast. And at the same time,
that excitement also served to help you to forget the truth of
what was happening to you, to save the face of your pride,
which was failing.
       It is clear that most people have never had much choice
to be any different from what they are. They came into the
world preceded by overwhelming pressures that compelled
them to react. If you look very carefully at your emotional
reactions, you will see that they represent a failing and a
stranglehold on your life. By continuing to react, you edge a
little closer to hell and you lose a little more real life while
you gain a little more worldly identity with its brutish life.
Inside, you are not yourself; you are something else!
       The closest you might have come to the truth is
knowing about the way you were. You may remember
knowing better but never doing any better. You may remem-
ber that long ago you doubted yourself, and then somehow
you lost consciousness. For years you were cut off from
Reality, you wandered through life in a dream state; but now
the pain of this aimlessness is bringing you back to the truth

2