Another thing hidden by the brain fog is the dual aspect of our machine and its life. Our lives are largely the process of a machine generating energy, like a treadmill. The dual motion of two pistons, action and reaction, experience and experiencer, hooked to a central drive shaft, is transferring our energy away. We can see this by observing how we spend much more energy in our lives than is necessary to simply get by. We lead mechanical lives of dissipation, which are not of our own making, but from the states of mind we have bought into.  We are hooked up to the treadmill in the rat race, and in our personal emotional lives as well. Our emotional reactions to our spouses, our parents, our careers, whatever belief system we bought into, drives the machine, takes away our energy, and we never question it.  We can never solve this problem from its own level. The harder we push, the harder too are we pushed back. We think that we know what we’re doing, that we want what we want. It’s all being forced upon us, until we begin to question it.

This questioning takes a certain amount of courage, and trauma perhaps, but in the end run it saves a lot of energy.  We have to be able to face the fact that we do not want to question ourselves, our very beliefs, our sacred cows at whose altars we pray.  Our defenses automatically jump up whenever anyone else calls us on it, keeping our ego and the system of belief safe.