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 I am not the happenings in this Life.  

I am not the "me" who gets inflated or deflated, 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 dimissed 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 accoplishments 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 falsely made 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. 

Hmm! I realized why I I haven't been picking up calls for work.  It wasn't the avoidance tendency that comes with anxiety and fear holding me back...it was this inner knowing about  how painful it will be. I worked yesterday, just a few hours,  and I had the same internal experience I had the last time I worked months ago.  I was not anxious or fearful...I was simply too exposed to all the energy around me. My nervous system doesn't know how to handle it anymore...how to filter, select and organize the stimuli coming in. I am open to it all. Doing such things is difficult because I am so raw...clinging to the tattered and shattered shells of a crumbling ego and its shaming and redeeming tendencies. 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 I see so clearly...the ego that remains still looking for others to tell it is okay...when it doesn't get what it wants,  it begins to puff itself up and internally 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 the harmless situation feeling like a magnet that just walked through a scrap metal yard...so much is sticking to me.  It will take days for me to get it off...just from a few hours of such exposure. It's crazy.

Is this a normal part of the waking up process?

Well intuitively I know it is...my heart was protecting me here preventing me from accepting calls....even when my ego was protesting and shaming me for it.  This is why.

Wow it is so great to have that realization. That it might be for a higher reason tahn just fear based avoidance.  I am growing.  I am expanding.  And though it is very very confusing and uncomfortable to put tis human through that...if it is shedding the remains of ego that I want off me...then yeah. I can handle that discomfort. 

All is well.