UNCOVERING WHO WE ARE
The key to understanding ourselves is to employ gentleness. This is important because we are organic beings. We will nurture plants on our windowsill but treat ourselves with a demanding impatience that almost certainly engenders a blockage. Pushing is counterproductive as none of us likes being told what to do. Not even by ourselves.
Coming to know ourselves takes gentleness, patience and commitment. This is akin to a courtship. Gentleness is key in moving past the watchful guardian of ego. Ego is the mental structure intended to help us fit in with a social milieu. This may change from situation to situation. Unfortunately, ego likes to work undercover and so we have the impression that these facades are all “me”. Hence, ego obscures who we really are and how we really feel. This all works quietly when we feel comfortable and confident. But should we feel challenged, triggered, ‘less than’ or insecure ego will employ any number of strategies to help us feel comfortable and welcomed into the protective clan.
Ego has a number of strategies. We might try to impress others so we will be admired. But being admired is not the same as being accepted. So ego’s strategies ultimately fall short because we’re not addressing who we actually are and how we’re actually feeling. It might feel like me, it might look like me, but we are not a duck, and we’re only playing games. And winning a game is only rewarding in the short term. Somewhere inside, we know it’s not us.
Ego has a vast arsenal of schemes. If besting the others fails we might take a weaker position below them. Whatever the case, we are born with a deep biological need to fit in – somewhere, somehow – because there is more protection in the heard. Whether we’re leading the charge, or trailing behind, we have a clutching, gripping urge to be ‘part of’. Ego is the structure tasked with helping us fit.
Ego can be helpful if, through deepening meditation practice, we transform self-consciousness into self-awareness and are able to see our social faces and are able to employ them mindfully. But when ego lies unseen, it can also be very limiting to our growth. Because in order to protect us, it will reduce our frames of awareness down to manageable quanta we can control. This involuntary ignorance narrows our world but sadly also limits ourselves.
Frankly, seeing ourselves can be a very de-stabilizing experience.
But it’s important to spiritual growth that we come to know ourselves and are willing to grow beyond our defenses. This can be scary. Who will we meet there? Who hides below the façade? Who are we before we have a plan? What will happen if we’re not in the game?
Therefore one step at a time, like a gently insistent courtship. A courtship with someone you love and are moved to know better.
But, love? Realistically do we really love this being? The comedian Jordan Jensen has a wonderful routine where she asks “love myself? I didn’t ask to be with this bitch.” And for some of us, yes, we’re in a contentious relationship with our closest partner. This is likely because we learned that from our upbringing. Again, the schemes of ego replicating what the milieu had shown. Keeping us locked in this trauma dance.
But this is just another game. And if we’re genuinely satisfied here then we might live happily, unhappily in a heated turmoil. A rule of ego is “do what you’ve done, then do it again.” Some of us find abuse comforting. Someone is paying attention. We’re being seen. But is that bruised flinching person really all we are? Or, are we the rageful abuser?
Actually, our minds are complex enough that we can be both, and still make it to work. But isn’t this a bit exhausting? And, the saddest part of the process is we’re never getting to see the truth of who we are. Somewhere in there is someone worth caring for. Maybe love is a strong word for someone we’re just coming to know. But with attention, we can begin sense are way in.
Classical Buddhism would say there is no one to find. But maybe that means there is everything to discover. Ego describes the limits of our imagination and, as such defines the limits of our experience. But what if we were meant to discover more?
Rather than believing the stories we tell ourselves, we can look past them into a world unfolding as it will. A world not under our control. We can choose to be part of that unfolding. Or, we choose to remain in the half-light of fear.
Or, we can do both, opening as we can, when we can and then shutting down when it gets too much. And with that gentle probes allowing ourselves to emerge we’ll uncover more about the way we block ourselves.
We can’t just manufacture Buddha Nature. that would just create another of ego’s masks. But e can begin to see our true nature when the clouds part and that openness appears. With patience, we’ll eventually come to trust that openness. And in that openness maybe we’ll see glimpses of our essential being. Our Buddha Nature.
And maybe even fall in love.