The moon, fish, and water: Our ego's battle with reality (Part One)

“When the sage points to the moon, the idiot sees the finger” – Chinese Proverb

“Our final barrier to God is our concept of what ‘God’ is” – Anthony De Mello

“This is what is ultimate in the human knowledge of God-to know that we do not know God” – St. Thomas Aquinas

What’s with all this God talk if this article is supposed to be about the ego? What the hell do you think your ego thinks it is! Ha!

Welcome my friends, I think you will quite enjoy this relatively brief blog about the ego state, how one lives from it and how to detect when one does (look at the moon not the finger, idiot), how to awaken to reality to rid ourself of our concepts and so our attachments (the ego’s bread and butter and work and home and everything); how to allow the light of reality to combat the night in the dark room for us; and some different recommendations I've taken successfully (if there is such a thing) to challenge and work against the ego’s grain that you may find ‘fun’ as well. YOU will find it very fun, your heart will dance, but your ego will bring its hardest game to defeat you; because you are going to see why the ego sucks, what can be done about it – that nothing you do about it is the answer (just another ego state) – how to "let the miracle happen", and then some fun games to enslave the ego to the higher self - the heart (as intended) and so “Become like Children” Matthew 18:3. Come on, jump in, its fun.

We’re not talking here simply of the dilemma of being egotistical – that’s a judgment of one ego from other ego; but the dilemma of ego.

We’re going to try and have a brief discussion of pure ego – of the active conscious trapped within a focus on a concept or script as Reality and its activity to continually align the world to this end. Remember Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy in a 'Glass Cage of Emotion'? Yeah, kinda like that - but all the time and almost no one knows they're in there.

I want to share this example before we go any further to try and get you to the level I am reaching for here; it’s a very delicate sense I am trying to write about – so much so that I can only write about what it is not for to write about what it is, is to inject a concept (through word) that captures the essence of the reality and forever changes it. If you box the water from a wave it ceases to be a wave and is just a box of water type thing.

I pull from the book “Awareness: The perils and opportunities of Reality” by the Jesuit Priest, Father Anthony De Mello (who’s apparently from India which was a cool discovery for this Indian as I read around his sculpting of the unseen unknowable…)

“Say this scrap of paper is a billion dollar check. Ah, I must renounce it, the Gospel says I must give it up if I want eternal life. Are you going to substitute one greed-a spiritual greed-for the other greed? Before you had a worldly ego, now you have a spiritual ego, but you’ve got an ego all the same, a refined one and one more difficult to cope with.” - Fr. Anthony De Mello

That’s the ego I’m talking about. Not the ‘Jersey Shore’ ego or the ‘My New Haircut’ ego – those are already far into their ego states; already denying and defining a world from a set script or concept about reality (including their relation to that reality and their ability to control and influence it) –

And here in part one (and maybe part two) I find no requirement to describe the various reasons the ego (our mind state) goes into the business of constructing a reality of its own and passing that perception off as a ‘truth’; even when some ‘humble’ ones will say, “it is only my truth” – bleh! No friends, not that ego, but the ego at the start of it all. The seed that can, and most frequently does, become a dreadful dead tree, diseased and corrupted, twisting in its barren branches the beauty and goodness that our world, even full of slavery and sickness and war, still offers us.

So how do we battle this pervasive ego, this bull in the golden chambers of our heart? This cancer to our soul? Well first and foremost, we don’t battle it – “you don’t chase darkness out of a room with a broom, you turn on a light.” – De Mello. A cancer patient would not operate on themselves, but they can live a life that reflects health to the best of their ability. So its not that we do nothing, its that we work on getting out of the way to let the light and the surgeon do what they are intended to do.

If we fight our ego states, we just take on an even deeper ego state; that is to say, if we are focused on “changing” whom we are (how we perceive ourselves to be, whether good or bad) we are already striving from our egos. This sounds nuts to a culture and world driven on goals and the chase for them, but this is part of the ‘asceticism of awareness’ – and it sounds scary to any and all till they begin experiencing it in pockets and maybe one day live it fully….we may even say, abundantly! (What do you think Christ was talking about – eternity is ours now if we tap into it! “I come that they may have life, and life more abundantly!” John 10:10). A final way of thinking about this point, and I do recommend taking time to reflect on these movements within yourself (it’s a way to awaken to reality and then the whole of everything becomes something new “Behold I make all things new!” - Rev. 21:5”) are the following two analogies which helped me describe and relate this concept of turning on a light to battle the pervasive ego.

An old Japanese saying, “When you stop traveling, you have arrived” and the analogy of a fish in the ocean who is swimming frantically searching for water – if it could just stop and see! It lives and dies by that very water it seeks! Quit it! Let it happen – let pain take care of itself, the “I” is eternal, it is only the “me” (the ego) that has all the thrashing and gnashing of teeth…

Why does this renunciation of control sound so scary? The ego – the ego must control – or at least have a false sense of control, which is all that any sense of control really is - a fallacy through and through! “Don’t seek to fulfill a desire so much as to understand a desire” – De Mello. Most people spend all their energy trying to rearrange the exterior world, and others take even more energy to rearrange the interior world – but if one awakens, then one doesn’t need this needless energy! Think of the analogy De Mello uses above to describe the scrap of paper. Instead of denying the scrap of paper and falling into a deeper ego state, we can awaken to the reality that it is only old newspaper! If we do that, then there is no active energy to renounce anything (further tying ourselves to it) but a genuine change in ourselves because we finally see it for what it is.

So to conclude part one and leave you with a suggestion or two that my therapist and my study and prayer have brought me (and what the Gospels have been yelling for thousands of years); to detect your ego- look at anything which you seek to control; for instance, a fun way to detect your ego is with a few minutes of reflection; conjure up something you desire – then ask very earnestly what that says about you – look for where the fear in it is, and where the love in it is – for at the end of any emotion exists one of those two realities – either fear, or love – it’s often a mixture of the two and the ego will always side with fear (you watch, just try it, the ego will only act from fear, I promise you) and conversely, the heart will only act from love.

Once you can detect these movements, for some quickly and others very slowly, you will go to the second stage – you will finally be a bit more free to actually choose! There I recommend living from your heart, from the love, because the ego will ruin you I promise – and if you don’t believe me, keep at it – your life will never feel abundant, I promise. In this reflection you will detect the ego, ridding the illusion (notice what is fear and what is love and then awaken more to reality as it stands without any of your interpretation), and finally be able to make the choice to let the light dispel the darkness called our fear (our ego) - if you choose to...

Another exercise you can do is trying to do something opposite from a fear driven action. This can be done once we've detected the actions we take, and guard ourself from, because of fear and past experience and pain suffered and survived but un-dealt with, which is to say not truly released. For example, as one allows the notes of a symphony to continue instead of always guarding their ears against one note, or focusing too intently on another and missing the whole beauty of the symphony. I had, and maybe do, in the long run it doesn’t matter – none of this matters, we have got to experience the breath of the sky for ourselves – but anyways, the baggage that I had or have now somewhere maybe where I can’t see – kept me from doing a lot of what my heart desired; thats how big an ego often becomes! It entirely enslaves the child heart! Which after time becomes so wise that it is a child again! Not saying I’m there now, but just that that’s what happens – where I’m at now is of no concern at all – or can’t be, because as soon as it is a 'concern' to me, I have stepped back in my ego state (and if you’ve read close, or I’ve explained myself well – that ego state is a very pervasive one that guises itself as good...as ‘growth’) – Bleh!

St. Thomas Aquinas says in his Summa Theologica, “Every time someone sins, they are sinning under the guise of good” They are unaware of the reason behind their movement, it is not free. It makes sense then why Christ on the cross would say, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” – most people are very unaware of what they are doing and are often convinced it is good; in fact, most people will not do something unless they think there is some good in it somewhere; and those very very few who choose to do pure evil can even be refuted because it is bringing them pleasure and so it is “good” for them.

The final exercise besides finding a desire, or a fear, or anything in you and asking “What does this say about me”; and doing something from the seat of love after discovering where the ego lies (and this is quite a battle my friends; anxiety and depression and fear are very aggressive soldiers the ego tries to scare us with during this stage – attachment is everything that opposes awareness! Simple preference is the key – and that we will discuss in part two before I digress further!); so this final suggestion, which rests at the foundation of all this, is observing yourself as a third party.

When you sit to discover what your desire says about you, watch yourself as if you would watch another person or a child try to answer the question. Look where their minds go, feel what their hearts experience, see how they connect what seems logical to them. It is a life changing experience. Once you do it, you will have the first and most important sense to awaken to reality – the sense of the “I” – the “I” that is wholly and entirely apart from the “Me” who is doing all this thinking and involved with all this activity. Then as time goes one, we begin living from the “I” – the ocean of love, the heart renewed and eternal, and take little concern with what happens to the “Me” – the sickly little ego (think of Gollum from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ – that’s a pretty amazing image of the ego).

Looking forward to hearing about any cool experiences you may have after trying some of the things in part one, take my word, the world opens up as if you were a new born child. Snow flakes don’t become slushy roads and wet and cold, they become wondrous and surprising. Yep, it sounds super lame and so super cliché, but I always said, Cliché’s are cliché’s for a reason – they’re timeless truths! But pick anything, even modern things if you want, a person cutting you off or a new message in your email, everything becomes active and new. Now I am new at this, very new and it doesn’t matter how far I am if far at all or maybe not even started and self-deluded (which I don’t believe I am, but also know not to care what the “me” thinks about where the “I” is) – so I can attest that often we fall back to our old thinking patterns, but we do it with an awareness that allows us to lift ourselves up from that mucky mess quite expediently – and it grows faster all the time. I can’t say anything about it, because to put it in any concept kills it, it distorts it to a point of falsification, I can only hint to it, I can only point to the moon as others point to the moon for me, I can only feel it – so expressing it to you is literally impossible, but hopefully the hints and brief explanations of this literally inexhaustible topic (the ego and its destruction in the face of sweet sweet reality) take "beneficial" root for you; and if not, that's fine too, it has nothing to do with me or you - we just have to let it happen!

See you at Part Two – please let me know what you thought about this blog; I am very excited to bring you a ton of distilled information from a varied range of topics and your feedback (anything you have to say) is like applause to a performer. But truly its cool if you don’t resopnd too – because I literally need nothing, and it’s the most amazing feeling – look around my friends! We are all swimming in water!