It is imperative that we leave our facade in order to be happy. We cannot be happy if we are living a lie. We cannot simultaneously be real and fake.

We are faking it when we do the wrong things and pretend we can still be happy. If we lie to ourselves by betraying our conscience, we will lose our dignity. When we lose our dignity, we lose our self-esteem. This only happens when we give into our ego and selfish tendencies.

Some people just don’t care. They don’t realize their carelessness will ruin their life and make it a hell. Anyone who is hell-bent on gratifying the whims of their mind and the demands of their ego is definitely going to get ‘bent out of shape.’

As the saying goes, “Shape up or ship out.” If we don’t shape our mind with wisdom, we are going to get caught up in false friendships. A false friendship is one which takes us away from our real self. We have to be our own best friend; then we are the true friend of everyone. But if we are our own enemy, we will make our friends into enemies, and our enemies our friends. In other words, we will turn away from our well-wishers and embrace those who wish hell upon us. There are many people who love to raise hell, but very few who really want to raise consciousness.

The one who raises your consciousness is your true friend; the one who feeds into your unreality is your enemy. We only have enemies when we are first our own enemy. In other words, when we go against our true nature and embrace the demonic nature, we will be drawn into the company of those who are demented.

Human beings are demented when they are mentally inclined to destroy themselves with bad habits. Only a facadist does that. A real human being doesn’t become the slave of his or her ego. A real human being is really happy, so they don’t seek happiness from hapless people. One who is content within himself does not seek out the company of the malcontent.

It is a bad arrangement to mix with uncentered people. Uncentered people are self-centered, which means they really don’t care about you, they only care about their own small self. They live behind a facade of ‘having it together’ even though they are falling apart inside. How do you know? You know they are falling apart because they are looking for someone to lean on. They want to impress you because they are depressed: their real nature is being pressed down by their ego, and this manifests in the mind as depression. To ward off the depression we seek to impress others with our personality. Our ‘fun-loving’ nature is a facade which masks our real nature. Our real nature is to love wisdom and Liberation (Moksha); our real nature is to love to be totally free; free from superficiality, artificiality, sensuality and all other ego-unreality.

Being caught up in ego-unreality makes us mentally deranged. We are easily upset, annoyed, frustrated, angry, and depressed. We are caught up in ego-unreality when we fail to control our mind and its tendencies.

Yoga is the self-control of our thoughts, attitudes, feelings, and tendencies, and the eradication of all our negative impressions. This total self-control is accomplished through right action. Wrong action is the loss of self-control, and leads to more wrong actions. The loss of self-control leads to the loss of freedom, and we become the slave of our mind and ego.

A person who is controlled by his mind and ego is not a free person. That person is stuck in the facade of personality. We need to leave our facade to realize our real nature. When we leave our facade, WE ARE FREE. OM