Egoic Stories

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Have you ever considered how hard it is to stick with the straight facts of a situation? Say you’re driving down the road and someone stops suddenly, making you brake so quickly, it’s frightening. Your thoughts might jump to “they did that on purpose!” or “they’re not paying attention”. How about your significant other? Perhaps you call them and they haven’t returned your call. What goes through your head? Do you think they’re too busy? Do you wonder if they are okay? If you text something and they don’t answer back, what do you think? Is it something like “they’re ignoring me so they must be angry” or maybe it’s “how rude!” or “they must think what I said isn’t important”?

Here are the facts when your significant other doesn't answer a text: 1) you sent a text to your significant other. 2) there was no answer.

That's it. There are no other facts. Don't let your thoughts create any other story out of it.

Real life example: My older teenage son’s bathroom was disgusting. When I discovered it, I immediately noticed I was reactive and angry, so I took the time to get present before addressing it with him. When I finally did, I was very firm and serious in nature – a demeanor not normally seen in me. What happened? My son overreacted to the extreme. He behaved as though he had PTSD and was in a war zone. He sobbed for hours, he flinched when I spoke to him and he ran when adults approached. It was completely bizarre.

I sat him down. I asked him why he was acting as though he would be hit. Was he in danger? What was he thinking that was telling him he must run from his family? Why did getting in trouble over the condition of his bathroom turn into a dangerous situation for him in his head? Well, the discussion revealed his thoughts focused around being hurt. There was no history of it but because I was behaving in a manner he defined as “angry”, his thoughts created a story putting him danger. I showed him this thinking had completely destroyed hours of his evening by creating a story that didn’t even exist.

Our egos generate thoughts that create stories from the facts. The ego cannot be okay with the present moment, so it must find a way to make it different. One way it does this is to create a story. The only way to get out of it is to make our thoughts stick to the facts. In each and every situation, especially one where we find ourselves reactive, the solution is to notice our thoughts and the stories there. Is what we’re thinking strictly based on the facts? I often tell people (and myself) to write down the facts. In a particularly volatile situation that is unresolved, carry around the facts so you can anchor your thoughts if necessary. I’ve done this several times. It works.

The most important thing of all is to be able to notice when this is happening. Can you honestly admit when your head is making up stories? It takes courage to step back and really examine your thoughts for accuracy.  If you can begin doing this, your life will improve dramatically. No longer will you have needless drama. No longer will you hurt others with stories made up from the facts.

Challenge yourself.

Surrender – What it is. What is isn’t. Or is it?

 

There are so many definitions for surrender. My favorite because it fits my personal experiences the best is “ceases to resist”. Think about that for a bit. Chew on it mentally. Ceases to resist. Even a white flag thrown up in the middle of a war can be defined as “ceasing to resist” for isn’t a war a resistance? The French call it “Le Resistance”, among other things.

I polled some friends before I wrote this post. I asked them their personal definitions of surrender, for I didn’t want a bunch of rehashing of the dictionary entries. Several of them mentioned “giving up” or “giving in” as their definition. Why is it so many people define surrender as giving up? None of the definitions I found for surrender included “giving up”. Why do we correlate these words? In my early years, I did the same thing. Fast forward 20 years, throw in some serious desperation and some spiritual teaching and now, I have a whole new thinking. Turns out, surrender is a necessary & delightful thing.

Surrender is being able to admit not knowing. It is the ability to realize I don’t know all the answers. Surrender is being able to accept imperfection – to embrace it. Surrender, boiled down, is giving up all control, every single tiny bit of it. Surrender is being able to accept give myself to the moment, no matter what is happening in it, without trying to control it.

Not an easy matter, but that is surrender. In order to change, we have to admit we don’t know everything. We don’t know all the answers. What we’ve done in the past isn’t working. The great paradox of life is we must surrender to win.

Several people have asked me to help them in their spiritual journey. A few of these people I’ve spoken to, given solutions, given reading materials, even helped them through specific situations at their request. They were surprised later why they got no relief.

Why do they get no relief? Because they refuse to surrender. They hold onto their old patterns, their beliefs, and their old behaviors. They don’t practice anything they read & they refuse to see any of the things pointed out to them. They have the blinders of denial on. It’s not them, it’s everyone else’s fault. They will continue on in this way until they’ve reached their time of desperation. At this point, I can’t help them, no one can. Only a person who is ready to surrender & be willing to learn can be helped.

Surrender is pivotal to spiritual growth. If you can't get to a place you can give up completely, then you will never be able to truly learn & adopt a new way of thinking and living. Without beginning to think and act differently, the spiritual teachings in books, blogs & videos will be just that - teachings. They will mean very little in the long run. All they will be is fuel for an information junkie.

So surrender if you haven't already!!! It's a powerful step.

What Does it Mean to Be Offended?

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There are many spiritual quotes out there that encourage the reader to not be offended, no matter what. When I first read about being offended, I came at it via all my conditioning & thought it meant to take something personal to the extreme. I didn’t look up the word in the dictionary. I thought I knew what it meant. Some friends of mine have expressed a similar translation of the term, so I thought I’d take a few moments to define it.

From the online dictionaries:

A.) Dictionary.com:  offend – to irritate, annoy or anger.

B.) Merriam-Webster:  offend – to cause dislike, anger, or vexation.

C.) Oxford: offend - caused to feel upset, annoyed, or resentful.

With this exercise, I also found the reason why so many of us have a much more serious definition of the word than is accurate. There is one of Biblical origin meaning to transgress moral or divine law, or in other words, to SIN. No wonder we took it to such far extremes before.

By using the first few definitions of non-Biblical origin, this means to get offended is the same as getting upset, flustered, aggravated, irritated, and the like. It does not mean you have to be so angry you are ready to kill someone or think someone has personally come up and cursed your mom. It simply means something caused you to become off kilter.

Why does this happen? We choose to get offended. It’s a reaction taken when someone/something does something we perceive to be personal, such as wasting our time, slowing us down, invading/crowding our space, polluting our air, ignoring us, endangering our lives, etc. We get angry, indignant, self-righteous, irritated, hateful, argumentative, etc. – all offensive reactions. Most of us think the other party’s at fault, when in reality it’s OUR problem, not theirs. We chose to react to them. They didn’t do what they did TO us, they just did it, no matter what our head might want us to believe.

Every situation is completely & utterly neutral. Our thoughts surrounding it tell us a story about it. Our egos tell us something like “How dare they drive so slow!” or “Don’t they see how busy I am?”.  Or our egos will tell us a story about our partner’s intentions, like “He meant to ignore me all day.” These stories are all untrue egoic reactions stemming from taking something personally & then getting offended by it. Until we become willing to believe every situation is neutral, we will continue causing harm by walking around being offended by things. Mostly, that harm is in the form of harsh treatment of others, which then comes back to us as harsh treatment. We then wonder why people treat us badly. Well, there ya go! But, I digress.

If you’ve never tried NOT being offended, I challenge you to do it. For one full day, don’t react by taking offense of any kind to a person, place, thing or event. It’s that easy. Choose to have no reaction. Choose to be calm both inside & out. It’s not personal, so don’t make it that way. Do it & report back. It's a challenge.

"Become a person who refuses to be offended by anyone, anything, or any set of circumstances." - Wayne Dyer

The Voice & Our Conditioning

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As I used to say before I got present , “As long as I don’t argue with it and lose a fight, it’s okay”.  I belong to the recovery community and this voice, along with the varying characters of other voices (a.k.a. the angel, the devil, the peacekeeper, etc.), are collectively called the “shitty committee” usually because they have nothing to say other than criticism & judgment.

There’s a word for the voice(s). Most spiritual texts call it our ego. Not the ego of Freud or the ego of “you’re so conceited” - ego is the voice in your head that judges everything & labels situations good and bad. We are born without one. Before our parents have a chance to shape us, we run around not knowing what will hurt us, wanting to experience everything, and ignorant of societal rules.  Some of these rules are for our personal safety, like “look both ways before crossing the street” or “don’t touch a hot burner”. Most of the rules, though, are based on what our parents believe is good behavior, such as “good girls aren’t promiscuous”, “cursing is bad”, “being thin is attractive”, and “you must give gifts at holiday time”.  Those beliefs are based on cultural influences. They can do a lot of damage if we believe them, take them into adulthood & use them as our filter for everything in our lives.

The cure? Inspect them. Write them down & review them. Look at one. I’ll pick one very close to my life experience today – “Cursing is bad”. Is that true? Why is it true? I grew up in a very conservative Pentecostal family in Texas. I was told cursing was bad, especially the “F” word. I called my sister an “idiot” and my mouth was washed out with soap. You know what I took from that experience? “Idiot” is a bad word. I shouldn’t let anyone HEAR me use it. I should keep my judgments to myself. Now, that’s a lot of “shoulds”, isn’t it? The word “should” is a sign of conditioning & is a red flag for me these days. Anyway, I doubt my parents meant to teach me those things, but without a lecture on what they DID mean, my young mind grasped that erroneous lesson. I had to undo that later on.

So, I’m back to “cursing is bad”.  Is it true? Hmmm… NO. The facts of it are this: A so-called “bad” word is really just a few letters strung together & assigned a definition by society. For instance, “fuck” is four letters assigned the definition, well, many definitions. Look it up. I am amazed at how many slang definitions it has. People in America label the use of certain words as “bad” when they are simply words. The word itself is not bad. It’s bad because we think it’s bad. People don’t inspect that thought, so they go around shaming people who use curse words. There is no shame in them unless we choose to accept the shame. If we grew up believing we were bad to use them, we will accept the shame & think we’re bad. It’s quite damaging in the long run don’t you think? I can testify to it.

The only thing “bad” about a curse word is if we use it to hurt another person. In this vein, any word can be turned into a curse word. If my kids (I have two teenage boys) use “fuck” in a funny context or to illustrate the importance of something, I have no issue with that. It is simply a word. The only reason society calls it “bad” is because they’ve singled out several words and teach everyone they are “bad”. Now, I’ve taught them to treat others nicely or as they would like to be treated. In a perfect world, they would do that & never use the word “fuck” in a hurtful way to another person. Of course, they’re only learning & they use it improperly, although not as much as I thought they would. It is remarkable how little curse words are used for harm when the stigma of using them is removed altogether.

I looked at my conditioning around cursing. I found it baseless & simply a tool for control. Once I removed that thought from my conditioning, it no longer bothered me to hear curse words, unless they were used to inflict harm. Once I taught my boys the same thing, they react very seldom to those words anymore. That button no longer exists on them.

Now, that’s one example from my own experience. I don’t know about you, but until I could quiet my mind, the voice in my head (my ego) had something to say about nearly everything. It literally began to drive me crazy. We can use these same tools on any judgment our ego comes up with it. The key is to see it for what it is - a thought. You don't have to own it or react to it and therefore, cause harm. Just see the thought for what it is. See the conditioning that goes with it.

Believe you are not your thoughts. The only pain around an experience is the pain we create in our thoughts about the experience.

Are you ready to let go of everything your ego has you believing? It's an experience, but you have to be willing. You have to give up. The ultimate paradox - you must surrender to win. But that's another entry for another time.

For now, just know you aren't your thoughts.

What is Peace to Me?

As I sat here wondering what to make this first blog entry about, the first feeling that came to me was "Peace is what your signposts point to, but peace means different things to everyone. What does it mean to you?" But then, my silly thoughts began tossing that around & judging it, ridiculing it, labeling it, all kinds of ridiculous nonsense like that, because, well, that's what thoughts do. There was a time not too long ago when I would've bought into those thoughts & let them rule my behavior. Instead, I watched them. I waited to see what those thoughts told me to do or not to do. I let it pass & then I began writing this. So, here I am now, writing about what peace means to me.

Mostly, peace means staying calm, both inside & outside, no matter what life throws my way. For instance, in the last 24 months, my life has run the gamut of experiences. Close friends and/or family - killed themselves or died, were diagnosed with life-threatening diseases, had surgery, moved in, moved out, cut themselves, ran away, divorced, were unfaithful, had sexual identity crises, relapsed into substance abuse, etc. Some happened within my immediate family & others happened outside of it. A few times, the situation brought me to tears & with that, a lot of fear. But for the most part, I could see the situation was transient, as it always is. I was able to remove my emotions from the situation, maybe not immediately, but shortly thereafter, and regain a feeling of "alright-ness".

So for me, peace means to be able to find stillness or that quiet place in between thoughts, despite the craziness that is life, at times. No matter what, I'm able to still the fear & be okay with whatever is happening. After all, if something is going on it will do so whether I like it or not. To resist it by getting upset, arguing, name-calling, making up stories, is simply making a challenging situation even more challenging. Why do that? It makes no sense. The key is to NOT resist what is. To accept it fully, inside & out, even if it's scary or extremely sad. This also includes other emotions often labeled "positive" by society, such as excitement & anticipation. The point is not to align so closely with an emotional reaction, regardless of what it is, to the extent it becomes who I am or what I do.

Peace means being able to see my thoughts for what they are - ideas & conditioning - & ignore the reaction they want me to give. I don't want to resist the thoughts, but simply to "watch" them. I want to see the reaction they suggest, but not give into it. I want to let those thoughts pass & be able to laugh at what they wanted me to do. I then want to move on, past the thoughts, to a more relaxing, peaceful state.

 

I couldn't agree more. I would add "and mind" to the end of this & then, it would be perfection. This is what peace means to me & it's what this blog's signposts will point to.

What does peace mean to you?