Happy Monday Friend 🙂
Today I want to share with you something that came through me the other day. My purpose in sharing this is not to have you agree with me. Not to have you share in my point of view or even to have you believe in what I am saying. I do not want for you to take these words as anything but a fiction, a map, a creative expression. Read to be entertained, not to be convinced of anything. Then, if you are stirred, go look for what I am speaking about within your own experience. If not, allow it to be a nice story.
After years of contemplation, spiritual seeking, personal growth and development work, therapy and God knows what else, I have come to a conclusion about life.
I have come to the conclusion that life is HELL BENT on destroying me.
To be more specific, life is hell bent on destroying my ego.
To come closer to the truth - as close as one can with words - life is hell bent on destroying my unrelenting, unbroken, uncompromising and absolutly exclusive identification with my ego structure.
Now, I want you to know that for as long as I can remember, there was never any comfort for me in my ego.
There was no soft or tender spots within it.
No cocoons or meadows of flowers to lie in.
No real moments of pleasure or peace or even quiet placation.
It was all sharp edges.
All thorns.
All anxiety, pain, despair, searching, hungering and aching.
Of course there were fleeting moments of reprieve from the pain - moments of connection or union with others, moments of forgetting my experience, moments of 'fun' - but they were few and far between. I was, generally speaking, a miserable human being - all things considered.
Yet even as life tried with all its might to destroy this ego structure that was so painful, it still felt like evidence that this life was cruel. Mean. Unforgiving and fully lacking any real grace or love. I felt like I was going to have to let go of everything I had ever held dear, I was going to have to sacrifice everything and lose what little I felt I could cling to and call 'good.'
I was right. And it hurt. Like fucking hell.
That is, until life killed just enough of my identification, that I was able to see the real game that was being played.
That life was doing its life thing, in order to liberate me. To set me free from the cage.
At this point, I got excited and started to get out ahead of life. No longer did I resist the things that were causing my ego to die, I started to seek those things out. I ran after them. I got zealous about the whole ego destruction thing. I got good at it, and I was at a place where everything was being burned, and I was the one who was throwing it all in the fire.
I moved constantly.
I got rid of almost everything I owned - and continued to downsize periodically.
I sat for hours upon hours in meditation - looking at my deepest, darkest, most painful thoughts, emotions and experiences - and I felt them, fully, without running away.
I started to seek out all the places I defended myself, all the places I worked to uphold my image, all the places I lied, cheated, stole and manipulated.
I came face to face with all the places I had abdicated my responsibility, and submitted to the conditioning and authority of others. To all the places I believed I was 'wrong' and someone else was 'right.'
I looked for the areas where I had made myself 'right' and others 'wrong.' All the places where I blamed, projected, was competitive and contrary.
In essence I looked for all the bullshit inside of me. What I found was there was a lot of it.
I realized all that bullshit had to go, if I wanted to have a shot at joy.
After man, many months of this 'ego death' that I did not even know was an ego death, I realized something. That my ego, this creation, this energy that I call "I" was not being destroyed. Not really. It was doing its 'matter' thing - it was obeying the laws that govern 'stuff' which states that it cannot be created nor destroyed, only transmuted.
My ego was not going anywhere. It was simply being put in its rightful place.
You see, this life here is a costume party - and no one gets to come without a costume. That would be rude. The layers of bullshit did not have to be a part of the costume, but I still had to wear a costume none the less.
What really was taking place here, was life helped me put everything in its place. Is helping me put everything in its place as this process continues to unfold.
The Ali (or Alyssa) that you know, isn't going anywhere. She also is not going to be stuck in any one place, as transmutation is the name of this game. There is no permanence to this ego, and nor should there be. That would be to resist life.
Now, I am simply parting with the belief that the costume is 'me'.
I do not need it to be any one way all the time. To look any one way. To behave any one way. I don't need you and I to agree on what this costume is - your perception of it does not have to align with my perception of it. I am releasing the idea that there is any right or wrong way for this costume to be. I am letting go of anyone having to relate to it in any particular manner.
I do not look to the costume for steadiness, for assurance, for identity, for permanence, for spirit, for truth - because that is not the point of the costume.
The costume has many, many fun attributes to it. As I let go of all the things that the costume couldn't do for me, I started to figure out all the awesome things that it can and does.
The costume allows me to express. To experience. To try new things. It is the vehicle that allows me to connect with others.
All the layers of my costume - my body, mind, emotions, intellect - all have something for me to discover, each one teaches me something about myself.
The costume is not absolute, but it points to the absolute, and it expresses aspects of it. That is a beautiful thing.
That truth resides, it is, and it is what wears the costume having no form or symbol or name. (This is a crude description, but I am limited by language here so bare with me)
I now journey towards fully identifying with both the costume, and what wears that costume. In their rightful places.
Now, this destruction, this forced dis-identification, that felt so cruel at one time, now remains as the only shred of evidence that there is love and grace in this universe.
So why should you care about this rambling?
Because life is coming after you too.
It is coming after you, because there is only love in existence.
<3
