When Shakespeare advises us "to thine own self be true," he is not referring to our petty self driven by its narcissistic impulses. He refers to a higher self - the one which transcends the ego and is connected to all that is. This self is a bit of a misnomer. We reach this self by going deep inside ourselves, yet when we do find it we discover ourselves to have passed into another realm altogether, a world which transcends the minuscule confines of the ego, with its limited perspective. It is as if our inner self is merely a portal through which we must pass to escape our selves.

The guardian at the gate to our inner essence is our ego, we must manipulate our ego "trick it" into actually letting us pass through. The ego is not a team player. It needs to be the absolute alpha in its own universe. Anything that challenges that can conceit becomes its mortal enemy. Therefore it must be deceived into going along for the ride. Our ego is very basic in its core motivation - it hates pain and loves pleasure. The lure we use appeal to the pleasure side is promise of power and prestige. For the pain side it is simply the promise of cessation of pain.

Yet few of us are inclined to follow this course. It is frightening - to let go of the window ledge when your feet cannot touch the ground and you have no idea of what floor the window is on. Also, it is a journey which each of us must start on completely on our own. This means that we must make a friend of the loneliness which has cowed us with fear our entire lives. The Players, the magistrates of the great game we are in, count on this dread of the unknown that is an integral part of our psychological makeup, to keep us in line.

Ultimately we usually only embark on this course as a last resort. It is only once we have exhausted all the other options, all the lies, all the "as if's that define our existence, that we engage with this search in earnest. Once we do, we immediately become an outsider and can never really go back, even though in the early stages of this search we need to tell ourselves that we can. We become a kind of monk: in the world, but not of the world.

Upon reading this you have to be asking yourself: is it all worth it? Why follow this road less traveled loneliness and isolation is all that awaits us at the other end? The answer is what awaits you further along the road is of such value did it compensates you 1000 fold for the pain you've suffered a paragraph also, do you really have a choice? None who follow the path who we choose it. Instead we are thrust upon it. After are all eyes are opened by circumstances, once we come to see the matrix for what it is, it becomes increasingly painful to live inside it, among those who are completely blind to it eventually that allege we have been clinging to become so uncomfortable, and up arms and fingers so weary, that we can hold on no longer. That is when we finally let go, and allow ourselves to fall... To freedom!