The Painful Shedding Away of Ego

 You are not suppose to love yourself until you do.

Byron Katie

I set out to know and love Self. I know now what is in the way and what I want and don't want. 

I don't want this me inflated by the happenings of life ...exalted by praise, and false confidence

I don't want this me deflated by the happenings of life...crushed by aversity, and negative opinion, 

For not only, am I not the happenings in this Life, I am not the "me" who gets inflated or deflated by these happenings. I am not this personality encased in a body that seems so seperate, so dependent on the opinion of others and how it appears in this ever changing world.  

I am not that which cringes in shame when things done are not enough. When words said are not received well...when gestures of kindness are dismissed or ignored. I am not that which is judged by other opinion, not appreciated or ignored.

I am not that which puffs itself up in a time of crisis to appear bigger than it is, or that which will stick its nose in the air as it lists its accomplishments to anyone who will listen...just so it doesn't have to hear its own pathetic messages of unworthiness. 

I am not ego. I am not good.  I am not bad.  I am not someone to be admired or someone to be rejected. I am not someone to be liked or someone to be disliked.  I am not my pride and I am not my shame or my fear.

I am the soul of perfect authenticity, equanimity, and humility that exists beneath the many, many layers of a personality that is forever exhausting itself in an attempt to bring itself up when it is down  and down when it is up too high. These layers are in the way of me experiencing Who I Am.  I want to expereince the free flow of Who I am. I no longer wish to be made small by my shame and my fear.  I no longer wish to be made falsely  bigger by my pride and my redemption tendencies. I want these layers gone.  I want to be Who I am.

Oh...but what a painful and confusing process this shedding and tearing away is. 

It wasn't fear holding me back.

Hmm! I realized why I haven't been picking up calls for work.  It wasn't the avoidance tendency that comes with anxiety and fear holding me back, like I feared it might be.  I had to find out for sure.  I couldn't continue to not take calls because of fear. I don't want to avoid my life. I was so glad to discover, then, that it wasn't avoidance but an inner knowing about where I am in this process I set out to complete. 

I worked yesterday, just a few hours, and I had the same internal experience of overwhelming exposure I had the last time I worked months ago.  I knew that if it was anxiety or fear facing the situation was the only way to conquer it and that I would know when I did confront it. I discovered, however, that I was not anxious or fearful when I got there...I was simply too exposed to all the energy around me. This is how I get lately. I suck it all in without noticing until the end of my experience...that is when I tend to feel very unsettled...when I realize I am not thinking clearly. My nervous system, I am realizing, doesn't know how to handle it anymore...how to filter, select and organize the stimuli coming in. I am open to it all. So, everything comes in...I pick it all up...what I am seeing, what I am hearing, what I am smelling, tasting, touching...and most importantly what I am feeling...so, so many feelings that aren't mine. Allowing it all in is difficult because I am so raw...clinging only to the tattered and shattered shells of a crumbling ego and its shaming and redeeming tendencies like they were scraps of tattered fabric blowing behind me. Without the protection of these layers, I tend to pick up everything from an external environment and I have no place to put it...I have no paradigm to stuff and store it in any more. And at the same time I see so clearly...the ego that remains still looking for others to tell it is okay. I find myself seeking approval. When ego doesn't get what it wants,  it begins to puff itself up. It internally , and to my surprise, externally redeems itself by listing all its accomplishments and why it deserves to be here. I see what it is doing while I am taking in all the stimuli around me and I don't like it.  I walk away from what should be harmless situations feeling like a magnet that just walked through a scrap metal yard...so much is sticking to me....all while I drag even less of thes protective layers I once identified as, with me.  It is very unsettling. It will take days for me to get all the stuff I picked up off...to regain my balance...just from a few hours of such oridnary exposure. It's crazy. But it is very real.

Is this a normal part of the waking up process?

Well intuitively I know it must be. My heart, I figure, was protecting me here by avoidng or resisting calls, ....even when my ego was protesting and shaming me for it.  It knew I was at a very fragile and vulnerable stage of this process even when I, as the "me", didn't know it yet.  It was no longer trying to protect body and personality...it was trying to protect the vulnerable part of my connection to a higher Self as it emerged through the shattering of ego defences. This is why I so need the healing safety of solitude these days.  Not because I am running away from Life but because I am preparing myself to jump back in it as the most authentic Self.  I am caught somewhere between the dying part and the newborn part of "Die to be reborn" ...I am, as a protective personality, still dying and at the same time I am coming to Life in a new way as a very raw and vulnerable being.  Bizarre really. 

Wow, it is so great to have that realization. That my retreating back into solitude might be for a higher reason than just fear based avoidance.  I am growing.  I am expanding. It feels absolutely terrible.  And I also know, that though it is very, very confusing and uncomfortable to put this human through the exposure I put it through yesterday...if doing so is helping the "me" to die quicker, helping shed the remains of ego so who I am at the deepest and most authentic of levels can emerge...then yeah....maybe I should continue to expose myself a bit.  Humans can handle that discomfort in small does. can't they?. Well, maybe I need to do it slowly and gently with a great deal of compassion for this human I still call me.

All is well.