It doesn’t sound pleasant when we hear people telling us that whatever we do we are doing it for ourselves. It gives us a meaning of selfishness and ill-intent when such words are directed at us. I may even retaliate or defense myself if I am told that way. But the truth is… I am that.
If I react to a comment, I can be sure there is a part of me that attest to the reality of who I am. I hate that part of the statement that tells so bluntly about me. I am angry because you have exposed that part of me that I am so unwilling to deal with. That is who I am but I am so unwilling to address it and I carry that pain with me wherever I go. I thought I have buried it deep into the abyss of the mind and expect it to decay and rot into disappearance and carry on with my day to day living.
But the truth is, I am carrying it day by day, moment to moment. I am not aware, obviously. My actions never lied. My actions tell me so. I am maneuvering a machine that is geared towards approval and support instead of entering into spaces that I could foresee conflict and disagreement. I thought that is normal and sometimes I also thought that is being timid. And those are the times where I will bulldoze myself into those spaces with trepidation, expecting courage to overcome my fear and yet, hidden at the edge of my mind, there is an overwhelming hope that the outcome will be to my favor. Isn’t that selfishness again?
There are moments where I am “in charge of a situation” – having the ability to articulate my answers to questions that seems complex and unanswerable to a lay person. I feel great and elate. I may also feel that at that moment I have the ability to “conquer” what is in front of me, to “slay” whatever that is directed at me. Do I hear myself at that moment? No I don’t. I am only following and believing what’s in my thoughts. I don’t questioned what comes up in me. I am drowned in my own obsession as I feed my own selfishness. Where I am standing tall, I am standing on the foundation of selfishness.
Where I am standing low, I am also standing from the space of selfishness as there is a payoff for me in that space. If I am in equal with someone, I can be sure somewhere in the abyss of the mind, there is also another hidden agenda. In reality, there is no difference between superiority, inferiority or equality – they are just façade of the same stuff – unworthiness infested into selfishness.
It is a disease of the mind, a cancer that spreads in different forms to attract attention to feed itself. Listen deeply, and you will understand what I mean. If unworthiness is my core and selfishness is my action, does selflessness matters anymore than selfishness? Does doing good any difference from doing bad? If doing good is motivated by the ill of the mind, what good is really there for me except to feed the hunger of the ego?
Or is there something that I did not see, something I have missed, something so profound that I have misinterpreted entirely of what the Masters have to say? Surely there is something greater than what I am seeing. Surely there is a potential of true wisdom and love emanating in me, only if I am truthful with what I am not, to see who I am. In that space I am sure to view selfishness and selflessness, with love. Until I truly come into that space, I can be sure I am constantly feeding the ego, at different levels and degrees. Aren’t we all self-centered?
Until I truly come into that space, I can be sure I am constantly feeding the ego, at different levels and degrees. Aren’t we all self-centered?
Maybe this is the dilemma. To do or not to do anything all. Even just simply observing is doing something.
Until I truly come into that space…
I have lost of words to describe this “dilemma”. Shall I float and let the wind blows to wherever and whenever, or shall I do something, toward a certain direction which again, I will asked, “Which direction?”
It is truly an addiction, until self awareness is present.
To be able to recognize the nature of the ego is the first step to sanity – reclaiming our innocence. As Elizabeth Lesser pointed out in her book Open Secret – “This is the secret I try to keep from you, and you from me, and in doing so, we do each other a grave disservice.” Let’s be joyful that at least the first step has begun, and the journey of openness is ever continuous, peeling the layers over and over again until we come to the finishing line.