Category Archives: Transformation

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Waking up

In order to get out of ego identification, we have to wake up first. The kind of waking up that happens is very unique to this circumstance.

To initially wake up to my ego identification required a jolt of some kind, at some point. What it reminds me of is the feeling you can have when you take a nap and end up falling so deeply asleep that it is a serious struggle to get yourself to wake up again. You are aware of the fact that you are sleeping, and at the same time have to pull yourself out of sleep. If that has ever happened to you, you know what I am talking about. That’s almost the way it felt when I first really woke up. I had a jolt, which caused me to see my ego, and my full blown identification with it, all at once. Then I realized that I really wanted to wake up from this, but that ended up being incredibly hard at first. It took some baby steps. It reminds me now of learning a martial art, at first you learn very basic moves to teach balance, movement and flow. You repeat this to no end. And it seems as though you are not making progress or learning anything. Then you graduate to more complicated moves until you become a master at it. At this point you realize that the most basic moves are still there in everything you do, they actually make your mastery possible.

When I woke up to my ego identification, I had to start with the basic moves. I had to trust my awareness of the ego in me. I had to quite literally tell my ego thinking ‘I see you,’ and that I was no longer interested in it. Sometimes I did this out loud. Then I had to choose to stay away from all the sticky ego thinking, but without choosing anything else. This created space for something new. This whole process felt very tedious to begin with, it felt as though ego was everywhere and there was no way to get away from it, and it didn’t feel as though I was making much progress. Then something in the balance of what was on my mind shifted. It was the tipping point. The ego sourced identification began to recede, it had less power and when it showed up, I found it truly uninteresting. I didn’t have to do anything with it. From that point forward, everything changed.

Once on that track, the awakening simply continues. The awareness of having an ego rather than being one sinks in, it becomes the new experience of myself. This does not mean that I don’t occasionally fall asleep or take a nap and fall into some ego identification – to say that does not happen is a big fat lie. The most important thing here is that I notice it usually very quickly, and when I do, I automatically use my basic waking up moves I learned way back, to come to. Much like the martial artist, the foundational moves have become part of me and I can use them in my sleep.

I guess what I wanted to share is that the awakening does have an initial jolt to get us to wake up, but after that it’s a lot of practice at first, which eventually leads to a different state of awareness that enables us to stay awake more, and wake up more quickly if we happen to nap out. In all of this, the biggest change for me has been in the quality of my life and relationships, and realizing that being is always here, no matter what I do or believe. I feel as though my life is not about anything in particular anymore, and it doesn’t have to be, it is enough to just be here and do whatever occurs to me out of that feeling. No fear, no expectation, just choice and its expression.

The next time you see yourself operating from your ego, and you don’t like how it feels, consider that this means you are waking up at least a bit at that moment, and then see if you can drag yourself out of your slumber and to the surface. You may just realize that you have been trapped in a nightmare and are about to step into a world of your creation.

Cheers,

Ralf

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More honesty…

After writing the last post on honesty and authenticity, more came to mind about it, specifically my own learning around this. To actually be honest with oneself is a toughie to say the least.

When I began to catch on to my incessant ego machine, I was shocked and horrified with how deep the rabbit hole of this was. It was mind boggling, and frankly I had my doubts that I was ever going to be able to get away from this monster that had taken over my life. It felt like a tumor that had spread into every nook and cranny of my existence. How can one get rid off something like that? Die? That was one option I considered, because I was not going to continue to live like this, no matter how. Then I discovered that honesty with myself was going to get me headed in the right direction. I thought that would be easy and ‘do the trick.’ Well, let me tell you, I found out that real honesty with one’s own bs is not for the weak…

The hard part was to realize that I could not believe anything I was telling myself anymore. Nothing. It was a mental tabula rasa if you will. During that time it was almost unbearable to look at the constant shitstorm of my own psyche, everything I was thinking was a lie, a lie based on a lie nonetheless. Everything I was thinking about me or anything in my world was based on the lie of my complete ego identification. Based on this lie, I then told myself that I had to make sure to look good, get my share and generally try to make out ok. This became the basis of my existence, which meant that I would lie to myself and everyone else to varying degrees about pretty much anything that would serve my purpose. That is what I had to face and be honest about.

In the ensuing weeks and months I got to practice being honest about my own thinking. Was I asking someone a question out of curiosity or actually running some kind of agenda? When being nice to someone, was I trying to gain something from them, and thus really for me? Whenever I would make deals with myself, wasn’t I simply avoiding some deeper fear I was running from? When talking to my family, friends or loved ones, was I not trying to manipulate them in even the smallest of ways for my agenda? When meeting new people, was I only talking to them because I would ultimately gain something from it? You can tell that this was quite encompassing and exhausting. In the beginning of being honest with oneself, it can be very discouraging to see what we do to ourselves on a daily basis. The lies we employ to manipulate ourselves and everyone else are truly stunning when seen in the light of awareness. But it gets better and it is worth it.

Now I find myself in a place of a much quieter mind that is not focused on me, myself and I as much, though I certainly can have my moments. Honesty about those moments, owning them and at the same time not holding on to them makes it much easier to be. Plus, when this kind of honesty becomes a habit, there is not much room left for the bs we like to produce, and if we do, it is honestly very uninteresting. I am no longer interested enough in the lies my ego tries to whisper in my mental ear in an attempt to take over and make my life miserable again. Because that is exactly where it will lead, and I have been there and done that.

So honesty of the helpful kind, the kind that is not of the ego, really challenges us to stay the course of authenticity with ourselves and thus the world around us. It is not for the weak, it takes rigor and discipline in the beginning, only to get easier with practice and eventually becoming part of who we are: someone who is no longer interested in the dishonesty and lies of an ego identified life.

The next time you catch yourself in one of those sneaky little and oh-so-comfortable lies, stop and take a look at what you’re doing. And then choose whether you would like to see what happens if you didn’t believe yourself.

Cheers,

Ralf

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Fear

Fear is a sneaky little bastard.

What has amazed me over the past couple of years is that it shows up in ways and places that I would have never thought of as fear. I remember reading about the idea that there are only two emotions we as human beings can feel, love or fear. I liked that. It made sense. One was the ‘good’ feeling, the other the ‘bad’ feeling, but both were part of the deal and of essential nature. This whole notion has changed for me, because these two emotions only exist in the realm of ego. Let me explain.

In the writing of my book, I was often confused and left in disbelief with what came out. One of these was the idea that love and fear as we talk about them are actually an illusion which only exists in a world of duality. Within the realm of ego, duality is necessary, because without it, there would be no ‘me’ to experience. Beyond that duality, there only is love. A love basically beyond human understanding, but not experience. That love is the real deal, it’s the space where all exists, before, in, and after time that is. Not that I understand that, but I can feel it.

Love and fear as opposites makes perfect sense, but the love in this case is actually fear in sheep’s clothing. We think of fear as this emotion that is frightening, upsetting, or in some way negative. Since love feels the opposite of this, it certainly does not feel connected to fear. But it is. This love is always attached to some thing, be it a person, idea or circumstance, it does not matter what the focus of my love is, it is attached to it. When this attachment is lost or no longer available, the love is lost as well. Deep down we know this, which is why we will often go to absurd lengths to keep around that to which our love is attached. And we are thus constantly afraid of losing it. What if my partner won’t love me anymore? What if I can’t do/have my favorite thing in the world anymore? That is some scary shit.

This is also why fear is so sneaky. It shows up in both of these ways, and when it comes dressed up as love, it really fools us. This is a very limited way to experience life to say the least. It never lets up, because if we are in fear, we try to get away from it as much as we can, or try to face and overcome it, and when we feel that attached love, we’ve got to make sure that we keep it around.

The other love is not attached to anything. It is simply a deep feeling that arises in us regardless of our life situation. It is utterly reassuring and puts us at instant ease. With it we are thrust into the present moment, and in the present there is nothing to fear, because fear needs the past and future to exist. With the real thing, we are (in) love, period. That is fearless, because there is nothing to lose, nothing to hold on to. It is freedom.

So here’s to catching on to that pesky and sneaky fear in our lives.

Cheers,

Ralf

 

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Recovering from ego identification

I used to be into ego identification. I am now recovering. Let me explain.

The whole ego thing had always been something of a confusing concept to me. I grew up learning that having one was not only important, but that you needed to make sure to have a strong and good one, and be able to show that to the world so that others may take you seriously. You didn’t want to overdo it though, too big an ego was frowned upon and not seen as an advantage. Thus it was important to find just the right balance with this, not too much and certainly not too little. So I worked on mine and tried hard to find the right balance.

Over the years I ran into all kinds of definitions and theories on ego, but they all had as a common theme that it was real and something to deal with. As I got into the spiritual community and became a ‘spiritual seeker,’ the ego was often talked about as the ‘enemy,’ or at the very least something to ‘transcend.’ I created a version of ego that looked spiritual, sounded spiritual, but wasn’t spiritual. And that, as I found out to my surprise years later, was simply so, because the ego is neither the enemy nor does it have to be transcended, it has to simply be seen for what it is: A keeper of information on an individuated level to enable us to have a functional human experience. Nothing more and nothing less.

Once this realization hit, the ego and the idea that it is me diminished rapidly. There is a choice to be made here. Do I live my life as my ego or with my ego? Huge difference. With this the questions about how to overcome or transcend it become meaningless. Once I see that, I live with my ego, which makes my individuated functional human experience possible. That’s it. Your whole perspective shifts. Suddenly there is this other ‘me’ that sees ego in its rightful place and function, but I am no longer the ego, rather it is simply a useful aspect of me.

This is freedom. We see the ego doing its job most efficiently, and when we have bouts of ego identification (as I call them), they tend to pass rather quickly because they really don’t feel very good. Ego identification is fear. For when I am my ego, I am trapped in the time bound version of me, the one that is born, does some shit, and dies. And that even sounds depressing. The ego is temporary and when I am identified with it, I desperately try to deny and hide from that fact by making it more real and more permanent through personal experiences, and that is one fearful existence. For when the ego dies, I die. That is why the ego identified state is one of constant alert, after all, we know deep down that it is only temporary and try to hide this fact from ourselves. So we make a lot of noise, and the best noise in ego identification is one of competition with other egos, only second to competition with itself. Thus we spend a lot of time of our lives defending and building up our egos only to find out at some point that it is the least real part of us.

Even entertaining the possibility that we are not our egos, but the one seeing it, changes everything. I don’t have to worry about keeping up my ego/me, doing maintenance on it/me, making sure other people see it/me, always making it/me look its best, etc. Life is no longer about me in that smallest way, instead it is about living here and now, while being able to see this at work in others with the compassion and understanding of a recovering ego addict.

So I invite all of us to have some fun with this idea and choose to stop the ego identification when we notice it. Whenever we feel any kind of negative or positive drama, no matter how mild or severe, we are in full ego identification mode. Dramatic emotions are a hallmark of this state, and can serve as great information and wake up calls. They can either put us deeper to sleep or awaken us. Our choice, as it always is.

Cheers,

Ralf

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First one

This will be interesting. Not only did I never intend to write my book, Flying Leap, I most certainly never expected to start a blog based on it. As the book is at least partially a result of a personal transformation which happened under the oddest of circumstances in the most unexpected manner, I guess this is the natural result. As the years passed since that initial experience, I continue to change and see myself and the world in new and different ways on a daily, actually a moment to moment basis. I often make observations about all things life, and my wife has assured me that others would enjoy, if not benefit from these observations.

All of this is based on my experience of seeing myself operate one day. It was mind blowing and boggling. I saw myself plot and manipulate, control and assess, and generally make me feel like the most sickening and self-absorbed human being I had ever been in the presence of. I had no idea who this ‘other’ was, that was experiencing ‘me’ in such a visceral way. This happened out of the blue and practically paralyzed me. I did not want to speak or express myself in any way, because all that was coming out of me, or rather was in me wanting to get out, was so nauseating and disgusting, it was unbelievable. I had stumbled onto my ego.

For lack of a better word, I was a complete mess for the next three weeks and had a hard time functioning. On the one hand I thought I was nuts, and on the other hand I knew that something I had wanted all my life was indeed now happening to me. I just didn’t expect it to be like that. Over the next three years, I learned and began to understand what had occurred. I had discovered how my ego, or the collected memories of my life, had become me. Once that had become clear, I realized that there was a whole other way to live: instead of being my ego I could live with it. Big difference, let me tell you.

I reckon that everything I will post on this blog from time to time will be about this difference of living with oneself, and how it affects not only how you live your life, but who you are and thus show up. It is actually all quite simple, but also so all encompassing that words ultimately fail in describing any of it in any meaningful manner. It has to be experienced. I hope to inspire this in some people through my book and this blog.

So here we are. Let’s see if I can get this thing going and, most of all, make it interesting enough and keep it up.

Cheers,

Ralf