The psychic structures established to support the familiar sense of identity, such as those which internalize the functions of the idealized object, are fundamentally false because they support a false identity. All psychic structures based on past impressions are found to be false when the emptiness underneath them reveals their unreality. Our exploration reveals, then, that the idealized object functions as a support for the familiar, but inherently weak, identity, and also as a defense against acknowledging the absence of true inner support, which we call the Diamond Will. The relationship with the idealized object supports the familiar identity, and thus masks narcissistic helplessness. Since this helplessness is an expression of the deficient emptiness—which signifies the absence of inner support, the idealized transference is specifically a defense against acknowledging this absence and the painful emotional states connected with it.

We have been discussing the process of personalization of the Cosmic Consciousness, which shows the direct relation of the Personal Essence to the formless realms of Being. It indicates, in an actual personal experience, that individuation is really the Cosmic Conscious Presence individualizing and manifesting as the Personal Essence. This process is also the deeper resolution of ego inadequacy. It is easy to see here that ego inadequacy is not only a consequence of the loss of contact with Essence, but also due to the separateness of ego boundaries that isolates the ego individuality from the Cosmic Presence. The Personal Essence has no inadequacy because it is directly connected to, and hence completely supported by, the Cosmic Loving Presence. Ego boundaries leave the ego individuality without the inner support of the various aspects of Essence, and without the comprehensive support of the Cosmic Essence (Consciousness). So just as we saw before that ego inadequacy is due to a mistaken sense of self, now we see that it is also due to the presence of ego boundaries. Both intrapsychic self-structures, the sense of identity and the sense of separateness, although indispensable to ego existence, are the reasons for its deep and basic inadequacy. Inadequacy is the deep nature of ego, due to the mere presence of its structure.

You usually think of support as doing something, but real support has nothing to do with that. It is an inner sense of solidity, of a solid ground within you that feels like support for being truly yourself. True support is our contact with a certain quality of our Being, which is an authentic sense of presence, which is beingness. When this inherent inner support is not present in our experience of ourselves, we start to effort. Efforting becomes the ego’s way of acquiring support or of supporting ourselves. The fact is that this efforting cuts us off from our true and essential support, which is complete effortlessness. Essential support is an aspect of Essence, so it is Being, but in a solid, firm, and strong way, the way a mountain is present.

The recognition of the need for support, specifically, the need to support our sense of self, will naturally precipitate the feeling of no support, as we saw in the cases above. If this feeling is not defended against, it will reveal an underlying emptiness characterized by a sense of deficiency of support. The emptiness may provoke many associated feelings and self-images, as we have seen, like feelings of helplessness and weakness, and images of smallness and lack of structure. This usually brings up from the unconscious deeply repressed, painful object relations and their associated emotional states of abandonment, betrayal, depression, terror, even fear of death and disintegration. These are reactions to and associations with the deficient emptiness. We must then clarify these reactions and associations in order to understand the genesis of the emptiness. This process requires awareness of, and disengagement from, judgments and superego attitudes about the deficiency. This process finally reveals what the specific feeling of deficiency is, what lack of support makes us feel. We begin to realize that what we feel is that we do not have our own support. This is possibly the first clear indication that there could be such a thing as one’s own inner support, for the sense of self—based on ego structures—cannot conceive of this possibility, just as Kohut could not. This lack of our own inner support feels like a particular kind of helplessness. It is not general ego deficiency, the ego weakness having to do with functioning and one’s sense of being an immature individual. It is helplessness about supporting our sense of who we are. When a student finally recognizes it precisely, she usually feels, “I don’t know what to do,” or “I can’t do anything.”

In fact, the realization of the Personal Essence makes it more tolerable for the individual to confront and deal with ego weakness. It gives him both the inner support and the hope that it is possible to deal with such a profound sense of inadequacy. The study of the severe ego weakness seen in psychopathology is useful for our exploration because its extremity exposes something that is usually not seen; it exposes a characteristic of ego by exaggerating it. It is true that the more integrated one’s ego the less one feels, or is affected by, this sense of deficiency; but if one goes deeply into himself, exposing the deeper layers of the ego structure, he is bound, sooner or later, to come face to face with this dreaded basic characteristic of his individuality.

So at some point it is useful and necessary to have only your own inner support which is not dependent on external sources. This means you have to have support for aloneness. You need to have support for the state of aloneness itself. And this is much more difficult to attain than the state of self-realization. If your support for realization, for being your self and being real, is in your environment and you leave it to go off by yourself or with other people, you will feel you can’t be the same way, because the support for being real depends on that environment. For instance, when you are with your teacher you might say, “I can be myself easily.” Right? But if you go back to your business or talk to other people, it’s gone. You can’t be the same way. You begin to bring back your shell, your personality, in order to function in the world. This is where your enemies become useful. An enemy is useful here because an enemy exposes the fact that you don’t have your own inner support. By taking away your external support, your enemies show you the gap in yourself. They show you the hole in you. Now your enemy might be doing it because they want to teach you something, or they might be doing it because they hate you, or because they don’t care about you, or because they are ignorant. When someone cuts you down or undermines you or devalues you, your tendency is to feel hurt or rejected. But if you really feel the situation deeply, you will realize that you have lost your support, and you feel that you can’t maintain your reality.

The more it is integrated and the more inner support is realized, the more your experience of self-realization will become independent and permanent. At some point you will have to become independent of the school and of the teacher. This does not mean to be physically separated. You can be in the school and still be independent and alone. Eventually you will have to be free from all teaching, from everything you have learned, everything, absolutely everything. You will have to give up all the ways you support your self-realization with anything you have learned in the past, so that nothing from the past is needed for support. The past can only support self-image. Your self-realization will deepen, go to different levels and become more permanent. The final support that has to go is your mind. Even after you let go of your particular teaching, or whatever you learned from other sources, you still have your own insights and your own experiences. They define your way of looking at things and of understanding things. “This is me, this is that, that’s the meaning of this.” These are the final supports that have to go. Then you can be who you are, self-realized without even having to know it. Self-realization does not become complete and permanent until it doesn’t need any external support at all, not even the support of your thoughts. You don’t even need to recognize it. You don’t need to feel it, just experience the natural thing. You are the presence without cognizing the presence. Letting go of the teaching and letting go of your mind are the deepest, subtlest levels.

Inner spaciousness is the necessary step for the emergence of Being in the essential manifestation of support for nondoing. It usually manifests as an experience of presence in a new form which has the characteristics of solidity, immensity, immovability, strength, groundedness, definiteness, precision, and clarity. We feel solid, as immense as a mountain, as immovable and grounded as a column, but as clear and definite as a cut diamond. We have the innate certainty that we can be, for we are, simply and easily. There is an implicit confidence in our capacity to be ourselves, and a determination about and commitment to it. The psychological feeling is that of a singular and clear recognition of support—of our own inner support. But it is not our own in terms of ownership; we perceive that it is inseparable from the Being that we now recognize as ourself. We may feel supported, we may feel the presence of support, or we may feel that we are support. We now recognize that support is a way of experiencing Being, our Essence.