I was moping around feeling lowly. I was feeling very lowly indeed, unbearably lowly, in fact. I wished I could feel just a tiny bit less lowly but there was nothing I could do to help myself. I was scrabbling around in the dust of my own wretched ignominy, clutching desperately after greatness, but no greatness came my way. If only I could become great, I thought to myself, if only I could know what it felt like to be not so bloody lowly the whole time…

I’m lowly now, I thought, but I could be great. I could very easily be great, it’s just a matter of changing my attitude. Lowly, lowly, lowly – but that could all change. That could all change in an instant. It could all flip around in a second and become the opposite of itself. Just like flipping a pancake on a pan. Switch the negative for a positive, kind of thing. ‘Quick – switch it!’ I commanded myself, ‘Switch it you damn fool! Don’t just stand there, gawping like a complete dope. Seize the initiative for once, you useless prick…’

Lowly, lowly, lowly – always so bloody lonely. But never mind that. The hell with that. Let’s move on, for God’s sake. My mind tells me that I’m insignificant and feeble, incapable of bursting my way out of a wet paper bag. ‘Too much effort, is it?’ sneers my mind, ‘just give up then, why don’t you? Carry on just the way you are. Carry on the way you always do. You’re achieving great things, obviously. Any day now the world will hear of you and come knocking on your door. They’ll be wanting to know all about you. That’s the way it always works, after all…’ Deep in my core I felt defiant – I knew I was destined for greatness. I could almost taste it…

‘Taste the greatness, my friend’, I told myself grandly, ‘taste that wonderful, wonderful greatness…’ In my imagination I was already there. In my imagination I was a fully-fledged hero – I knew what it felt like to be emanating waves of pure greatness wherever I went. Wherever I went people would recognise me for who I was and they would look at me in that special way. I would see the admiration and respect in their eyes. ‘Yes,’ I would say, ‘it’s me.’ I used to be a lowly useless no-account ego but now I am great and all the other egos want to be like me. They want the life that I have. They’re envious of the superbly magnificent life that I’m having. My imagination failed to satisfy me in the way it used to on this occasion, however. It no longer seemed to do the trick. My visualisation exercise fell flat, it fell flat at my feet and lay lifeless on the floor in front of me. My fantasy world has become hollow, dry and unsatisfying, and I yearn for a taste of the real thing for a change.

‘What a wretched life I have’, I thought to myself then, ‘moping around the place feeling inferior and inventing fantasy scenarios to make myself feel better’. ‘Where’s the fun in that?’ I asked myself bitterly. ‘Where’s the greatness in that?’ I was in Dimension X, which is what I like to call everyday life. I was in Dimension X and I was hatching ingenious schemes. I was working out my strategy for solving all the problems that were holding me back. I had enemies, I knew, and those enemies delighted in seeing me fall flat on my face, as I so often did. Chief amongst those enemies was my mind which never stopped sneering at me, laughing at me, poking fun at me. ‘I’m not beat yet though,’ I say to myself slyly, ‘I still had a few tricks up my sleeve…’