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We’ll be look­ing at the dif­fer­ence between “polit­i­cal” and “per­sonal” rela­tion­ships (hint: con­fu­sion in this area is the cause of many com­mu­ni­ca­tion problems—especially at work!) We will explore The Phoenix Centre’s reset­ting of the tra­di­tional Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Model. And we’ll give you oppor­tu­ni­ties to ask ques­tions and practice!

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I want to spend some time, over the next sev­eral arti­cles, talk­ing about the ego, and talk­ing a bit about Zen. Mostly, I want to sug­gest an exer­cise for you to try.

The exer­cise is this:

Notice, moment by moment, how attached you are to the sto­ries you tell your­self – and how that attach­ment leads to each and every mis­er­able moment you have.

Let’s briefly think about the one aspect of ego—of “me-me-me-ness.” Part of the human incar­na­tion is gain­ing a sense of “me”—in psy­chol­ogy, this is called a sense of the self, but I am not so sure if self and ego are the same. In any event, it’s a sense of me as dis­tinct from, ini­tially, mommy. As any­one who has a kid knows, this process takes a bit of time.

It is almost as if the process of grow­ing up has within it this great joke. I come into the world as an undif­fer­en­ti­ated being, and as such I am wholly other. I am unaware of my “me-ness”—I feel con­nected to mommy and to the universe.

As I grow, I become more “me,” and the sys­tem of life expe­ri­ence teaches me to do more of this. I am coached to set myself apart, to strive, to suc­ceed, to be noticed, to be spe­cial. I find myself more and more sep­a­rate, both from my envi­ron­ment and from oth­ers. I dif­fer­en­ti­ate, and become an iso­lated ego. Empha­sis on isolated.

And then I die, and I go back to form­less­ness, back into the wholly other.

Now, the joke is this – we were never sup­posed to get stuck in “me-ness.” It’s sup­posed to be a stage, like ado­les­cence is a stage. But, because of the per­verse joy of being mis­er­able, the ego does every­thing it can to keep us stuck, iso­lated, and miserable.

I’ve been read­ing Zen: The Path of Para­dox, by Osho. I hap­pened upon a few quotes. I’ll share one now, and one later.

“Yes, when you see for the first time, a great laugh­ter arises in you—the laugh­ter about the whole ridicu­lous­ness of your mis­ery, the laugh­ter about the whole fool­ish­ness of your prob­lems, the laugh­ter about the whole absur­dity of your suf­fer­ing. There was no need. There was no point in suf­fer­ing; you were in a night­mare of your own cre­ation. You were the author of it and you were the actor in it and you were the screen and you were the pro­jec­tor and you were the spec­ta­tor and you were all in all.” (pg. 172)

I’ve been coun­selling since 1981. In that time, I’ve seen hun­dreds of clients. In that time, I can remem­ber only one or two true tragedies – authen­tic dra­mas. Typ­i­cally, they’ve been of the “deal­ing with can­cer or death” kind. And even in those cases, the peo­ple who have lived through these “large” events seemed to go back to the same “me-me-me-ness” upon recovery.

Mostly, what I hear from my clients is a retelling of the story in order to main­tain the mis­ery. And there is only one, uni­ver­sal story. As my mom used to put it,

“They are not treat­ing me right. Don’t they know who I am?”

Now, it is so that some peo­ple, espe­cially if they have spent con­sid­er­able time with us, or at Haven, will under­stand that no one is doing any­thing to them, and indeed, every­one is so busy feel­ing mis­er­able that they have no time to be doing any­thing to any­one else. So, blame drops away, and a more self-responsible lan­guage and think­ing occurs. Instead of, “You make me sad,” I hear, “I am mak­ing myself sad right now.”

The prob­lem is that accept­ing respon­si­bil­ity for one’s life is only “half way home.”

If you truly see, you’ll find that the seeds of your con­tin­u­ing mis­ery are con­tained in the words of that sen­tence, “I am mak­ing myself sad right now,” and espe­cially the words “mak­ing myself.” So long as I assume that I must cre­ate, over and over again, my self, and that the self I cre­ate, over and over, should be mis­er­able, I am doomed to remain painfully mired in the illu­sion of life.

It begs the ques­tion: Why the hell would I choose to re-make myself, over and over, and in the process, make that self miserable???

The alter­na­tive is not hap­pi­ness.” I should be happy” is just as stu­pid as “I should be mis­er­able.”

No! I should be noth­ing.

Now, that’s strange… yet I art­fully con­structed that sen­tence, and I’d like you to re-read it. Because it has two mean­ings, and both are accurate.

1. We are noth­ing. No thing. We are not objects, egos, “me-me-me.” When we get caught into ego and objec­ti­fi­ca­tion and labelling and nam­ing and blam­ing and finger-pointing, we cre­ate, as Osho said, the entire drama.
2. There is no should. Who deter­mines who you “should” be? Your par­ents? Your spouse? Your kids, boss, co-workers, teach­ers, pro­fes­sors, ther­a­pist? YOU? Even you, (me-me-me!) can’t deter­mine who you “should” be—because all you ever are, is how you are right now, no mat­ter who or what your ego tells you that you “should” be.

A friend reported being sad, and indeed looked teary. I encour­aged her to cry. She des­per­ately wanted to explain “why” she was sad, and it all had to do with exter­nals, some of which hap­pened 20 years ear­lier. I kept say­ing, “Nice story. Just cry.” In the end, with much effort, she cried, still gamely alter­nat­ing with words. And the words were her ego-stories, her defenses against sim­ply being; they were her self-created dramas.

Now, who was she?

She was not some­one mak­ing her­self sad. Her being, in that moment, was sad and teary. Sad and teary requires tears, not a dra­matic story.

Osho men­tions a story about Bud­dha. After he attained enlight­en­ment, some­one asked him what he had attained. Bud­dha replied that he had attained noth­ing. He had lost something.

Bud­dha said, “I have lost something—I have lost my mis­ery. And I have attained nothing—because what­so­ever you think I have attained has always been there, and now I laugh at the whole ridicu­lous­ness. Why was I miss­ing it? It was in me: it was within me. Why was I miss­ing it?” (pg.172–3)

The essence of Zen is Zazen, or sim­ply sit­ting. There is noth­ing sim­ple about it. At a recent Zazen, my right foot kept falling asleep, and my mind (ego) said, “Oh…my…god, how will I get up? How will I walk? I can’t do this! This is tough. Every­one will know I can’t do this…” And on and on. I found I could carve out a sec­ond or two of sim­ple presence—a breath amid the clat­ter and clut­ter of my mind. Then, my ego started harp­ing again.

Later, talk­ing with oth­ers, I heard the same story, and in each case, the teller was smil­ing. One even said, “Don’t worry. Twenty years from now, you won’t even notice.” Cracked me right up.

The ego is des­per­ate to keep you away from being in the moment. In the moment, your ego drops away and you are sim­ply and com­pletely here. You occupy your body, you feel your energy, and you rec­og­nize that noth­ing is hap­pen­ing. There is no need to name, to judge, to crit­i­cize, to blame, or to “me-me-me” misery-make. In this moment, I am exactly and pre­cisely who I am and how I am, and noth­ing more.

As Dar­bella and I work on our­selves, and with oth­ers, we prac­tice drop­ping the ego while encour­ag­ing sim­ple pres­ence. In breath and body­work, we cre­ate space to feel the moment-by-moment “what’s-up-ness” of living.

Then, the ego kicks in and cre­ates fear or bore­dom or judg­ment, and there is the urge to run and hide. If I can see that this ego-created drama is mad­ness, is fool­ish­ness, I can have a breath and bring myself back into the moment.

Watch your­self this week. Notice how you play games with your­self, to stay stuck. You may even be try­ing some­thing new—a new ther­apy, a new body­work, read­ing a new book. Notice how you use the new thing to prop up the old, misery-creating think­ing. Notice how you use sto­ries and fears to keep from being present.

Then, have a breath. Sur­ren­der to each moment. Invite some­one in, some­one who will help you to let go of the things you hurt your­self with. Let go of think­ing you have more to learn, more to gain. Notice that, in the moment, all that you need is already there – because you already are all that you need.

And then, laugh.

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

Day-long Inten­sives
Week­end Residentials

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Incom­ing search terms:

• Yes when you see for the first time a great laugh­ter arises in you — the laugh­ter about the whole ridicu­lous­ness of your mis­ery the laugh­ter about the whole fool­ish­ness of your prob­lems the laugh­ter about the whole absur­dity of your suffering
• zen and ego-drama

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Tagged with: ego • self • Zen Approaches

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