A cat may look at the king, so it is said, and so too may a speck of fly shit imagine itself to be the Supreme Being, the Creator and Upholder of All. A solitary lonely flea turd may quite legitimately believe itself to be the Lord and Master of the Seven Realms and I would like to stress this most particularly – this is perfectly legitimate. Absolutely it is perfectly legit. No problem at all, no reason for anyone to get upset. It’s all cool. That’s just the way things are, that’s just how it works – we’re all at it one way or another, after all. We’re at it. We like to dream that we’re great. We’re all dreamers, dreaming our lives away – that’s what they say after all, isn’t it? That’s what they say and why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they say that or something at least very much like that? A flea turd may quite legitimately believe itself to be whatever it pleases, the only qualification here being that a flea turd will very rarely wish to believe itself to be what it actually is. That’s the only exception – that we are happy to believe ourselves to be anything other than what we actually are. That’s our blind spot, so to speak, that’s the one thing we will never allow ourselves to know. Any fantasy – no matter how grotesque or degrading it might be – is always preferable to the truth. Anything but, my friends anything but. That’s the game after all. That’s the only way the game can work and so we’ve got to be OK about that, haven’t we? The ego loves the scriptures, loves the sutras, loves the teachings of the great enlightened ones. It can’t get enough of them, it makes its home there. It makes its home wherever it can of course – it’s nothing if not adaptable. Anything will do as long as it’s not the truth. ‘Just give me something – is that too much to ask?’ I cry out piteously, ‘can I not even be allowed that much?’ The universe can seem like a very unfair place sometimes however and I’m afraid there’s no getting around that; the bottom line is that we wish to worship ourselves. We only wish to worship ourselves, none other. Yet is this so terrible, is this so unforgivable? Are we damned because of it? Are we guilty of transgressing God’s law? Is this something we should never do (or at the very least, never admit to)? We are tormented by such considerations it is true, but there really is no need for us to feel so bad. It’s the most natural thing in the world to wish to worship ourselves (and at the same time – by ‘virtue’ of this very same act – deny the Divine. We’re all at it, after all. it is not as if you are all alone in this. What could be more natural – or indeed, more perverse – than wanting to worship yourself? I am being perfectly sincere here, I really am. ‘Thanks to social media, young people take constant photos of themselves’ – that’s what Merriam-Webster has to say on the subject. ‘Selfies are causing a rise in mutant head-lice’, observes the Daily Mail Online…