Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Ego Death and the Hill We Die On.

Stacy Mizrahi Meditation

I was attending a meditation the the other day and heard a great quote from  Eckhart Tolle:

Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego's fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life.

 That one hit me pretty hard. I can't tell you how many times I've died on some hill defending some abstract idea that, in retrospect, I wasn't really attached to. Sometimes I do feel passionate about defending ideas, which is something I should be even more introspective about. There is this fear of being wrong, I've being proven wrong. That is my ego screaming for it's self worth to be acknowledged. I've had some time now to work on myself, to watch my mind as it stakes out hills to die on. I've gotten much better at doing the "ego check", to make sure my thoughts aren't really racing to fight because I've conditioned my ego to be am unyielding rock for ships to crash on. That power of habit has been cranking for decades, making sure I assert myself  or risk being irrelevant.

The treatment for such a sickness is evident. I slow down. I shut up. I listen.  I let other people talk. I stop inserting myself into the middle. I let Ego death occur.  I take off the hat of "rebel" and be at peace.

Unfortunately, there is this lingering side effect. I now see ego of others screaming back. I'm aware of their fears pouring from their mouths. It's as if I walked into a funhouse to admire the hideousness of my ego's reflection in different  a thousand warped varieties. Perhaps it isn't so bad, maybe this new found perspective is to serve a reminder of the self I could not see. If I am forced to reflect on the screaming egos around me, perhaps it keeps me ever vigilant to monitor my fears.   In ego death, there is no finality, only transcendence.

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