Let­ting go of Assumptions

Back in the 70s, many were look­ing for another path. EST, Encounter Groups, Med­i­ta­tion Groups—and a com­mon idea.

You Have to Develop a Self
Before ‘Los­ing’ Your Self.

This Does Not Hap­pen Naturally!

The cre­ation of a per­sonal and social iden­tity (this is not the self—this is the ego iden­tity) is the work of the first 16 years or so of life. (If you think about the aver­age 16-year-old and her mon­u­men­tal lack of know­ing who she is and how the world works, you will get my point.)

Cre­at­ing a per­sonal and social iden­tity involves learn­ing live in 3D, in a phys­i­cal world. You learn how to ‘oper­ate’ peo­ple and things—for exam­ple, how to turn on a stove, how to address oth­ers, how to act in rela­tion­ship to others.

This is a mech­a­nis­tic model, and is decid­edly rules based. It is good to know, for exam­ple, that step­ping off a lad­der typ­i­cally leads to a fall.

The Ego Project

The first 16 years is all about what I call the “Ego Project.” It is impor­tant to note that the per­sonal ego cre­ated in this process is self–aware but not self–reflec­tive. I know that I am I, but I do not really know who ‘I’ am.

When asked about him­self, the aver­age young adult might recite a list of char­ac­ter­is­tics— height, weight, age, sex, etc. He might iden­tify with a par­tic­u­lar phi­los­o­phy, polit­i­cal direc­tion, or reli­gions stance, or other belief system.

Exam­ple: what is a car? Most list characteristics—engine, brand, colour, horsepower—but this fails to iden­tify the car’s essence—its ‘car-ness.’ Thus, the car’s car-ness is a being-state that can­not be reduced to parts or characteristics.

In Bud­dhism, these sorts of lists fall under the cat­e­gory of maya, or illu­sion. The per­son holds on des­per­ately to def­i­n­i­tions, for fear of the empti­ness that seems to be right under the sur­face. Humans at this stage exhibit one com­mon characteristic—they suf­fer. We feel this suf­fer­ing as a per­va­sive sense of unsat­is­fac­tori­ness.

The cause of suf­fer­ing is grasp­ing. Grasp­ing comes in three flavours—

attrac­tion, repul­sion, and indif­fer­ence.

For our present dis­cus­sion, you can think of grasp­ing as cling­ing tightly to per­sonal def­i­n­i­tions, beliefs, and prej­u­dices (pre-judgements.) This is the young adult’s des­per­ate tac­tic to avoid fac­ing the matu­rity of let­ting go.

It is Hard to Move Past your Conditioning

It is impor­tant to remem­ber that our par­ents and tribes teach us to cling to tribal assump­tions for a good reason—they want to social­ize us. The unfor­tu­nate part is that most reach adult­hood think­ing that this is the only way to live and to be.

Our cul­ture has failed abysmally at teach­ing peo­ple to use per­sonal and social iden­tity as a tool. With­out learn­ing this, young adults are doomed to grow old as noth­ing more than the total of their assumptions.

The devel­op­ment of a True Self

Typ­i­cally, there are boun­ti­ful oppor­tu­ni­ties to shift our per­spec­tive. Usu­ally, they come as the result of a tragedy or cri­sis. There are then two choices.

1. We defend our con­di­tion­ing in the face of its fail­ure (95% choose this approach,) or
2. we let go by pay­ing atten­tion to the pro­gram­ming of our minds, with the goal of mak­ing choices as opposed to unthink­ing reactions.

Watch­ing Your Mind

How you appear to your­self (your ego-image) is, if you watch, a men­tal process. In other words, how you feel about your­self is an inter­nal eval­u­a­tive process.

It is not caused by exter­nal sit­u­a­tions
or the judge­ments of others.

What hap­pens is that you (often arbi­trar­ily, or out of bore­dom,) select some aspect of your his­tory, some char­ac­ter­is­tic of your ego-self, or you select your whole self, and then apply one of the three ‘grasp­ing’ cat­e­gories. You like your­self, you hate your­self, or you are indifferent.

If you watch, you begin to see that your mind is select­ing aspects of your­self (or inven­tions of your mind—I have one friend who is a tri-athlete and often thinks she’s fat…) and adding an inter­pre­ta­tion. How some­thing appears, then, is clearly not fixed in stone. How some­thing appears has every­thing to do with how I choose to describe it. And then, how I judge it.

It is not pos­si­ble to stop this eval­u­a­tive process. It is pro­grammed into our cel­lu­lar struc­ture. What is pos­si­ble is to shift our iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the sto­ries, descrip­tions, and judge­ments. This process begins with reflec­tive questioning.

Ask Your­self this…

Go inside, and speak to your­self. Ask:

1. Is this belief help­ing or hin­der­ing me?
2. Is what I am doing help­ing or hin­der­ing me?
3. What would another, more help­ful story and action be?
4. Who is it that is ask­ing me these questions?

Only 5% Will Choose This Path

The step the 5% take is to ask these ques­tions, and oth­ers, on a very reg­u­lar basis. The pur­pose of the ques­tions is to chal­lenge the neces­sity of hurt­ing your­self with your judgements.

Remem­ber, the sto­ries you react to will pop up until you curl up your toes. The sto­ries and the facts of your life ‘just are.’ The optional piece is tor­tur­ing your­self. I call this bash­ing your­self in the fore­head with a hammer.

What to do?

Get up, get out, go for a walk, med­i­tate, study yoga or tai chi, get a life.

Sit­ting there stew­ing is men­tal abuse, and you’re doing it to your­self. Here’s a hint: never, once, did your inter­nal tor­ture do a sin­gle thing the change things in the phys­i­cal world.

Think­ing changes noth­ing. Act­ing changes everything.

After 27 years of this work, I still tor­ture myself over the same sad stuff. Briefly. I now notice what I am doing and give myself per­mis­sion to shift my think­ing and my ‘doing’ to some­thing else.

This, and noth­ing else, is the essence of let­ting go.