Tag Archives: awareness

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Control

Control is everywhere in the ego identified world. It really likes to hang out with need. It’s like this: Control and Need walk into a bar. They go up to to the bartender and Need says: “I need a drink now!” Control says: “Yes, but make that three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large slice of lemon-peel. Got it?”

Control is as important as need in ego identification, and one of them tends to be behind the actions we undertake out of that state. They are the foundations of ego identification. Because in an ego id world, control is an essential tool in making the ego more real. If I can control something or someone, then I exist. Only someone that is real and has some measure of control over the world, exists. This is the basis from which the ego operates. So it finds things to control. Our own thinking is where it begins, if I cannot be in control of my own thinking after all, where else is there to go? Once that is established, we go forth and establish all kinds of domains under our control, no matter how limited that may be. It’s not about the ‘amount’ of control that the ego seeks, it’s about control. That is why having control over the oddest or sometimes seemingly most insignificant things can be so important to people. And then we go ahead and laugh at those people, because they get so bent out of shape over nothing, they should see our lives, and the really important things we are in control of… Ego identification abounds.

The tough part with this control addiction of the ego is that in good times, when things are ‘under control,’ we get to feel good somewhat, while always having to make sure that things stay that way of course. We have to check on people, make sure tasks are done correctly, always demonstrating to ourselves that everything is just so. Have you ever caught yourself on a morning, and things were off somehow? Your mood was bad, your spouse was difficult, your kids were a nightmare, your car was old, your job sucked, etc.? Almost inevitably at some point during a mental shitstorm like that, the thought that we really don’t have control over our own life shows up. We then either keep going with it, and end up feeling worse and worse, until that moment when we have to throw up our hands and say ‘I don’t have control over anything in my life!’ or we commit an act of control. Make a decision that affects us and (even better) someone else as well. We make the kids do what we want them to, we tell our spouse or coworker that we need them to do something for us, and they do it, and bingo, we feel more in control again. Taken to the utmost extreme, our minds go completely out-of-control, we succumb to every thought we have, and we end up in varying degrees of mental illness. The ego after all says (to quote the bird from Flying Leap): “…that control is the measure of a certain life, and that knowing what is real is the test of your existence.”

Thus is the story that comes with control, it’s one or the other, I am in control or out-of-control or somewhere in between. It’s a game of duality, and a game that only works in duality. Outside of duality, it has no existence or meaning. Outside of ego identification, that is. That is the other possibility.

What if control was of no issue? What is we simply showed up in our lives and control was literally of no interest to us? This is not about being for or against it, it’s about living a life beyond control, where it does not matter in our experience of life. What does matter to us, is that we have choice. We choose (our) life, moment-to-moment. No one does this for us, and thus no one or no thing controls what we experience. We create our experience. If you can entertain this as a possibility, your life will change dramatically, and control will go right with it. If we live in a world where we alone create our experience, and we know this about others as well, control makes no sense. I create, you create, whatever we wish. This does not mean that we cannot have clarity around what works and doesn’t work for us, quite to the contrary, we are more clear on these matters. But we do not express this by means of controlling the other, but simply by expressing our view. It’s not about control, it’s about choice. It’s about all of us choosing our life circumstances. They are not imposed on us, which would mean someone or something is in control of it.

Most of our human systems on the planet are built around control, beginning with our own personal ego identified worlds, extending out to groups, nations, and any and all belief systems that tell us how to be. But it only works as long as we believe that we need to be in control to be real, once we choose not to believe this, the world is a different place. Starting with our own.

As always, check this out for yourself. The next time you think that something in your life is out-of-control, and you notice this, stop for a moment, and see how it feels. Then notice how your mind is trying to find a controllable action, something to get you back in control, and how you need this to feel better. Then don’t. Choose to not engage in this, choose to say that you have a choice, and see what happens. You may just find yourself creating something entirely different.

Cheers,

Ralf

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Crazytown

Have you heard of this place before? We probably have all gone there at some point. It’s that place where all the craziness makes sense to the people who are there, and they will support each other by confirming and justifying their different crazy stories. It’s a happening place.

Have you ever gone, or had a friend or relative that went to Crazytown? You could tell when they were on their way there, you could see that this was the direction they were going, you may have even pointed it out to them on the mental road map, but they just kept going. Depending on what they were going there for, it can be frustrating and scary to watch them disappear into town. We have all been there, and made it back out, sometimes we stayed for a while, sometimes we only had a short visit, sometimes we only drove by the outskirts, sometimes we drove past it, and sometimes it doesn’t even show up on our maps…

In order to have Crazytown on our maps, we must have ego identification going on, and the story that comes with it. Our story. The story we believe to be, because ego and the story are one and the same. The nature of the ego and its story is, of course, perpetuation. It’s compounding, and that part is the road to Crazytown. Let me explain.

Let’s say that we have hit a rough patch in our story, lost our job, went through a breakup, or feel totally and utterly unappreciated by everyone in our life, or anything else that may put us in a state, if you will. Not a nice place to be. At that moment we have a choice to make: Am I going to believe this story and go with it, or am I going to become aware of of my ego id and the story, and choose to disengage from it? One puts us in the state where Crazytown is, the other takes us in the opposite direction.

If I go with the former, things are going to get worse, it’s part of the deal. I will justify my ill feelings, confirm them with others, and do whatever it takes to make it real. Now, once I am so full into my story, I will do what I can to feel better, no matter what that is, or what it looks like. I will try to change the circumstances that have caused my drama, I will assign blame to the person(s) that are at fault (sometimes that can be us, also called the ‘poor/bad me’ story line), and I will not stop until the pressure of my bad feelings releases. This can take a few minutes, days, weeks, months or years. Time is of no consequence here, it is all about the level of identification I have with that story that my ego sells me as ‘me.’ You have arrived in Crazytown. We hope you enjoy your stay.

The latter decision above changes the dynamic drastically. I realize that the car is my story and that I am the driver. This ‘I’ is the one who also built the factory that makes the car, is the designer, the worker that puts it together, the one who builds the roads the car drives on, and on and on. The second we remember this fact, we are back in the driver’s seat and regain full control. That’s usually the moment when we want to pull over and catch our breath. It’s the pause that allows us to see what is. As in we see that we are not the story, and bam!, we are thrust back into the moment. And with that moment comes instant perspective. The perspective that gives us an opportunity to take another look at the situation we find ourselves in, and thus an opportunity to choose a different route. Away from Crazytown.

The beauty is that it does not matter how long we have been hanging out in Crazytown, how much we have liked or hated it, when the moment of pause happens and we choose to stop driving around, we can head out of town immediately. We can also work our way out of town slowly but surely, we can do whatever we choose at any moment. It is all about waking up to the fact that we are headed to or in Crazytown, and then making a choice about that. Sometimes someone else says something that triggers our awareness, sometimes it’s a hug, a firm but loving reminder, and sometimes we just have enough of it, it does not matter what triggers our moment of waking up to our own drama – what matters is that this can happen at any moment and we get to see it or not. Our choice.

So the next time you find yourself heading towards Crazytown, make sure you’re prepared for the trip. Bring lots of guilt cookies, indignant huffs and puffs, lots of blaming supplies and self-pity. Or pull over, stop the car, get out and take a deep breath. Take in the beautiful surroundings, called life, and have a picnic. As Crazytown will surely fade away at the horizon, plot a new course and see where it takes you.

Cheers,

Ralf

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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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Ego attack

Ego attacks can come in all varieties, from vicious and mean to subtle and sweet. That makes them so tricky.

I had one the other day. It came out of nowhere and was the vicious kind, the kind that comes at you like a hurricane, except without warning. You find yourself in the midst of the worst mental shitstorm imaginable. It comes at you from all directions, and it knows exactly how to hit you in the most effective way possible. Those storms pack quite a punch and can overwhelm us in no time, because the devices used are usually deadly. This ego is made up of our collected memories and thus it knows all intimate details of our lives. This is what is utilized in a full blown attack. All the registers of a well informed agent provocateur are put in play to scare us into submission.

If it’s one of the vicious attacks, it will usually come at us with all kinds of ideas around our failures and shortcomings. We haven’t done enough, we are too lazy, too dumb, too fat, too ugly, too stupid, too careless, or not trying hard enough, not ever going to make anything of ourselves, and on and on it goes. There is one thing all of the arguments have in common, they are fear mongering in one form or another. Then we panic. What if this is all true? What if we are failing in some major way? After all, we all want to be responsible people at the end of the day. So then we begin to consider the very urgent and alarming arguments set before us, and bingo, we are hooked. We get sucked into the drama, and once that happens, we have to deal with it all. We can either work through the list of challenges one-by-one, or go into denial about them all by arguing our way out and around them. No matter what we do, we are now in full ego identification in all its glory.

The other way the ego attack can come at us is the subtle and sweet kind. It tells us in some way that we are so great, perfect, deserving of praise and generally wonderful. It’s like watching a hurricane from the safety of a bunker. It doesn’t seem to be based on fear, because it feels really good and lulls us into a state of comatose self-delusion. This self-delusion is the fear part. The delusion that I am nothing but this wonderful ego, which has to constantly be afraid of not being good enough, perfect and wonderful. Buying into this one will usually lead to complacency on one end and big time arrogance on the other end. And neither one of those ever allows us any peace.

Both attacks have in common that they are made of the ego and nothing else. It is about me, me, me. So whether we fall prey to a sweet or vicious attack, we always end up in the same place as a result. So what is there to do?

To get into the eye of the storm. When I had my attack the other day, I was taken aback, because I had not experienced this level of intensity in quite a while. For a moment I was like a curious customer checking out the goods presented for sale. I picked it up, looked at it and considered whether it could be useful. I considered all the scary crap my ego was throwing at me. And it felt awful. It also felt overwhelming. That’s when I stopped for a moment and looked at what was going on. That pause is the eye of the storm. That is the moment or space where we get to see what is going on, and that opens up choice. To choose whether we want to continue to listen to the shitstorm or not. If we choose not to engage, we stay in the eye of the storm, it is still going on around us, but we can watch it and feel calm in the midst of it. If we do this, it subsides surprisingly quickly. For me that meant making a run to the grocery store, not talking to anyone and simply watch the bs my ego was throwing out at me. Once I got home, it had moved on.

All we have to be is willing. Willing for this to pass us by. To be willing to consider that the storm is of our own ego’s making and has no meaning or reality beyond that. The next time you see the storm coming, or find yourself in the midst of it, see if you can remember that every hurricane has an eye, and put yourself there.

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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Standing next to yourself

Have you ever experienced this, where you are in a situation, you react to it and almost at the same time you hear yourself think or talk and then wonder what is the matter with you? I certainly have. It’s an interesting and odd feeling when it happens, almost as if you were talking to someone else. But aren’t we?

In my mind this is exactly what is happening in those moments. We are literally seeing ourselves in action, we notice what we are thinking, and doing or saying as a result and we literally wonder what is wrong with us. But we never stop to see this moment as impactful as it actually is. We are actually watching our ego in action. We are being the observer. And what do we usually do with it? We laugh it off or turn into a funny story to tell others. Every single one of those times is a missed opportunity to see something beyond the usual story of who we tell ourselves we are.

Rather than thinking of it as standing next to yourself, think of it as being next to yourself. Because we have to be in a moment of awareness or being in order to see ourselves operate like that. That’s a beautiful thing. We get to be aware of the part in us that is doing the reacting, the story telling, in other words: the ego. The one who is aware, is the being. This is good news to me, because I used to believe for years that all this being stuff was for the evolved, the enlightened and real devoted spiritual people, and that unless I completely changed my life circumstances I would never get to be. Not the case.

Being is what we are all the time, whether we believe it or not. There is nothing we can do to change that. Whether we are aware of this makes all the difference, and that is also all that it takes.

To be aware.

Awareness is powerful, it changes our perspective on whatever we focus it on. It gives us a chance to step outside of the routine of our story and ego identified ways and see them. Seeing ourselves operate like that gives us a choice at that moment to walk away from our own story and let it pass, and instead stay in the awareness. When we choose that, we are instantly in a state of being. It really is as simple as that. But as simple as it is, it is also as powerful. It’s also very hard to do when we are completely committed to our story and think that this is who we are, because this story needs perpetuation in order to keep us from realizing the one thing that this story of ours is designed to hide from us: that we are not permanent. And that scares the hell out of our egos.

But it is really simple. Seeing ourselves operate and going further with that awareness is all it takes to break the cycle of ego identification and instead be. The good news is that this is not a one shot deal – we get to choose this every moment of our lives, again and again. And when we do choose awareness instead of the ole story, our lives are transformed instantly. And then we look for it more and more, because it feels so natural and wonderful. And eventually we lose all these important ideas of who we think we are, and what we think our lives have to be about. It becomes uninteresting and instead we are filled with this sense of momentness (just made up that word).

Next time you are watching yourself do something, stop for a moment and realize what is happening. You are being aware of yourself, plain and simple. Question is, what will you choose at that moment?

Cheers,

Ralf