I have had a few encounters in the last weeks that put me in touch with some people whose unhappiness and uneasiness of their inner life I could feel.
This uneasiness is often caused by not living according to our inner truth. We sometimes talk about people that “have a big ego”, when we think of self-centered people. But this is not the kind of ego I am speaking of here. I am talking about the idea we have of ourselves, the influential illusion that often dictates how we act. Encouraging the permanence of this illusion prevents us from really knowing ourselves and from experiencing life in a truthful manner. We have to realize that we are not a body with a soul but a spiritual being living an earthly experience through a human body.
This difference in perception changes how we experience life. As a spiritual being, we feel the connectedness to other people, we feel like we are a part of a whole and that what we to others, we really do to ourselves. We all have a spiritual guide inside ourselves. Listening to our inner core is not always easy but it is the way to be happy. Meditating bring us closer to this inner voice and gives us the opportunity to discover peace.
When we talk about forgiving, I have noticed that we look at it as something we should do for ourselves as well as for the other person. But once we understand that each person has “suchness”, meaning they are what they are, they act like they act, for no other reason than because that’s the way it is, once we understand that we don’t have to question but just accept, everything becomes easier. If you are attacked by a great big bear while walking in a forest, you will not feel offended by this attack. You will be fearful and maybe physically hurt but your ego will not be wounded. We should feel the same about the onslaughts of our fellow human beings when they happen. “We should protect ourselves, or get out of their way, but without feeling morally wronged”, as Castadena said in “The power of Silence”.
All the things that offend us are hurting our ego because they are affecting how we feel about ourselves, not because they are necessarily hurtful. They are playing on the idea we have of ourselves and of how the world should behave towards ourselves. Someone has broken our rules and has played on our sense of self-absorption. This is all an illusion. Even the idea of forgiveness is somehow twisted because there is nothing to forgive really once you realize that everyone is only trying to do their best with what they have in one particular moment. There is nothing to forgive once you realize that a certain event has moved into your past and is gone. There is no point in wallowing in it. The only way to go, the only direction to move is forward.
When you listen or live by your ego, you are building your life on a foundation of illusion, a life of mirrors where you are trying to keep up with the idea you are trying to project to the world, and also to yourself. This becomes very hard to live after a while, this need for constant reassurance of who you are as seen through other people’s eyes. Trying to keep the illusion, afraid something will shatter it, scared of gossip. This is not good. You have to discover your sense of self, meaning the sense of your spiritual self and live as truly as you can according to this understanding, instinctively following this true path.
If you let go of your ego, you will start seeing other human beings as they are rather than how you think they should be. You will start accepting people as they are and then will be able to choose what place you want them to take in your life.
I truly believe that everyone is special and nobody is special at the same time. We are but a wheel in the chain of life, each with a role to play and it is by following your true self and trying to crush the ego that you can really move forward and progress along your spiritual path.
All are not friends that speak us fair