Be Nobody (4 page)

The rates of depression—as well as associated ailments like anxiety and stress, and mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder—have risen precisely in those
places where material prosperity has also substantially increased. In little more than a generation, we have gone from a society in which expensive consumer goods, once only available to the elite, are now readily purchasable by the masses: cars (now regularly equipped with cameras, computers, and talking GPS), televisions (now, like the movies, in realistic high-definition or 3-D), telephones (they've gotten so “smart”!), and computers (formerly only possessions of the government and large research universities, now standard issue, in constantly updated better, faster, and more compact versions). And leisure activities formerly reserved for the mega-rich—including exotic holidays now made possible by nearly universal access to air travel—are currently enjoyed by most of us commoners.

You can't afford to be depressed if you're just trying to stay alive. Depression is itself a kind of luxury good, available only to those for whom the material necessities of life are a given. It may not only be one of the
entitlements
of the economically privileged but also one of the
entailments
.

In the post–World War II era, we were promised happiness through acquiring and consuming, and for sixty-plus years now we've dutifully been acquiring and consuming. We all got cashed up and started amassing all kinds of stuff. We began buying ovens and refrigerators even before they became self-cleaning and self-defrosting. We've obediently purchased pretty much everything they've brought into the marketplace, from transistor radios (remember those?) to iPods; from clunky black-and-white televisions to the sleek fifty-two-inch plasma flat-screens; from pocket calculators to handheld supercomputers.

Maybe by now it has dawned on us that we've gotten everything they promised us and much, much more. And isn't it just as obvious that desires are being created and implanted in order to get us to buy more?

Yeah, so you already have the big black iPod, but now we've come up with this white itsy-bitsy model! Last year's car? It may still run fine, but it's so outdated!

Either we got everything and are still not satisfied, or we had our expectations raised so high that we feel it's our right to have everything and then, when we don't get something, we feel cheated. In either case, since we've placed all our hopes for happiness on self-fulfillment through consumerism, when it doesn't bring us what we expected, well, then there's a big crash.

Once we have staked our claim on owning everything, we are left with not much of anything when it comes to inner peace and contentment.

It seems quite likely that many of us feel so bad not only because we are encouraged, at every turn, to remain dissatisfied (so we will buy more) but also because of an insistence that we continually brood about how we're feeling. We're all constantly keeping our fingers on our own pulse:

Am I OK? Are my needs being met? Am I recognized and appreciated enough? Am I somebody enough yet?

This obsession with the self emanates not only from egocentrism but also from deep insecurity. There's a dark side to the culture of narcissism—in fact, maybe there's
only
a dark side. According to the ancient texts, as we shall see in chapter 2, one of the karmic causes of depression is an overweening interest in oneself at the expense of thinking of others. In a time and place where “it's all about me”—
where the promotion of the first-person pronoun demands a “me first” attitude—it's no wonder that we're plunging into depression in unparalleled numbers.

The self, as we'll see below, is both our best friend and our worst enemy. And it's only the “best friend self” that can save us from our own self-destructive tendencies; it's only by improving ourselves that we'll feel better about ourselves.

Trivializing the pain and suffering that is associated with the mental afflictions brought on by the “somebody-self” mentality is neither compassionate nor fair. But neither is offering panaceas that don't get at the real root of the problem or, worse, aggravate it by promoting as the cure that which is in fact the cause. After all, there are effective and ineffective methods of self-improvement and self-help.

It's not self-help if it's all about you
. It's not genuinely self-serving to live only in the service of the ego instead of in the service of others. It's only through cultivating real humility and an unselfish spirit, and not through indulging in yet more self-absorption, that a healthy and deeply felt self-esteem can emerge.

It's important that we not mistake humility for self-abasement or confuse depression with self-forgetfulness. An individual with low self-esteem who feels like a “real nobody” is not actually
being nobody
as we'll be using the phrase in this book. Rather he or she is
somebody posing as a nobody
—and that's a very different thing.

There's a kind of perverse pride in the “somebody self” who feels special and exceptional in feeling so bad. And if we imagine that we can help ourselves through more, and not less, self-centeredness—and that includes obsessing about how lousy we feel all the time—our efforts to improve our self-image will inevitably backfire.

As stated in the preface, there is a difference between the egoistic “somebody self” who regards itself as worthless—a nothing, a
complete zilch—and
being nobody
. Our limited, personalized, and individual self—which may regard itself with healthy self-esteem or unhealthy self-debasement—is distinct from the unlimited, shared, and universal “nobody self.” Identifying with the latter is quite different from identifying with something contemptible. “Nobody” refers to our ever-present “true self,” our greatest source of joy and strength, the eternal reservoir of peace and contentment to which we repair in order to silence the persistent demands and complaints of the insatiable ego.

Consider this: We all know that it is in those moments when we completely lose ourselves—engrossed in a good book or movie, engaged in an all-consuming task or hobby, or immersed in our child's or lover's gaze—that we are truly happy. These experiences point to something extremely important:
Our greatest joy comes when we vacate ourselves and give ourselves over to something or someone else
. It is when we manage to “stand outside of ourselves” (
exstasis
) that we experience
ecstasy
.

True and deeply felt self-esteem comes not through the exhausting quest for more and more ego inflation. It comes only when the ego and its endless demands are quieted and quenched, when the lower self is emptied and the fullness and plentitude of the Higher Self arise.

It is only when we stop narrating the play-by-play of our lives and actually start living in an unmediated and direct way that we become really present and fully engaged. It is only when that little voice inside our head finally shuts up that we become wholly assimilated with what's actually happening, and become truly happy.

It is important to have a good, healthy sense of self-worth, and the point of being nobody is certainly not to become servile, a doormat on which others can trample. But thinking that we will feel fulfilled only if we become
more special than others
leads to an increase, not a diminishing, of anxiety and dissatisfaction.

Wanting to be somebody unique—or somehow “more unique than others”—is actually quite common: there's nothing special about wanting to be special. But it is this very drive for radical individuality and superiority that keeps us feeling isolated and alone. In the end, the willingness to let go and
be nobody
is what's really extraordinary, and it is the only means for real connection with others and communion with what is real.

•  •  •

As the successor to
A Spiritual Renegade's Guide to the Good Life
(Beyond Words, 2012),
Be Nobody
takes the quest for real happiness into new territory. As with its predecessor, this book draws upon the universal truths of the world's venerable religious and philosophical traditions and distills them into an accessible, practical handbook for finding happiness and fulfillment in our modern, everyday lives. The principles may be ancient, but the presentation is up-to-the-minute.

It is a spiritual truism that only by loosening our grip on the lower, egoistic self will we discover our real potential.
Be Nobody
maps out this journey from egoism, selfishness, and the obsession with individual identity to the spaciousness and freedom of abiding in one's true and authentic nature. Such a goal—living one's life fully and happily in the here and now—is not just for the spiritual elite or the mystic but is achievable by anyone (“religious,” “spiritual,” “secular humanist,” or “none of the above”) who understands and implements the right ideas and practices.

The desirability of such self-transcendence has been recognized for millennia by the world's spiritual traditions. The mystics have all encountered this blessed state, and acquiring a deep familiarity with it on a permanent basis seems to be what is meant by the Eastern terms
satori
,
samadhi
,
nirvana
,
moksha
,
mukti
, and so on.

In Christianity, too, one finds the concept of
kenosis
(from the Greek word for emptiness)—the “self-emptying” of one's own ego in order to become entirely receptive to the divine will. As the great theologian of the last century, C. S. Lewis, writes in
Mere Christianity
,

The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self—all your wishes and precautions—to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call “ourselves” . . .
¹⁵

The goal of a spiritual life is to bring true happiness to the practitioner. To that end, the purpose of spiritual cultivation is not to learn to become
better than
others, but rather to become
better for
them. The religious traditions, as opposed to the modern secular sensibility of narcissism, consumerism, and greed, have always recognized that the inflation of the egoistic self is not the solution; rather, it is the problem.

Be Nobody
unfolds in four sections:

In part 1, “Desperately Seeking Somebody,” we review one of the main sources of stress and anxiety in our lives: the interminable search for personal identity in what are only temporary and ever-shifting roles. We are forever trying to find some stable self in the guises we assume: “
I am
a father/mother/son/daughter/friend/lawyer/doctor/teacher/surfer/blogger/Christian/Buddhist/secular humanist,” and so on. Whether these roles are chosen by us or given to us to play, when we wholly identify with one or another of this cast of characters, we lose touch with our deeper, changeless nature. And when we take excessive pride in one or another of these individual or group identities, we not only separate ourselves from those who are not like us, we also imagine we're superior to them—and by doing so, set ourselves up for a big fall.

Part 2, “Making a Better Somebody Out of Nobody,” begins with a “Where's Waldo?” search for the self we are so sure we have—a quest that leaves us clutching at straws and chasing shadows. We are not who we think we are, but by the same token we are nothing other than who we think we are. And this realization is the key to true self-improvement: the development of a better self-conception. Here we learn how karma really works to upgrade the “somebody self” into a happier, more self-satisfied model. And we also learn that it is by changing our sense of who we are that we change the world around us.

Part 3 is entitled “Losing the ‘Somebody Self,' ” and in this section we explore the joy we feel when we drop our inner narratives and self-conscious facades and truly experience life as it is. We are happiest when we lose ourselves—in empathetic love and compassion for others and in really “getting into the zone” when we are fully engaged in an activity with
mindful unselfconsciousness
. It is in these moments of self-transcendence that we find the real heart and soul of what it means to be alive.

We conclude with a return to the pressing question of self-identity in part 4, “Everybody Is Nobody.” Who or what is this “nobody self” that lies at the base of our being and that all of us somebodies universally share? And how can we live in a way that integrates more of our true nature into our daily lives? Posing less as a “special somebody” and being more of just an “Ordinary Joe” infuses our individual existence with more humility, more of a sense of connection to the world and the people in it, and much more true and abiding contentment and joy.

Each chapter ends with an “Action Plan” exercise to help put this all into practice and further incorporate what we've talked about into our daily lives. It's one thing to read about how to live a happier, more fulfilling, more satisfying life. It's another to actually start doing it. It
doesn't take much to make a significant change. But it does require at least some modification of our old patterns of thought and action—old habits that, if we're honest with ourselves, have not really worked out the way we'd hoped.

Collected at the end of the book in a section called “Dropping into Your True Nature,” you'll find very simple and brief meditations you can do whenever you have a free minute or two in the day. They are samplings from 112 such meditations found in a rather astonishing eighth- or ninth-century
ad
Indian text called the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, “Methods for Attaining the Consciousness of the Divine.” The really remarkable thing about the techniques prescribed in this text is how mundane they seem. According to this ancient scripture, dropping into our true nature and communing with our Higher Self is way easier than we might think!