Cheated By My Best Friend

What do you do when you realize one day that you have been cheated? How do you react? How do you handle it when you realize that it was your best friend who cheated you?

Take a minute and think about your life, about who you are. No more than 60 seconds. Run through the list quickly just to get an overview. Gender, race, age, nationality, religion, political leaning, job, economic status, personality, hobbies, favorite genre of books, music, and movies, other likes and dislikes, etc. Got it?

Now take another minute and in a very abstract sort of way try to imaging all of the possibilities of who and what you could have been. Just let it sink in that the number of possibilities is infinite, that there is an unimaginable number of possibilities on who you could be, what your life story could have turned out to be. There is no way to even imagine all the possibilities of what you could still be if you decide to allow yourself to grow and expand. You can change anything and everything about your life. The possibilities are endless.

And then take a second to realize how small and restricted your life actually is compared to what it could be, if you chose to change.

Who convinced you that such a small life was what you wanted? Who sold you the bill og goods that included such a miniscule and limited package? Who convinced you that a limited life was the preferred life?

I'm sure you know the answer before i even say it. Your best friend — you, yourself. That is, your ego. You have been undergoing conditioning since the moment of your birth. Everyone you have ever known, unless you met a great, great teacher somewhere over the years, has consciously or unconsciously been conditioning you to accept limits, to live with restrictions, to wear blinders so that you can't see the vast, vast, vast reality beyond. And your ego soaks it all up and says "Sure, why not. I like this life."

Your best friend has convinced you that a small and restricted life is better than a life infinitely large and infinitely lived. Your best friend has convinced you that Plato's cave with its cozy campfires is a nicer place to live than a life outdoors, under the vast blue sky and the warm rays of a beautiful summer sun.

Your best friend is a coward, afraid to to lose what it already knows. Your best friend is a pervert, fixated on itself and loving no one more. Your best friend is a small minded cheat and a liar; fearful that if it doesn't keep up the stories you might realize, one day, that he is a phantom and you are, in reality, so, so, so much more.

Call a cheat a cheat. Call a liar a liar. Jump up and down and yell "Thief. Thief." Refuse to let him get away with it any longer.

Let yourself open, let the blossoms out. Let yourself see the infinitude of what you can be — of what you already are. Don't settle for the small story anymore, start living the 1,000-episode mega-drama, that is the first baby step on the journey to who you really are.