When we were young, too young to remember, as the ego began to develop and establish itself, we chanced upon a use of the mind that appeared to work for us. It brought success to the fledgling self – it largely guaranteed that we got our own way. That use of mind, which is really just a ruse, a deception, then becomes our identity, the stamp of who even we consider ourselves to be, and we can then go through life appearing as though there is nothing more to us than that, yet with this nagging suspicion that we are a fraud, that, in fact, we are something else, someone different. Spiritual work – the work – is all about digging beneath this false self to find the true Self, which, especially nowadays, is so different as to be unadmitable.