Tag Archives: life story

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Rationalization

If opinions are the currency of the ego exchange, then rationalization is the Federal Reserve for this currency. And it will print endless amounts of currency…

Living in ego identification requires a lot of rationalization to justify all the crazy bs our ego comes up with and make it seem at least reasonable and at most absolutely necessary. As a matter of fact, justification is the flip side of this coin. Those two live in beautiful harmony and co-dependence with each other. When we are totally into our ego identification and thus fully committed to being the story it makes up about us, we have to follow through on the story in order for it to work and continue. This is where rationalization comes in. It is a tool for the ego to make us believe and do what is necessary to perpetuate the story, and for it to make sense. Have you ever done something that later on made you wonder whether you had lost your mind? I certainly have, and this is only possible because our ego id story has this built in bs justifier, called rationalization.

The ego will make anything look rational and reasonable to us if it serves its perpetuation. Literally anything. When taken to the extreme this can lead to what we may call mental illness, or horrible trespasses against others (or us). There are mentally ill people that will very reasonably and rationally explain to you, why garbage trucks actually eat people and this is why they have to stay away from them. There are people that can very rationally explain to you why they have to take drugs. This list is as endless as humanity may have thoughts on this planet. There are also a lot of normal people that will rationally explain to you why they knowingly make a product that will harm others. There were (are) people that will very rationally explain to you why they are standing on a train platform at a concentration camp and send people to ‘work’ or into the ovens. Do you see how intricate and perfected this ego tool is? Rationalization will have us say and do things we would never do if we had some perspective. But when we are completely immersed in our ego story and its perpetuation, the perspective we have is limited to the rational and justified options of my ego story. In other words, the perspective is limited to me, me, me.

Rationalization starts out really harmless and takes us wherever we need to go in our story in baby steps. The drug addict didn’t start wanting to kill themselves with drugs, they had to get there one step at a time. It takes time and a lot of rational ego id thinking to get us there. The doctor on the train platform did not start out ready to send people to their certain death, it took time and step-by-step rationalization to get to that point. The ego identification route is one of constant whispers in our mental ear, constant little compromises to get us to take that next step into the story, so that it may continue and make sense. Rationalization provides the ego with the mental ammunition we need to close that access point to our Self, the observer, the common sense, whatever we may call it, that would give us a broader perspective. To open that access point, we have to be willing to stop.

Stop the train of thought even for a moment. To create a space in that deluge of our ego thinking that immediately opens up a gap. Have you ever found yourself going crazy over something and out of the blue you saw yourself going crazy and literally stopped, because you saw the craziness? That is what I am talking about. None of what I write in this blog is rocket science or some big secret that requires years of earnest study, it is ultimately simply a choice. At any and all times, a choice. Whenever we choose to stop and see where we are coming from at any moment, our perspective shifts. We see more. We realize that we can choose to walk away from the story. When we step out of the story, we find ourselves in a land of opportunity, a state where we do not have to rationalize anything in order to do it. We simply feel what makes sense to us at any moment, and our actions are no longer about perpetuating some story, but are about expressing our choice, knowing full well that no one else has to agree or made to agree with it. The motivation is no longer me, me, me, the motivation is being in a space of boundless expression. In that space we are not interested in perpetuating anything about us, we are interested in what is. To be with it, to experience the life situation we find ourselves in, whatever it may be, and move through it. Movement is more interesting than anything else. Life takes on a flow that is pretty amazing actually. When something ‘bad’ happens, we experience it and move through it, when something ‘good’ happens, we do the same. There is nothing to hold on to. That sounds pretty irrational and crazy, right? Well, it does to anyone living in their ego identification anyway…

As always, I invite you to play with this. The next time you see something crazy in yourself or someone else playing out, choose whether you are going to step in and do something to stop it or not. If you don’t, the craziness will only build, if you do, something will shift instantly and your perspective right with it. Promise.

Cheers,

Ralf

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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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Choosing the ‘story of my life’

My bride and I were on a walk the other day, and a woman and her a friend walked by, talking. One of them said to the other: “So I guess I am going to have to tell them my life story.” That really struck me for a couple of reasons. One, we say so many things in any given day that really shine a light on how things actually are but we barely notice, and two, how much meaning her statement had.

We say that line as such a throw away, don’t we. ‘You really want to hear my life story?,’ ‘He/She tells everyone her life story,’ or even better, ‘Story of my life.’ Let’s look at this with a little more depth. When we talk about our life story, on a certain level we recognize that our life is just that, a story. But only to a certain degree, where it’s still safe. Safe for the ego/story, safe for it to maintain the illusion that we are, in fact, the story. We never stop to see how much deeper than that safe degree we could go with that simple, but very powerful and accurate statement.

When we entertain the possibility that our life is a story, then immediately we have to wonder about who is doing the telling of it. That’s easy enough, it’s me. And then we feel that we might overwhelm or bother people by telling our life story, so we keep it short and simple, and move on. Too bad. Next time we sigh to ourselves “Story of my life…” (usually when something bad happens), stop and look at that. It is truly the story of our life. It’s a story we not only tell ourselves, but the story we continually craft and create. All the time. Incessantly. And most of all, unconsciously. That is the important piece. And because we do this unconsciously, our story continues on, seemingly without our participation or input.

But what if we woke up to the simple fact that we indeed write, craft and create our stories? What if we realized that this ‘story of our life’ was not happening to us but by us? It’s a game changer, let me tell you. Suddenly we become aware of how much we tell ourselves on any given day. How many ‘mini stories’ we have going all the time. ‘I am a loser, a winner, the best, the worst, the mediocre, will never amount to anything, am the greatest person alive, other people suck, it’s my parents fault, my fault, his fault, no ones fault, God’s fault, why me, why not me?’ and on and on and on… Once we notice this, we can either stay with that growing awareness, or go right back to being a victim to our own story.

If we choose to take the matter of our story into our own creative hands, the jig is up on the illusion. The illusion that things and life happen to us, because all we are is our story. Instead we discover quickly, that life is a creative endeavor of choice. To choose anything. Nothing limits our freedom of choice, short of physics and our own minds. The magnitude of this escapes us at first, but when we begin to understand and own this simple fact of our choosing everything, everything actually changes. If we even consider the above to be true, then some questions come to mind: Why would we choose to create miserable stories? Why would we choose to believe them to be us? Why would we choose to continue on in the same manner? The beautiful point is that we can choose not to. And when we start to notice the incessant ‘story telling’ in our minds and begin to see it for what it is, we begin to get less and less interested in these ramblings until we stop feeding them altogether and become something very wonderful: present.

It’s our choice. Again and again.

Cheers,

Ralf