I was talking with a friend not long ago. He was wrestling with something I know well, something I think most of us face: getting caught up in our results. On paper, it sounds simple. Obviously, you are not what you produce.
But living this out is anything but easy. Maybe it comes from our parents, our friends, our own karma, or just the society we live in. Many of us struggle with the daily anxiety that we must produce something meaningful for our lives to be meaningful.
When I write it down, it sounds crazy. So why does it still run so much of our lives?
About 10 years ago, I became increasingly aware of an entity that seemed to live inside my head. It’s judgmental, it’s harsh, and it always has something to say about what’s going on. Sometimes it likes what’s happening, but most of the time it just complains. No matter what, it ends up unhappy; either trying to hold on to what it likes or running from what it doesn’t.
For a long time, I thought this voice was me. Even now, in weaker moments, I still fall for that trick. But over time, I’ve started to see it for what it is: just the ego mind.
The ego sprouted up from a sense of separation from life. In the Bible, this is how I interpret the story of Adam and Eve. We became self-conscious, self-aware, and therefore separate from God. And in that separateness, we became afraid.
It wasn’t that God punished us for eating the fruit. The fruit itself was the punishment. Knowing good and evil is the heart of duality, and duality can only exist when we feel separate. Anything cut off from its source will suffer.
But that sense of being separate wasn’t a punishment. It was merely a consequence of losing touch with the source of life. Suddenly, we saw how small we were in a big world, and fear took over. From then on, we’ve been fighting and struggling to survive.
Of course, in the physical world, that voice in our head does serve its purpose. To navigate life efficiently, it can be helpful to categorize, label, judge, and interpret.
The problem isn’t having an ego. The trouble starts when we think we are the ego. It gives us bad advice, tells us lies, and we keep listening because we think it’s us. Michael Singer calls it the roommate in our head who never stops talking.
Sometimes we catch a glimpse of what’s behind the ego. But letting it go completely? That feels impossible. And honestly, I think it is, for if you look closely, who is it that’s trying to drop the ego? None other than the ego itself.
In this way, the ego is the ultimate trickster. It’s made a job for itself that never ends, because it keeps creating its own work. Eckhart Tolle gives the example of a police chief searching for an arsonist, not realizing he’s the arsonist himself.
Why does the ego do this? I think it’s always trying to prove it matters, so we won’t get rid of it.
Life made us, and it will go on without us. We made the ego, so we can live without it. But the ego can’t live without us. Thus, it keeps trying to show how important it is. Like any successful parasite, it feeds on its host without the host realizing it’s even there.
And therein lies the problem. When we identify with the ego, which is constantly trying to assert its importance to survive, it’s no surprise that we exhibit the same unhealthy patterns. To the ego, relevance is required for its existence. So, of course (though not naturally), we feel the same.
That’s also why fighting the ego never works. Who is it that’s fighting? It’s still the ego. That’s why fighting just makes it stronger.
Then what do we do?
Ignore it. An ignored guest doesn’t stay for long.
But even that is easier said than done. It’s hard to ignore something we think is us.
Therefore, to be free, maybe we have to let go of who we think we are, so we can recognize who we really are.
Perhaps that’s why Eckhart Tolle told us that, “The secret of life is to ‘die before you die’ — and find that there is no death.”
The scariest part of my journey was realizing that everything I believed—even who I thought I was—wasn’t true. That moment was simultaneously terrifying and liberating.
This poem came to me during one of the intensives at the ashram in India where I lived.
We had been talking about death in all its forms. I was sitting outside the Satsang hall, watching the leaves on a tree, and suddenly this poem burst out of me.
It was the first poem I ever wrote, and it’s still my favorite.
The fall I am beginning to brown, my time has come. All used up, I’ve served well. But I fear the fall, I’m not ready to go. So I cling hard to this branch, it’s all that I know. But to struggle is futile, of this I am sure. What’s left is to relax. Release. And as that gentle breeze comes, it finds me ready. To fall is so natural. And only once I’ve landed do I realize— I was the tree all along.
So, back to the original opening of this reflection. How do we free ourselves from attachments to results? Perhaps to be free from attachment has nothing to do with letting go of results. Rather, it has to do with letting go of the false identity that believes it has to do in order to be.
Perhaps freedom is realizing that I’m not a lonely leaf. For though the leaf might seem separate, it’s only in appearance. In time, it comes from, and inevitably returns to, its source. How could it be anything but the tree itself?
The Upanishads remind us, “What delusion, what sorrow, can there be
for one who sees this oneness of all things?”
Do I have the courage to die to my past and to any notion I’ve had of the future? Once who I think I am dies, then perhaps who I Am can shine through the opening.
Love,
Shane
