Battling my Ego

[lisacaron 5,075]

When you read the word Ego…what do you think of? Some arrogant self-righteous holier than thou person? OK you would be right, that’s me. That is also YOU.

We all have an ego, it’s that part of us that we identify with that can be good or bad but mostly it keeps us contained. It’s thoughts of what is good and bad what is right and wrong are rigid. They are set in opposition to enlightenment and growth. Perhaps we do this because we need the challenge and who better to challenge us then ourselves?

After all do we listen to our parents, our children, our teachers our Doctors when they tell us to do this this way or that way and that there is no other way because they said so?! Or do we learn our lessons best when we push against the boundaries of what we know or think to be true?

The ego puts us in a box, and it’s our job to lift the lid no matter how many bricks we have piled on top of it, or baggage we stowed on top of it we must pick it apart and lift the lid. Eventually to free ourselves from the box to live the life we were meant to live.

So I have found myself battling this ego of mine, there are days when I really think it’s beating me and I am just so darn tired I want to allow the box to stay closed and just lie down at the bottom until all the baggage falls in and crushes me. I want to stop trying to hold it all up! I have a strong will, a strong sense of self, and yet……and in that moment I had an epiphany!

These are the very things that are holding me back. I am trying to lift a lid off this box it’s laden down with box upon box upon box of which I find myself at the bottom of. Holding it all up, and of course I am weakening! I am not meant to hold up all of this!!

It has to drop, I have to let go!! How to let go without being crushed? Maybe because of my ignorance I deserve to be crushed beneath the weight that I have chosen to take on!!! And so the pity party has begun!!! Lisa has RSVP’d and decided to bring all the cake and Cookies and candy and make sure she ate her share of them all!!!

Zing…. there it was again, that nagging feeling that this is my ego talking. My ego wants to sustain the pity party and keep me in that box. Keep me laden down with all this weight, keep that control at all costs.

I admit it, I caved and I am cowering at the bottom of the box. My hands are curled around the peppermint candy and fresh baked cookies and as that little zap of enlightenment hit, I realized that the celling did not cave in. I am still here, yes I am at the bottom of this box. Yes I lost sight of what’s outside as I let go of the lid, but I have realized that if I am busy using all my strength to simply hold up the lid with all the weight piled high on top of it, there is no way I will ever get out!

So today, right now my friends this tiny insight has put a hole in the box. It’s a tiny hole, I can see the light, and I can see a little more clearly what I am working with and what I must do. My next step is not to try lifting that lid again no matter how tempted I am. My next step is to recover., to heal, to breath to understand this part of my journey and to let it be. To be comfortable enough in this box to know it well enough that I can begin to dismantle and remove the weight on top of it that holds me in.

Yes it may be one tiny peppermint sized bit at a time, and I know my ego is going to fight me every step of the way. I has beaten me back a bit…but if I can use my strength not only change what is but to affect what is I know I will find success.