“Somewhere along the way through life, often in our early years, we begin to believe a lie about who we really are…I call that lie the ‘core deficient self’…These core stories lie dormant within us during times when life seems to flow smoothly. Like a fearful snake coiled up and waiting to defend itself, the story and the emotional wound come screaming to the surface when the right buttons are pushed by others. This leaves us spiraling into self-judgment and doubt. It’s fight or flight, all the way. We either attack and defend or run and hide.” ~ Scott Kiloby

“Once the notion of separation was believed in, we spent a lifetime trying to solidify this imagined notion through believing in the mind’s self-created concepts (‘I am not good enough,’ ‘I am not____, etc.). It is all a fraud, because it is all talking in terms of a defective, isolated and separate self, which we have taken as true.” ~ John Wheeler

Empirically, it can be observed that the self can be seen through, truly not found anywhere, yet suffering still arises, apparently in conjunction with conditioning. So while it makes sense to just try to find the self, and be done with the whole matter—get to the root of the “problem,” so to speak—there is an energetic component to this conditioning that resides in the body, that seeks to be released as part of the total freedom package. Freedom from identification with anything, with any lingering feeling of division, leads to freedom from seeking and suffering. This is why the inquiry is directed, in most cases, towards finding the deficient self, which is any idea of unloveability, unworthiness, or any perceived sense of lack. Because it is inherently fake, the deficient self can never be enough.

Ultimately, this can lead to seeing that there really isn’t even any original core wound. It is simply the label, in whatever form it has arisen, given to the primary, original experience of separation. Nothing was really wounded, or even touched by any life experience. But feelings, memories, and thoughts—the conditioning of a lifetime—can lead one to believe otherwise, and to manifest that belief through relationships, and any and all life circumstances.

The self tends toward deficiency because it is a total fabrication, an Impostor. It is then maintained by an underlying belief in, and subsequently a protective veiling of, that fundamental deficiency story. It is a blind spot in awareness. It is why we seek for love and acceptance in all the wrong places, but do not ever find.

The experience of being a phony, looking into that vague suspicion of inauthenticity, is a wide-open door to freedom, to that which is authentic and truly real.