I am reading Pema Chodron's book, "Taking a Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears.
She writes,
"There are many ways to discuss ego, but in essence it's what I've been talking about. It's the experience of never being present. There is a deep-seated tendency, it's almost a compulsion, to distract ourselves, even when we're not consciously feeling uncomfortable. There's a background hum of edginess, boredom, restlessness. As I've said, during my time in retreat where there were almost no distractions, even there I experienced this deep uneasiness."
"The Buddhist explanation is that we feel this uneasiness because we're always trying to get ground under our feet and it never quite works. We're always looking for a permanent reference point, and it doesn't exist. Everything is impermanent. Everything is always changing - fluid, unfixed, and open. Nothing is pin-down-able the way we'd like it to be. This is not actually bad news, but we all seem to be programmed for denial. We have absolutely no tolerance for uncertainty."
"It seems that insecurity is ego's reaction to the shifting nature of reality. We tend to find the groundlessness of our fundamental situation extremely uncomfortable. Virtually everybody knows this basic insecurity, and often we experience it as horrible. With me in that same three-year retreat was a woman with whom I'd once been close friends. Something had happened between us, though, and I felt now that she hated me. We were in a very small building together, we had to pass each other in the narrow corridors, and there was no way to get away from each other. She was very angry and wouldn't talk to me, and that brought up feelings of profound helplessness. My usual strategies were not working. I was continually feeling pain of no reference point, no confirmation. The ways I had always used to feel secure and in control had fallen apart. I tried all the techniques I had been teaching for years, but nothing worked."
"So one night, since I couldn't sleep, I went up to the meditation hall, and sat all through the night. I was just sitting with raw pain with almost no thoughts about it. Then something happened: I had a completely clear insight that my whole personality, my whole ego-structure, was based on not wanting to go to this groundless place. Everything I did, the way I smiled, the way I talked to people, the way I tried to please everybody - it was all to avoid feeling this way. I realized our whole facade, the little song and dance we all do, is all based on trying to avoid the groundlessness that permeates our lives."
"By learning to stay, we become very familiar with this place, and gradually, gradually, it loses its threat. Instead of scratching, we stay present. We're no longer invested in constantly trying to move away from insecurity. We think that facing our demons is reliving some traumatic event or discovering for sure that we're worthless. But, in fact, it is just abiding with the uneasy, disquieting sensation of nowhere-to-run and finding that - guess what?- we don't die; we don't collapse. In fact, we feel profound relief and freedom." Pema
Isn't it interesting to see her view point of ego, of not wanting to feel the unease of living groundless and changing. The part of us that wants to ground your life in a certain feeling is the only one with the trouble, for feelings are moving....and changing, and life is not stuck in one spot....even though often it seems like our lives are stuck, we only imagine they are.
I was lucky to have experienced the free falling, feeling of no ground, and panic...only to find that that is the true nature of living.
"This too shall pass..." is the state of being. Being present is to get used to feeling the static uneasy and not find a permanent reference point. We want to hold onto something that will NEVER change! And that alone, is impossible. Somehow, we have grabbed onto addictions and habits that we believe will bring us permanence, when the only thing permanent is our habitual actions...while life hums along groundlessly changing beneath us.
We grow old, people die, fall out of love, into love, feel sad, feel happy, it moves and ebbs and flows and we pile layers of habit on top...focusing only on that, believing life lives there....it is only a camouflage over life. Ego I guess lives in habit, while our souls thrive in ever changing uncertainty....free and relieved from being grounded.
