What I ACTUALLY learned on my sabbatical

If you didn't read the last issue of TEDNET, this won't make sense. So, uh, go read that one first :)

Here it is, the piece of wisdom that my mind says "Oh sure I believe that..." and then continues to act as if it doesn't: It's only "work" if you resist it.

All that crap I said last issue about the work of going inwards? It's not really work—well, it is. But, it doesn't have to be! It feels like work, because my mind is not actually in alignment. It is scared of being vulnerable and scared of the emotions attached to certain beliefs and, well, generally just scared.

The mind does a lot of things. One of those things is the sort of "egoic" function. Which is what makes you able to think of your own self as a separate, independent thing. It's a good thing. Without it, we would all basically be chickens with our heads cut off. We'd have no boundaries and no concept of an individual experience.

Without separation, we couldn't actually relate.

Yet, despite being utterly necessary for a human experience, the egoic function of the mind doesn't know when to stop. Given free reign the ego will harden your concept of self to the detriment of others, and eventually your self.

"As long as a [hu]man feels that he is the most important thing in the world, he cannot really appreciate the world around him. He is like a horse with blinders; all he sees is himself, apart from everything else." —Don Juan Matiz

The ego will latch on to more and more identifications: father, mother, empath, cyclist, roller-derby-er, winner, loser, successful, titan of industry, failure, addict, conservative, liberal, anarchist, lazy, fit, nerd, jock, emotional, non-emotional, stoic, powerful, weak, whatever!

Anything and everything can be an identity.

And, depending on how or why that identity was adopted, the ego can hold on very tightly. Many, if not all, of us adopt identities as children as a protective measure. For example, you could identify as fiercely independent because your parents let you down as a child, never accepting help or support as an adult. Or, emotionally closed off because it was unsafe to be emotional. Or, really any number of other identifications that protected you in some way as a child.

The hardest identities to drop or alter are those picked up through trauma. But, even without, like, trauma-trauma, we all likely felt unsafe in some way as children. A common one being when parents say they're fine when emotionally they actually aren't. Kids often pick up on the energy which is in discordance, which our young minds interpret as: “don't share your real emotions!”

They're essentially glitches in our programming. We took an experience as a child, perhaps many perhaps just one, and made a hard rule out of it. But, it's not even just a rule, it's an identity. And, the ego wants to hold on to ALL identities.

Dropping an identity is like a little death.

It's uncomfortable.

“Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.” —Thomas Szasz, psychiatrist

My glitch—or my main glitch at least—is my discomfort with work. Which, if I'm being honest, is a fear of work. All that feeling of struggle and of tiresome, grueling work? That's just my ego. It doesn't want to die.

My ego believes—identifies with—that to survive in this world, I have to struggle. And not that satisfying struggle of hiking up a mountain, but that existential weight of despair and boredom and drudgery kind of struggle. That I have go against my nature and well-being just to be comfortable in our modern world.

When I confronted this fear, it felt similar to the fear itself—work! But it's not the same. Going inward and facing this fear only feels like work—icky work—because I am resisting it.

Well, my ego is. And, I'm letting it. But the ego doesn't have to run the show! And a little ego death eventually feels like a little liberation.

Going inward is not work in the sense that you have to try harder and do more. You actually need to do less!

You need to surrender.

You have to find that boundary where you are resisting and not fight it, but allow it.

Eventually turning that allowance into acceptance. With acceptance, you can feel all the feels associated with that fear. It's not nice. But it's okay.

And then you surrender. Which isn't work at all. It's just.. "ahhh." A little liberation. 🕊️

"It has nothing to do with effort. Just turn away, look between the thoughts, rather than at the thoughts. When you happen to walk in a crowd, you do not fight every man you meet, you just find your way between. When you fight, you invite a fight. But when you do not resist, you meet no resistance. When you refuse to play the game, you are out of it." —Nisargadatta Maharaj