The Path of Alice

Hinduism prescribes two paths for overcoming the ego, the self with a small ‘s’.  One is to become nothing through the practice of love and devotion.  The other is to become everything through the practice of wisdom and discrimination.  The word ‘become’ is wrong.  Perhaps it’s more like snapping out of a trance.

My path appears to be inflate deflate inflate deflate: grain of sand / Mona Lisa, worker ant / Don’t Cry For Me Argentina -- until this ‘I’ is revealed to be so manifestly absurd that neither I nor anyone else can revere or revile it.  To be “somebody”, then “nobody” in such a swift procession until it becomes obvious that the ‘I’ is completely made up.  A path of absurdity and nonsense.

This is my spiritual practice.  I do not know yet if it is effective.  (I’ll let you know?)  I do recognize that it may be psychologically hazardous -- but isn't that true of all paths?

There is the path of devotion and the path of wisdom and then there is this way which, in honor of Alice, its best-known practitioner, we might well call the practice of Wonderland.