Saturday, October 16, 2010

Taking It

I've been using a hint from the Just Perception website as a sort of practice--if you will. I was reading one of David's posts and this just blew me away:

Let the ego hits burn you. Stop shooting your sense of self up with novocane. Take the hit, calmly. Then take the next one. Take every single hit to ego that comes your way, doing nothing that you ordinarily would or that your thoughts would insist you do in order to soften the blow or lessen the pain in any way. Little by little this is the surest way to quickly and efficiently allow what is false, and what is inaccurately holding you to your faulty identity - break away to the point where eventually major chunks of dreck will be able to be sloughed off. But those major chunks must begin by first not resisting, ever, the thousand daily blows.

Normally, if I start some practice like this, I can't keep with it; but this has just gotten in my brain and hasn't let go. It's like dripping water that just keeps working on stone--drip, drip, drip--and it's staying with me; I'm able to notice and let it happen.

This is NOT a pleasant process, but it is a fascinating one--at least, I find it so. It's fascinating and also sometimes nauseating and revolting, maddening and saddening to come face to face with how much ego there is here; how encrusted it is. For example, I do some work with a good friend of mine, and the other day, he asked me to do something a certain way; not the way I had been doing it. Well, my God, you would have thought he asked me to set my cats on fire!

Let the ego hits burn me; heck, I didn't even notice my ego responded until well after I had stormed the village and destroyed the enemy (meaning my friend). Far from taking it calmly, my internal monologue was something like this: "Well, who the hell does he think he is?! Tell ME how to do this job...hunh! I'll show him. I'll make him look stupid in front of his subordinates! I'll kick his ass. No one makes ME look wrong!" And the outward manifestation of that was to take my sarcastic, smart-ass, smarmy mouth and try to make him look bad and stupid--in front of other people he supervises no less.

After I managed to cool down a bit, I realized I had missed it. Missed the opportunity to just sit and let the ego hit burn. Let the defensiveness, the need to define ME as opposed to HIM, the need to justify and make sure he and the other person there knew who I was hit inside of me, burn some of that encrusted ego away. Because I felt like I'd missed the opportunity in the moment, I decided to apologize to my friend and tell him exactly what I had failed to do; hang the dirty little secret of my ego-laundry out for him to see.

This weekend, my sister is in town visiting. She and her hubby are a great distraction, but also a chance for me to practice, practice, practice. Again and again I notice how quickly I rush to defend against those ego hits.

The good part is, I'm noticing this more and more. And, when I'm able, I let those hits just burn and burn.

1 comment:

  1. I'm sorry but this makes no sense to me. I would end up rather quickly in a deep depression...

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