Winner: 2016’s Blog of the Year #2
If we’re lost in ego there’s only two directions we can go: forward and back. That’s the problem with ego–it’s a simplistic personal view and it is very limited in it’s vision of potential directions. Our egos can live in our past and egos can live in our futures. But living in the present moment is so completely and thoroughly involving that it simply does not leave us any consciousness left to use words necessary to weave illusions like ‘time.’ The quiet of our soul is always Now.
The ego is an action a living soul will take. Rather than being present and aware in the moment, a spirit will create an ego that can leave the body where it is and then take the mind on a word-based journey forward or backward in time. For example, we can be in a lineup for something. There’s maybe tea to taste, maybe some flowers to smell and maybe there’s some music to listen to. Children don’t yet know words so they can experience those things as a soul. They perceive but they do not divide and judge like the adults who layer labels over it all.
As an adult we can be standing with the child in a lineup, tea in hand, flowers nearby and music audible and yet we will ignore all of that and it will begin talking to ourselves about something we’ve judged as embarrassing from a week ago. Or a month ago, or even years ago. So that’s where the ego is–back on its past, dealing with something it’s already done.
It’s like watching a movie over and over because we don’t like the ending and we’re hoping if we keep watching it that one day it’ll have changed. But if it’s a terrible story then it’s important to remember that we’ll get the same chemistry now that we got then.
Meanwhile, there’s the kid that’s with us in line and they’re living in spirit. The song’s nice, the people around us are smiling, maybe someone’s holding a puppy in their arms that we haven’t even noticed. The kid is happy. And in pursuing that happiness in that moment, they move toward the puppy.
Meanwhile we’re the adult lost in our thoughts about a past event. The chemistry we’re asking for by reliving that thought is painful. That pain leads us to be sensitive and easily upset. And because we’re lost in our thoughts we haven’t noticed the puppy. So, from our perspective, when the child takes off it’s for no apparent reason. We then take our anger about our past, and use it to scold the child in the present, using words our parents taught us years ago. And all while we truly don’t even know what’s going on in the present moment, where there’s a puppy we might like too. This is why children often think their parents are unfair and it’s also how children learn to be adults that ‘stay in line.’
As children our parents constantly and unknowingly invited us out of the present moment, and instead they unwittingly encouraged us to stitch together our egos. We were told puppy’s ‘don’t belong’ in banks, and we were taught to pay attention to abstract ideas like obedience. Eventually we do this so much that we also don’t notice any puppies because now we’re we too busy with our own painful thoughts about how disappointed our parents always were with us misbehaving. So we spend our lives worrying about being out of line, regretting that we’ve ever been out of line, and hoping we’re never be out of line again.
But. In reality, our past is our past and has little to no bearing on the quality of our future. Moreover, hopes and fears about what might be can cripple that future by preventing us from attending to the present moment from which it will be built.
People think all the time and they’re reading this because they want something better. And better is easy. Better is quiet inside. Better is to simply to be. Because we can never go back and fix the past, nor can we guarantee our future. But if we’re present we might actually find a few more puppies to enjoy.
peace. s
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.
