Shall We Trance Part III: The Eruption of Ugly and The I'm-1-N-1 Virus

As you watch your favorite shows this evening, notice the endless advertising for beauty products aimed directly at your weakest spots–your insecurities. It starts with cellulite and goes on to target thin lips, sexual dysfunction, abdominal flab, and fatigue.  The people we watch on television are almost always the antithesis of what we see in real life. They are perky, puffed up and perfectly happy juggling mahhhhvelous acting careers, baby bumps, and award ceremonies.

There has never been a nation of more deliberately sculpted beauty or a culture that has spent more money on beauty because it is convinced that it is ugly.

Women starve themsevles, men fill themselves with toxins in search of the on-command erection and everyone spends hours in front of mirrors terrified of being unattractive as if our sexual desirability determined our worth in the world and our chosen-status by God.

The truth is we haven't a clue about what is really attractive or beautiful. And we miss all the real opportunities for love which have far less to do with plumped lips than we'd like to think. After all, if it were just a matter of a little collagen, that would be a relatively easy fix. No one would actually have to work at intimacy, forgiveness, or sharing.

This disease has American by its chinny-chin-chin. And we're spending a fortune "fighting" it.

The last disease we'll talk about in this series is the "I'm-1-N-1" Virus or the Centerless Self.

This is the deepest expression of all the above pathologies. Because of all the others–the distortion of self and body-loathing, the sense of never being or having enough, the constant fear–we've also become exceedingly self-centered. Which is actually much more disastrous than it sounds because in our cultural psyche, there is no self and there is no solid center. We've become painfully insecure AND entitled. And when we don't get what we want–because we have no center, believe that we need that thing to fill up our emptiness, fear what may happen and loathe ourselves without it–we become violent.

The evidence for that is all over the news on a daily basis.

All these diseases, these cultural, collective delusions form a sort of intellectual and emotional breast milk for us and our children. They are the formula for how we think and how we live.

So what heals these delusions?

The first and most important antidote is Love. A spiritual Love. We have to know and learn to experience that we are not the center of the universe. Something else is and that IT centers us. We have no center without a relationship with the creator.

The second is Faith. When we can put our faith in something beyond ourselves, there is nothing to fear. When we can trust that a God who literally loves us is running the show, we can relax in the moment. We don't have to buy anything. We don't have to run away anymore.

The third and perhaps most difficult for Americans is a Correctness of Desire. The medicine for unrestrained want, irrepressible fear, and self-loathing is gratitude.