Tag Archives: Ego

Inspiration

What does your Halloween costume say about you?

HalloweenDid you dress up this Halloween?  Were you an animal, a popular character, a pun, or a “sexy” something?  I saw a huge range of costumes yesterday; both children and adults went all out for Halloween.  I then found myself asking the question, why don’t we do this all year?

The answer is: we do.  While my sweaters and stretchy pants are not as exciting as a panda bear or Hermione Granger costume, I still wear clothes that are attached to an identity.

On Halloween we all ask each other, “What are you?”  On all of the other days of the year we wear costumes that are associated with clear roles and identities, so no one bothers to ask what we are dressing as.

The person in a suit and tie is in the businessperson costume, just as the person wearing a mail carrier outfit is in the mail carrier costume.  The difference is, we take our everyday costumes very seriously.  Our daily costumes are attached to an identity that we hold firmly in our minds, and which portray to the world what we think we are.

Harry Potter Picture In the end, whether dressed as a lion or an executive, we wear costumes that are attached to an identity in our minds.  When we change out of our Halloween costumes into different clothes the next day, we don’t think twice about it.  But if a job, status, or title changes we can feel lost, distraught, and diminished.

Even though the roles and identities we wear day to day have been taken very seriously, as our absolute truths, throughout human history, we don’t have to buy into them anymore.  After all, when at the end of life we discorporate and lose our human costumes, all of the suffering created by our attachment to identities will dissolve, and life will be seen as one big Halloween party.

What roles do you play in everyday life?  What daily costumes give you a sense of identity?  Create an experiment out of loosening your grip on these thought-created selves.  What you end up discovering beneath them will be more truly yourself and more miraculous than every costume Party City has ever sold.

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Inspiration

How To Lose Weight Right Now!

CakeI swear this will feel better than any regimen of protein or cinnamon.  

What weighs you down even more than half of a leftover birthday cake?  What is worse for your health than a fast-food sandwich containing bacon, cheese, pancakes, and syrup in one?  Its energy is just as real and contains consequences like any physical substance we ingest.  It’s a grudge.

When I was in high school I found little wrong with holding a grudge.  If I thought you “stole” my boyfriend, or talked badly about me to friends, that was enough for me to carry the weight of negative feelings for you.  It seemed just at the time.  My compassion grew after graduating high school a semester early, and finding that the daily lives of others were not at all like I imagined them to be.  It took time, but I slowly realized that just as my inner life was incomprehensible to even my closest friends, so too were the inner lives of all people.  I found that even though I could be affected by the choices of others, their choices were made from their point of view, in their world, with that person as the main character of the story, just as I am my own life’s main character.  

To drop a grudge doesn’t mean you approve of past actions taken by an individual; it means you allow the past to be as it was, and forgive it for being.  To expend energy fighting against that which is already the case is, bluntly put, insane.  The past that now exists in the present as a thought in the mind can persist in draining your life energy through your reliving it in the present, or it can be relinquished.

By Peter SperoWhat would change in your life if you let go of a grudge?

What would you receive if you relinquished your non-forgiveness? The reward looks different in each circumstance, but rest assured there is a reward, not to mention the actual of feeling of being lighter. The mind doesn’t know this, because its aim and reward is its own thought-made sense of self, which one grudge can easily keep in place. By letting go, the mind thinks it’s losing. And it is. It’s losing its firm grasp on your attention. It’s losing its stronghold on your sense of self. It’s losing what it thinks is all there is: thoughts. Because of this it has cunning ways of convincing you why you can’t let something go, why it is in your best interest to not forgive. Don’t be fooled, the mind will use its best logic to keep its identity as your sense of self. When it uses convincing logic to maintain its position on the pedestal of your awareness all that is needed is to see it for what it really is. The ego.

The mind-made sense of self pales in comparison to who you truly are. A thought in your head can never come close to the majesty of your being. You are consciousness. You provide the space for thoughts to be created and noticed. And one of the best ways to gently let go of the ego is to let go of a grudge. Who can you forgive today?

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spirituality

When The Going Gets Tough

HeartSometimes the days when you feel the least connected can be the most fruitful.  Part of the practice of being present is staying present even when you’re feeling out of sync.  There are days when I notice the voice in my head getting frustrated with the smallest things.  When I experience a day where a stranger sitting too close to me on the bus gets to me, I find it is a good opportunity to explore where the negative energy is coming from.

Occasionally the thoughts in my head give rise to negative emotions.  But more often than not, I first experience a low-level of unhappiness or discomfort emotionally that ends up giving rise to negative thinking.  Watching yourself, when you are reactive or irritated, builds the power of your presence even more powerfully than when you are watching yourself have a positive experience.  Spiritual growth happens in these uncomfortable moments.

The mind will often try to solve discomfort and in turn create more discord.  Noticing this as it happens is a crash course in awareness.  The strength of your own presence creates powerful roots of awareness during seasons of discontent.  This means that no matter what outer and inner circumstances you witness throughout your life, you will have the anchor of your own presence guiding you and working all situations for your good.  This doesn’t make negative energy any more comfortable, but it gives it meaning through the valuable lessons gleaned from it.

Eckhart Tolle provides an amazing free online resource for spiritual awakening and learning about presence.  You can sign up for this free online “UnCourse,” as he calls it, here:  https://www.eckharttolle.com/uncourse/register/.  Whether you are experiencing times of joy, or discord, the opportunity for a more awakened consciousness is always readily available.

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consciousness

Can you go a day without judgement?

FlowersThis morning I listened to Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success as I was getting ready for work.  Chopra talks about accessing the field of potentiality, the space in which your highest dreams have the opportunity to manifest, and how to access this space.  One of the prescriptions he gives is to go the day without judgement.  Along with other tools, such as meditation, going without judgement creates space for the highest potential of any moment to arise.

I made the decision as if it was easy, “Sure I can go the day without judgement!”  Which within ten minutes turned into me becoming aware of how often I was judging the world around me.  I first noticed it standing at the bus stop.  I saw a guy park his car “way too far” from the curb, and as I was thinking this thought, I realized I was already judging!  In conversations with friends and coworkers, I began to notice how often I voiced my opinion.

I wasn’t just noticing negative judgement, I also noticed that I judged things all the time in a positive manner.  I would see a tree and think, “What a beautiful tree!”  I would look up at the sky and think, “Such interesting clouds today.”  Negative or positive, I found that I was constantly in judgement.

This experiment was anything but a failure, it truly helped me see how often I was judging the world around me instead of perceiving it as it really was.  Tomorrow I’m going to try again and see what happens.  I invite you to join me in going one day without judgement, just to see what it’s like!  Let me know how it goes, I’d love to hear your story!

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Inspiration

“The ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment.” – Eckhart Tolle

Night SkyWhat thoughts take you out of the present moment?  For me, when I experience thoughts of fear I find it easy to lose focus on what I’m doing, my attention completely taken up by the train of thought.  I was listening to Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth today and the following passage spoke so truly that it brought me right out of my thinking mind and into the present moment experience.  May it do the same for you:

The most important, the primordial relationship in your life is your relationship with the Now, or rather with whatever form the Now takes, that is to say, what is or what happens.  If your relationship with the Now is dysfunctional, that dysfunction will be reflected in every relationship and every situation you encounter. The ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment. It is at this moment that you can decide what kind of relationship you want to have with the present moment. (Tolle)

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spirituality

The Human ATM

White Glove DanceAs I arrived at my place of work this morning I found the street full of huge trucks. It turned out a TV show was being filmed in the neighborhood. As I was walking home I ended up talking to a production assistant, who let me in on some of the woes of filming in residential neighborhoods. In his experience of filming in such locations he has found that people are always complaining, always angry, and always looking to get something for themselves. People want to park their cars outside their houses as usual and complain since they can’t, while at the same time they ask to watch and be a part of the show themselves. One of the most interesting insights from him, was that people always go up to the actors and want pictures, but never actually ask them any questions. All of this got me thinking about the nature of fame, image, and perception.

Why does being famous seem so fulfilling? Why does getting a ton of “likes” on a Facebook post seem important? Personally, I have had that desire for fame, for “likes” on Facebook, and admittedly, I check my blog stats all the time. When I first realized that there was a “stats” section on the blog I thought, “I shouldn’t make a habit of looking at this. After all, how many people read it has nothing to do with what I’m trying to accomplish.” What a noble thought! But to no avail. I still check the stats, and I still get that leap within when people “like” and comment on my Facebook posts. So as I speak to why these things seem so important, it is without judgment, but rather introspection.

When you’re around someone who you think has more than you, the mind will take one of two routes. It will downplay the success of the other person, and come up with reasons why they’re not so great anyway. Or it will go to the opposite end of the spectrum and feel bad about itself, coming up with a barrage of reasons why you, the thinker, are not good enough and should be better (but can’t). That approach to famous people is what I like to call “anything you can do, I can do better.” If the mind can’t come up with reasons why it is better than the other person, it will still manage to gain a sense of superiority by explaining why it is worse than the other person. Good or bad, the mind doesn’t care, as long as it can attach itself to a story.

The other approach to someone who you think has more than you, is to try to get something from them. I call this, “the human ATM.” This is when you see someone for what they can do for you. When it comes to being around famous people, “the human ATM” approach says that being around them will make you more than you currently are.

What these approaches have in common is that the ego, the mind when it identifies with things, is interacting with other perceived egos. There is no real human interaction here. It is merely ideas interacting with other ideas. The mind has an idea about who the other person is, and engages with that idea, rather than the actual person. So when a person really wants to take a picture with a famous person, but has nothing to say to them or any curiosity about them, it is really their mind attempting to attach itself to an object it sees as valuable. Or to post it on Facebook and receive “likes,” therefore making them more than they were before.  When a person is well known, it is easy to see only your own ideas about them, and not the actual human being.

On the flip side of this insanity, I had an amusing thought as I was walking home. Since everything around us is completely unified and whole, when we praise famous people it is like the universe praising itself! When I build up others, I know I am really just building up myself. This principle, however, is alien to the ego.  Having an intention when interacting with other people can help you to see them as they really are, and quell the ever avid ego. For example, as I was talking to the production assistant my ego would have loved to implement the “human ATM.” And I was one of the people getting their picture taken with the actors. But when I’m talking to people, especially if they’re telling me about things that are bothersome to them, it is my intention to spread consciousness, and leave them feeling great about themselves. I stay present by listening without talking in my head at the same time, and I offer helpful, loving remarks whenever appropriate. Asking questions and listening, without internal dialog, is a good indicator that you are having a human interaction and not an ego interaction. By no means am I always aligned with my intentions when interacting with others, but I attempt to remind myself of them when my ego starts to rear its ugly head. Experiencing other human beings without the mental screen of who you think they are, opens you up to a world the ego cannot conceive of. People are very different than the mind’s ideas about them. Next time your ego tries to take over an interaction, laugh at it, and then find out what happens when you see things as they really are!

“1 new thing a day challenge” update: Today, for day 6, I ate fried shrimp for the first time! For those who know me, you will appreciate the magnitude of this endeavor. I never eat anything that comes from the water, not fish, shrimp, lobster, literally nothing. This challenge has gotten me taking risks, and I am quite pleased I did! Not that I liked the shrimp, but I can finally say I’ve tried seafood. Now I don’t have to eat anything like that again (until the next challenge…). Yesterday,for day 5, I attempted a few new things. I am moving soon so I switched my address with the post office and other venues, and tried to set up the cooking gas service at my new place. I haven’t moved for five years, and didn’t have to do these things last time, so it made me feel quite the responsible person. What are your plans for the last day of the challenge?

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consciousness, spirituality

How The Mind Convinces Itself It’s Correct

This morning at work I experienced technical difficulties with the projector.  It was the last day of class, centered around the movie “Lilo and Stitch,” and the projector had always worked fine before.  After several minutes of unsuccessful troubleshooting, and with class about to begin, I felt reaction rising up inside of me.  I was frustrated and about to freak out.

The reaction I experienced was brief and subsided as I made the decision to have an enjoyable last day, and ask for assistance. Yet, however brief, the pull of reaction was strong, and it was to an inanimate object in a low-pressure situation.  How strongly can egoic reaction pull a person in when the unfavorable situation is caused by another person?  When other people act in a way that causes the voice in our heads to start condemning, we experience the beginnings of a reaction caused by the ego.  Some people manage to live mainly through egoic reaction, and over time it deadens all of life, leaving the person unable to enjoy any situation and experience their true nature.

I love this video because it is so clear, and beautifully manages to snap me out of the voice in my head.  The truth to which Eckhart Tolle speaks here, can have the power to completely change any life that has been taken over by reaction.

http://youtu.be/cbiMGV52O2s

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consciousness

The Stranger Who Killed My Ego

Happy Sign

One night a few summers back I went to the gym, and feeling quite proud of myself decided to walk home to keep the momentum going.  As I was briskly walking along, with my rainbow New Balances and a big grin on my face, a young artist who could’ve been my age asked me to look at his photographs.  I admired them, complimented his artistic eye, and was about to continue on my way home.  But before I could, he started asking me if I was going to buy them.  I told him I had no money on me but that I wished him good luck with his work.

Instead of the usual disappointed face and goodbye, I received a totally unexpected barrage of questions.  Did I really have no money at all?  Couldn’t I go to the ATM? Don’t I just live off my parents’ money anyway?  I admitted I was blessed and did in fact have some money to my name, but that I too was an artist, working part time.  He wouldn’t stop asking questions.  I could have made the choice to walk away.  In my mind it was important to just watch him and see him as a human being.  But when someone is completely taken over by the voice in their head, as he clearly was, the most helpful thing can be to choose a new situation, and exit.

Saying things like “I am blessed” and telling him how, as a poet, I understand how difficult it is to make money, set me up for a barrage of attacks on my religion, and my art.  “Oh yeah right, we’re all poets aren’t we?” he sarcastically remarked.  Along with, “If you really were religious you would go and get money right now but you’re not, so I guess you aren’t really what you say you are.”  On and on he went.  And I just stood there in awe, listening.

Eventually I gave it up as a bad job and walked away, tears streaming down my face.  He had attacked every identification I held dear.  He tore down all of the things I associated with to give me an identity.  He acted as if he could not see me at all, as if I were not a real person standing in front of him.  He may have appeared like many of my acquaintances from art school, with his hipster clothing and shaggy hair, but he didn’t seem to relate to me on any level.

I was in shambles the rest of my walk home; you would have thought something truly terrible had happened.  But I knew in the deep recesses of my consciousness that something terrible had not happened to me, it happened to my ego.  The part of me that attached itself to things and ideas had been belittled.  The voice in my head that demanded others take it seriously, and believe in what is says, had been attacked with no chance of retribution.  Not my true self, but the mind which seeks outside things to feel secure and to attain an identity, that ego self, had been greatly diminished.  He had claimed to know me better than myself.  He took everything I thought I was, and laughed at it, claimed it was all one big hoax.

Now I can say, thank God for this stranger.  Everything he said, all of the parts of me he attacked, were much too specific to be meaningless.  The universe is a beautiful being, who used this man, a person completely taken over by his ego, to show me the vestiges of my own ego.  The universe teaches lessons through joy, but it can also use negative people and situations for your good.

Since I couldn’t defend myself after parting ways with this stranger, my ego could not repair itself.  It couldn’t build itself back up, dig its heals in, and explain why it was what it said it was.  Whenever the ego is diminished without being repaired, space is created for your true self to emerge, that which is beyond thoughts and emotions.  Instead of defending my beliefs about who I was, I allowed myself to let go of what others thought of me, along with letting go of what I thought about of myself.  No thoughts, no labels, are who I am.  Nothing I can ever think about myself will ever come close to the reality of my being.  That stranger was a small flame of refining fire, burning up the egoic mind-made self, leaving room for my eternal being to live more fully through me.  It did not feel good.  I was amazed by how truly terrible it felt.  But through acceptance, the pain dissolved, along with the resilient attachments that are the ego, and I was still there.  Completely whole, undiminished, and open to life as it really was.  We don’t need others to define who we are.  We don’t need ourselves to define who we are.  Beyond definitions, we just are.

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consciousness, spirituality

Religion as Language and How It Connects Us All

For me, religions are like languages.  If I were to call a shoe “a shoe” and someone else called it “un zapato,” neither of us would be incorrect.  We were both describing the same thing using a different language.  The words sounded different, but they were pointing to the same meaning.  If I didn’t know Spanish I would have no idea what someone meant when they said “un zapato.”  That doesn’t make that person wrong, it just means the noises they were using to describe something sounded different from what I had known.

As we have many different languages, we have many different religions.  All over the world exist ways of pointing to God, the infinite, the divine, the universe, the oneness, being.  In English I just used many different sounds that are meant to point to a reality, to truth.  The many varied religions from this planet express God in God’s infinite aspects.

Right and wrong ultimately end up as thoughts in the head.  When looking at the religions of the world without the mental screen of “right and wrong” you can see God growing and manifesting for all people in unlimited ways.  Even further, without the mental screen of “right and wrong,” the present moment can be experienced as God’s current manifestation.  When judgment ceases, the miraculous increases.  Without judgment, you are accepting what is, allowing the highest potential of any moment to express itself freely in your life.

While I lived many years buying into the “right and wrong” voice in my head, I now can’t help but see God in everything.  When you are very present, watching the moment, looking and listening for God, God appears through everything.  For me, I could be watching a movie, overhearing a conversation on the bus, finding an encouraging sticker on the train window, and I receive it as something miraculous.  And no matter what mental screen or ego another person is operating from, if I concentrate really diligently on the present I can sense God in and all around them.  This is still challenging for me when people have really strong egos that feel very unpleasant, but the opportunity to recognize that person as their true self is always there.

The unity of the present is such that your awareness of God, (or being, or true self), in another human being, is also being experienced by that person in the present.  Even if that person is completely identified with, and operating from, the voice in their head, the awareness you are experiencing is one with them.  As was mentioned in yesterday’s post, once a small glimpse of awareness is sparked, it can only grow.  That connection can change both of your lives.  What a blessing it is to have the opportunity to understand another human being.

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consciousness, spirituality, Uncategorized

The Pain Body Practice and The Beginning of Inner Peace

I’m a huge fan of audiobooks. Every morning I listen to an audiobook, interview, sermon, or anything that will inspire me and bring me more fully into the spirit of the present. I am always amazed by how words of inspiration change my inner state from tired and dreary, to awake, energized, and joyful. As I do my makeup I let the positive words sink in. By the time I’m out the door I feel excited for life. This is the polar opposite of the feeling I have when I first wake up in the morning.

Inner peace is a practice. It requires practice in every single moment. This looks different in every moment. I know that when I’m at work it looks different than when I’m at home. At home I can listen to my audiobooks when I get ready for the day. At work I can allow myself to focus fully on each task, keeping my attention on the “doing” instead of the result I am working towards. When I am at home watching TV and a commercial about some deadly illness comes on and I am about to be afraid of it, I have to practice peace by letting go of fear. Each and every now is an opportunity for greater peace. It is totally fine that not all moments seem as peaceful as others, that is all part of the practice.

Yesterday I began talking about the pain body, the residual energy of past pain that lives within each of us. The pain body creates great opportunities for practice. Of course they don’t feel great, but the awareness gained in the moment of disidentification from the pain body can put you light years ahead of your current state of consciousness. Practicing inner peace with a heavy and active pain body can thrust anyone into a spiritual awakening.

When I was just entering high school I had a very active pain body. I can see now how the emotional pain and the thoughts in my head fed each other constantly. This was a blessing because I knew something was wrong. I knew that the pain and anxiety was not okay. I remember telling my mom, as she was driving home from a friend’s house, that there was something wrong with me. I told her that the voice in my head was always coming up with horrible scenarios about the worst things that could possibly happen to me. It would come up with scenarios where everyone I loved died and play through how I would cope and what it would feel like. While that all sounds quite dramatic, it wasn’t until many years later that I realized everyone had a voice in their head that was making up various scenarios, many of which had negative outcomes. The active pain body was so uncomfortable that it woke me up to that voice as a “problem.” Instead of assuming that the mind is just the way it is, I knew it was causing me too much pain to be in its natural state.

Together the pain body and the voice in the head create the ego. They live their lives through you, and until a little spark of disidentification comes in, they are you. They make your decisions, they create your reactions, and they completely obscure the inner peace that is your natural state. The ego will cease to run your life the moment you realize it is not you. That is all that is required. That is where the practice of inner peace begins.

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