If we look at Yggdrasil as a representation of and a map to the Self, we need to gain access in order to be able to reorganize and improve it. Unfortunately, this is not as easy as it sounds, as we first have to face a rather mighty foe.
Nidhöggr
Nidhöggr is a huge snake or dragon whose name means as much as “malice striker” and it is the guardian of the tree. It’s also its mortal enemy, chewing up the roots of Yggdrasil with its many companions that slither around beneath it and therefore destroying the base of its own existence. It is the embodiment of self-sabotage. Everything manifest is cyclical in nature and therefore the Self actually needs to incorporate a destructive force in order to be complete but at this stage of our journey to wake up, to improve the Self and to return it to its proper place, Nidhöggr is truly a malice striker, preventing us from success. So in order to pass the snake and gain access to the tree we first have to understand the nature of self-sabotage.
The core of the problem is rather unspectacular. We’re simply unaware of what we really want. This leads to us having conflicting wishes like being loved and admired by everyone as well as having a deep-seated urge to tell people off and putting them into their place. We’re usually not aware of the second wish because it doesn’t fit the image of ourselves that we’ve created in our heads. No matter how much we ignore it though, it is still there and our Self will try to make it come true with as much enthusiasm as our wish to be loved and admired.
So the solution to the problem is quite obvious. All we have to do is stop lying to ourselves and the self-sabotage will stop. Recognizing the problem unfortunately isn’t the same as solving the problem, otherwise nobody would smoke. But in this case, there is an actionable solution, which is to head-on face the snake. This means to take a long hard look in the mirror and accept what’s actually there instead of seeing what we’d like to see. The difficulty is that we are so in love with the fake image of ourselves that we have constructed over the course of our lifetime with so much passion and effort, that our mirror has several huge blind spots and so we fail when facing Nidhöggr over and over again. The Malice Striker has several tricks up its sleeve in order to prevent us from seeing ourselves for who and what we really are and I want to look at the three most common ones. Due to the default setting of the Self you will not like what I have to say. From experience, I also know that it is almost impossible to understand these kind of truths simply through being told about them by someone else as you have to experience these problems and find the corresponding solutions for them by yourself but I’m an incorrigible optimist, so I’ll tell you anyways…
Victims of Circumstance
Over the last few decades, western society has developed what I would call a “Cult of Blame”. Every kind of behavior is now traced back to some root cause over which the afflicted individual had no control at the time. He’s violent because he was beaten himself, she’s incapable of really committing to a long-term relationship because she grew up in the system, they’re addicts because they got no love at home, etc. These explanations might actually be true but they’re also mostly useless. Everyone will understand you suffering from depression if you’ve had a terrible childhood but how does that help you? Only one person is suffering the consequences for the abuse you had to endure and it’s not the neighbors and relatives that deliberately ignored all the telltale signs, nor the policeman that didn’t believe you when you finally mustered the nerve to walk down to the station and it’s definitely not the abusers themselves… it’s just you.
This applies to all the scars we’ve acquired over the course of our lifes, no matter how small or severe they might be. Pain and suffering have a certain aesthetic and being the victim can start to feel like a warm safety-blanket over time but it will prevent us from accessing our Self. Being haunted by the ghosts of our past severely restricts our freedom of action. Pain and suffering cripple their disciples and if we’re crippled we can’t jump around, can’t run, can’t feel uninhibited joy and therefore can never reach our full potential. If we’re happy to spend our life in this bubble of suffering, pain and victimhood, that is fine of course but we won’t achieve most of the things we’ve wanted to achieve in our life. We’ll always have a heap of valid excuses at hand for whenever we’ll find ourselves in a situation which is truly challenging for us. Once again, this is fine and oftentimes understandable and most people are destined for mediocrity anyways but if we truly want to go above and beyond then we’ll have to bleed. Odin sacrificed an eye in order to be allowed to have a drink from Mimir’s well and gain a deeper understanding of the past and we will have to sacrifice something of equal value to us in order to expand our consciousness.
The solution to the problem is as simple as it is brutal: We have to accept responsibility for our life, all of it, or to put it in simpler terms: IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!! The reason why you got angry just now are Nidhöggr’s other two most common tricks…
So we’re still not past the damn snake. In order to do that we have to see through two other tricks that Nidhöggr likes to play on us and that only works if we dispose of some good, humane and comfortable truths that our society has taught us: Fairness is of no consequence and we have but one right.
Fairness
Fairness is a good and valid concept in regards to social constructs and human interaction. If a boss is treating its employees fairly, they will perform better and will be far more prepared to go the extra mile whenever necessary than they are if he or she is not. On a larger scale, a state is more productive if its citizens feel that they are treated fairly than if their main motivation for doing their work and following their country’s laws is the fear of repercussions. But the idea that if you do good things, good things should happen to you, that the Universe should treat you fairly is just stupid and actually harmful in the process of Self-transformation. Fairness is a human value and the Universe does not adjust itself according to the current human value system. The Universe works the way it works and no matter how important we believe our species and especially ourselves to be, we’re but a footnote in the glorious history of existence. So if we expect the Universe to treat us according to our own definition of fairness we will be disappointed most of the time. As I’ve said above, being treated fairly enhances our performance, so in reverse our performance will decline if we feel that we’re permanently treated unfairly. Expecting universal justice based on our own idea of justice will therefore lead to a slow but steady decline. First, we lose our hunger for life, which we call “growing up”, then our optimism, which we call “starting to see the world realistically”. Next, we start to run out of energy, which we call “growing old”. So our demand to be treated fairly according to our own understanding of fairness is but a trick that Nidhöggr plays on us so he can slowly but surely suck all the life energy out of us without ever having to grant us access to Yggdrasil.
Entitlement
Besides our belief that we deserve to be treated fairly we also believe to be entitled to a long list of rights. We believe that we have the right to be happy, healthy, free, safe, etc… the list goes on. Just to make it clear, the idea of human rights is great in order for society as a whole to progress towards a better future but it is poison if we ever want to wake up and gain access to the Self. If we truly believe to have all these rights, we ‘ll constantly get sidetracked as one of them will be violated at almost every given moment in our lives. This in turn will give us the right to feel hurt, outraged, offended, sad, depressed and so on. Once again Nidhöggr has found a way to slowly but surely drain us of our life energy while denying us access to our Self. There is one right to which every human being, actually every living thing, with the exception of some protozoon’s, is entitled to and that’s the right to die…
Passing the Snake
So once we take full responsibility for everything that ever happened in our lives, get rid of the idea that the Universe is obligated to treat us fairly and get rid of our long list of alleged rights Nidhöggr will have to let us pass. Truly seeing ourselves for who we really are and thereby eliminating self-sabotage will be a lifelong process, but if we accept these three simple truths and integrate them into our Self we will gain access to Yggdrasil and the real work can finally begin…