"Enlightenment is ego's ultimate disappointment."
Chogyam Trungpa
The other day I heard a person telling a friend, "I drove by one of those storage places and wondered if I should rent a unit for my ego." Of course I was extremely entertained by this and it brought laughter into my day.
The eternal question is, "How can I silence my ego so I can hear Divine Spirit?" In order to truly hear the Divine, we must silence the ego. We can all create a system to leash this beast. A woman who has a meditation practice told me she pulls in an extra chair next to hers when she meditates, and instructs her ego to sit in the chair until she beckons it back. I wish it were that easy for me.
My morning ritual at times looks very similar to Swiss cheese ... lots of holes. My ego sounds like a bee buzzing in my ear. When I wake up, ego encourages me to sleep just a little longer. When the coffee is brewing, ego tells me I really don't need to do my stretches. While I am exercising ego encourages me to cut short the number of stretches I do per body part. When I am doing my morning commune with nature, ego is reminding me of all I have to do inside. Ego tells me to for go lighting the candle and essential oils are not needed. On and on until I finally force my self to maturely say, "You are not the boss of me!"
Marianne Williamson asks why we are angry with our body for excess weight when we are the ones who choose the food? It is ego encouraging us to eat the forbidden fruit (in this case, ice cream) and we choose what we eat, not our body. Her book, A COURSE IN WEIGHT LOSS displays how ego is frequently our automatic pilot.
THE NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle is also an excellent book to bring awareness of how to hold our selves accountable disregarding the ego. His concept of the pain body was a revelation to me. A pain body slumbering while I feel profound. The pain body waking up demanding to experience more pain, and my rose colored glasses change to lenses of inferiority and smallness, hiding my own self-worth.
Take a deep breath in and hold it.
Experience the pause.
Gently breathe out.
Experience the pause.
Repeat this series several times and one begins to experience the silence in which Spirit will commune. This small pause between inhale and exhale gives us a taste of what can be ours if we would only mute our ego. When ego no longer controls our mind, we can connect with our heart and form decisions or actions based on loving kindness for all concerned. Just by learning to stretch a small pause into a spiritual reunion, our lives become blessed with peace and calm.
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