Self-deception, self-delusion, self-sabotage, self-revulsion.
The ego and its need to keep up appearances is a powerful thing.
Aligned to this reality, the ego is a fragile voice that can wage war within and even prevent us from looking in the very direction of those things that would most benefit us.
It is clever and relentless in its task and will employ fear and demotivation, resistance and pain to thwart our focus. If it sees something as threatening its own perception or wavering reality, it will, regardless of the impact on us, simply refuse to allow or entertain it.
Many a person has had strong feeling they have ignored or downplayed because shame or guilt, humiliation or embarrassment has been invoked to control us. Ask many people who struggled with their sexuality or identity and they can seemingly surf the wake of their issues for years at a time, as though in the slipstream of life unable to make sense of it or act on it.
Perhaps it is confronting, even fear provoking that the discomfiture is arresting and they turn away, or at other times the power of the ego to suppress and smear with ambivalence things that matter can leave someone feeling unfeeling, listless and ambiguous, as if rudderless and directionless in the sea of life just being pulled and pushed here and there, effectively lost.
Being lost we find that deeper states like depression or anxiety, loneliness and fear can arise to keep us insular and further flame feelings of inadequacy and failure or of low self-esteem and confusion.
This is a cycle that even the ego is unwilling to relent if it feels that its prime purpose of pride, control and image is to remain intact.
Often, who we are is what we feel or are drawn to be and if we have denied those feelings we can often be limiting the fullness of ourselves. Yet, conversely, if we are off the mark and unaware, or our intuition is mis-calibrated, we can mistake our feelings for truth when they are simply run-off distorted programs that reflect suboptimal outcomes, which is something that Mas Sajady explains quite well in his programs and teachings.
Yet, when we face our own shadow and look at what we have done, often through periods of aloneness, we see golden threads of truth and repeated messages of who we are, which reveal how we can live a life that aligns more closely to that which would be fulfilling and nourishing in ways that are healthy, healing and happiness promoting.
What do you deny about yourself and what do you write down as experience you long to experience from your heart? Often, a list and lists are written at key junctures of stress or crisis in our life, or when we stop; yet, when the wheel of life turns again, how many of those things on the list are put off, pushed back or simply shelved?
Those things on the list are often the musings of our own heart that reflect those things that would balance and enhance our lives in untold and unimaginable ways. Yet, unlike the mind, they do not preach and surge forward forcefully, which is why it takes a patient and aware mind to notice and then to realise that those things are indeed the treasures within seeking to be expressed and explored more fully so our real self can come to the surface in beautiful ways.
Here’s to enriching, enhancing and enlivening our lives!