In his timeless poem of hope and encouragement, Desiderata, Max Ehrman acknowledges,

"Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism".

Sadly, it is true, that the world is full of trickery and deceit, much of it masquerading as kindness, benevolence, and nobility, or spiritual and religious authority. Still, countless examples of human decency, actual nobility, and heroism, and great spiritual insight, amidst it all, are easy to find.

Wisdom, however, as opposed to childish naivete, would dictate awareness, caution, and acknowledgment of the reality of evil exploitation and its motivations among us and the care that is required to guard against deception and self-delusion.

While I believe it to be true, that we come to this earth with spirits endowed with primordial sensitivities to truth, harmony, causality (causal relationships), and congruency (non-contradiction) and their opposites, it is also true that such awarenesses are almost immediately and constantly assaulted with obfuscations that distract us from our inherent perceptiveness while it is undermined and displaced under social pressure to believe what is socially convenient to believe in the pursuit of acceptance, approval, and economic and social support.

In 1970, the talented cartoonist, Walt Kelly, created an Earth Day poster featuring his character, Pogo the possum, declaring, amidst a field of rubbish, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." This was a recognizable parody of Master Commandant Oliver Perry's letter to Major General William Harry Harrison in 1812, advising of the defeat of the British Navy in the Battle of Lake Erie, "We have met the enemy, and they are ours".

As it turns out, most of the rubbish found in our collective and individual consciousness has been selectively placed there by ourselves in open defiance of the primordial capacity for perception and reasoning we have been endowed with upon our creation, in a rush to find social acceptance through social conformity.

Sadly, we learn that we are judged worthy of the social support of our fellows, by the social conformity of our adopted conclusions, and so, confirmation bias (selective processing of evidence with a forgone conclusion in mind) becomes our self-imposed intellectual handicap. It is driven by the egotistical and economic need for approval, respect, deference, social acceptance, and sometimes, tragically, the need to maintain false hope that keeps us climbing the wrong ladder, or to support transient feelings of artificial well-being with dangerously short shelf lives that are a counterfeit substitute for the abiding peace found in actual clarity of mind and spirit and equilibrium with the universe.

Our "deceivers", being well aware of and well informed of this human propensity, capitalize on it with enticing sugar-coated misinformation and obfuscation, that facilitates the exploitation of the energy driven by our egos (cash, votes, volunteer labor, false hope, other "charitable" contributions, and our own participation in further perpetuation of obfuscation and misinformation for self-justification) in a rush for acceptance and inclusion.

Make no mistake, calculated misinformation is constantly pushed on us by others at every level of society. Sometimes by those who know they are lying, other times by the deceived who sincerely believe the falsehoods they are spreading. But, it is our own defiance of our own capacities for reasoning and vetting that has us accepting it under social pressure and self-delusion. The poison in the cup is usually placed there by someone else, but the choice to drink it blindly with eyes wide shut is still our own.

The moment of clarity with which Rene' Descartes realized such folly in his own psyche inspired his Meditations on First Philosophy. In the first meditation, Descartes reflects on the many false beliefs he has accepted throughout his life. Then he commits to establish a solid foundation for knowledge by systematically doubting everything he thinks he knows while seeking to overhaul his system of vetting information. The famous atheist philosopher, Ayn Rand, has prescribed just such an intellectual overhaul and antidote to self-delusion in the form of highly disciplined epistemology which she delineates in her book, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Eastern sages, including Buddha cut to the very root of the problem of self-delusion found in ego-attachment. Non-attachment, accomplished through meditation, is their prescribed solution.

I have studied all of the above. I highly recommend all of the above. But the surest path to clarity and abiding peace, I have found, is in the prescription of the Eastern sages, and I know I would be better off today, and a better companion for anyone who dares tolerate my presence, if I followed that prescription more diligently.

When one strives to commune with universal consciousness, ego must be left at the door. That requirement alone, forces upon us a cleansing that can be accomplished in no other way. The more comfortable we become without our ego in the room, the better off we are in every other way, including mental and spiritual clarity and equilibrium. When that equilibrium is achieved, or even approached, everything is enhanced, including our physical well-being and prospects for every other success worth having, while our clarity on why certain successes are not worth the price is also invaluable.

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