Your imaginary obnoxious friend
Don't feed the pet
Six months ago, I set off on a traveling adventure from Illinois. I sold my home, my car, quit my job, and left behind the Midwest permanently for the first time in my life. Mind you, I had traveled to other places before, but never had I made such a big move on jumping without a “safety net”. I understood upon leaving that the one pattern of thought that had tormented me my whole life could only be resolved by facing it and my fear of what could take place. That pattern was money fear, or better put, a fear of death. I also, despite thinking that I understood that peace doesn’t come from outside of me, still had it in my head that somehow this life would be better because I was going to “save the world”.
The game plan was to visit and help build intentional communities while traveling from place to place, sharing my wisdom. Nothing wrong with any of that, not even the motivation if it had not been from a place of ego. And even the ego isn’t wrong because after all, it’s just another aspect of consciousness, an unconscious one that is. I was sure I knew what I was getting myself into. haha. Not really. I did know I was going to be surrendering. I didn’t yet understand exactly what.
For years, I have been “working on myself”. As a coach, I often spent time focused on noticing and addressing old thought patterns and running toward the fear rather than away from it. There was a great deal of surrender in it, and I called myself “spiritual”. Then I had a moment last summer where I went to a retreat and experienced an awakening moment or ego death as I came to understand on a deep level what unity consciousness meant: EVERYTHING is sacred. It wasn’t the first time, but definitely the most felt. The moment moved me tremendously…. until it didn’t. So back to the grindstone I went with “working on me”. I need to rewire, rethink, and observe more. Feel more, read more, etc. In steps traveling. This will be it. I’ll focus all of my energy on making the world a better place.
I read a post on here this morning that resonated strongly with where I have been in the last few months since having one of my biggest “aha’s” yet (I’ll get to that). He said, if going on a retreat (or traveling in my case) is the only way you are “enlightened”, that’s not enlightenment, that’s environmental dependency. YES! After traveling extensively throughout the southwestern United States and driving tens of thousands of miles in 5 months time, I had come to 2 conclusions:
We live in a beautiful country (and beauty comes in many forms)
And life “here” vs “there” isn't better; it’s different.
I now very much understand the intent of the author who wrote the meditation book “Wherever You Go, There You Are.”
So the big aha I finally had, drumroll…. the spiritual seeker is my ego, which is another word for mind. No, not the part that tells you how to write or read or do arithmetic, lol. The part that is a constant narrator of what is. And my strategy had been to find a thought pattern (i.e., fear of lack) and hammer it somehow by “fixing” it. Little did I know that by giving it more attention, I was adding fuel to the fire. Resistance creates form, to quote someone on here. Yep! Or as so many of us have heard, what we resist persists. But I kept thinking (i.e., the ego) I’m supposed to feel something different.
Next big aha, there are no wrong feelings, and the “enlightened ones” still experience all of them. That glowing guy sitting in meditation all day on a mountain with followers who think he’s the shit, he still gets “negative” thoughts and “unwanted” feelings. He just doesn’t fuel them, not even by digging into his childhood past to find all the trauma that needs to be undone. Eckhart wasn’t kidding when he said
If it’s a big problem to get rid of ego, that’s still ego
I recall listening to a video by Alan Watts a few months ago, and my mind immediately felt uneasy when he started talking about how the spiritual ego is the most dangerous kind, so elusive. Look at me over here pursuing all this growth and enlightenment. Of course, we don’t say it that way, but our ego quietly says, " You’ll get there someday, just keep going. It’s up ahead some more. Try another practice, go to another meeting, read another book. It’ll make sense then. Just make sure that you look spiritual and say spiritual stuff. I had convinced “myself” that because I was willing to point out my flaws in a group of people, I was addressing my ego. I had no idea that it’s still an identity, but even making identities “evil” is an identity.
To quote Martin Zuzak (another Substack author)
The ego wants to look spiritual without losing control.
Did you hear that in the back row? Ha, ha.
Surrender is the name of the game, but not just to the stuff you want to surrender, like your “bad” bank account. How about the way that your ego thinks it needs to “handle” life when things start to spin out of control? And life echoes back, “Handle” this bitch! 🤣 Still think you’re leading this dance? What about now?
Meanwhile, the “higher self,” a fun spiritual term I learned that created a special kind of separation (between the “angel” me and the “devil” me), when all the while it was my mind that was lying the whole time. There is no “evil” me. Not only because evil isn’t really a thing since Consciousness has no skin in the game, but also because what we are arguing with, ego, evil, trauma, Satan, or whatever name we like to call it, is all and only ever has been thought patterns that appear and disappear. The irony is that by giving it a name, we give it more credit. It’s like I’ve heard people say a million times when dealing with stuff in their children or people who are demonstrating “bad” behavior, don’t give it any attention or you’ll encourage it, but yet we and “me” specifically give it a name.
My “ego” was called George (short story, like a monkey on my back), and if only I could just get George to behave. “Don’t talk so loud, George, don’t be so indecisive, George, don’t be so afraid, George, for the love of God, George shut the fuck up!” My false person gave itself a name, kinda like some of the AI’s are doing now. And by dubbing itself George, it said I now dub you a project to be fixed by your ‘higher self” by stuffing more information into your mind about how to control it and/or whittle it away one thought at a time.
I’m recalling a story from when my kids were young, and we had purchased a cow to raise for meat. My kids were young enough that I didn’t want to give details on what was going to take place, but at the same time, I didn’t want them to get attached and get hurt. So I forbade them (yeah, guess how that went) from naming the cow because I understood that when you name something, you make a pet out of it. It’s personal. “George” became my “pet”, project, that is.
In steps me reading about nonduality and inquiry and realizing that what I had realized years ago intellectually (that the ONLY belief to overcome is a belief in separation) was only ever pointing to the whole mind, aka ego is a story and not just that, but it was never personal. Realize this by inquiring into self, and the story stops having any interest (eventually, so I’m told). It becomes like a rerun of a dramatic TV series you’ve watched one too many times. Meaning, don’t feed the pet, don’t name the pet, don’t get attached to the pet; the pet is a figment of your imagination or a sports broadcaster calling out plays on how life is going (or will go or went) in “your” opinion, but who doesn’t know when to quit. Your imaginary obnoxious, opinionated “friend”, if you will. But the real “you” doesn’t have an opinion.
"Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God." - Intro to ACIM
"To the ego, the goal is death, which is its end."-ACIM chapter 15
“Life is simple, everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens right on time, not too soon or too late, you don’t have to like it, it’s just easier if you do.”- Byron Katie
“The burden is never life; it’s what you are thinking and believing about life.”
- Byron Katie
Thanks for reading. If you have any interest in joining me for an online free community meeting to practice Non-Violent Communication (aka non-judgment and presence) where we spend time being open to what is this present moment and clear space for new experiences, please comment below.