"Attention, Flight Director Lucky. Your ego trip has been cancelled."
Kabbalah Schooling, days 7, 8, 9 and 10
Not to sound overly dramatic or anything, but I feel kind of like the emperor when he discovers he’s not wearing any clothes. Or… have you seen that episode of The Simpsons where Homer thinks he’s being a charming and witty house party host, only to wake up the next morning and find he was anything but, and Marge is ramming him in the head with the vacuum cleaner? Like that. Or… you know how in Buffy the Vampire Slayer when Angel – and later, Spike – regains his soul, he's suddenly acutely aware of all the damage and pain he's caused over the years? Yeah, that too.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not whining (all that much) and I realize this is all for a greater good. But man, does it ever suck to have the lights go up at last call and realize your beer goggles have deceived you. (Okay, enough with the analogies.)
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So session seven was all about ego and opponent, which are essentially the same thing. How much does it suck to realize that often times your greatest enemy is yourself? I think I always knew that on some level, because I can be the master of self sabotage when I want to. But I guess the difference is that now I don’t want to be, so now I really realize how I have been. In my workbook there’s this whole list of how to “Find Your Ego,” and I found myself marking a check next to nearly each and every point. Focuses on what society thinks is important for me? Yeah, I’ve done that. Desires power and forces control? Been there, have the t-shirt. Makes you feel worthless? Hello, most of my childhood and all of my 20s. I’ll spare you the full list. You probably know the rest.
As much as it’s agonizing to do, I really get a lot out of going through the workbook and writing down things in a problem solving kind of way. Like for session seven, I had to identify where – and at whom – I still have anger, jealousy, judgment, etc. in my life. And then I had to identify where my ego ran me. Session eight continued the fun with the concept of crushing my ego, where it pressed me to write about what I can do to embarrass myself. First thing I wrote? “Blogging about this whole experience.” Seriously. But what the hell? I’m human, I might as well show it. (There was also the "homework" where I had to do something to embarass myself in public, but I'd rather not detail how I picked my nose in a crowded pet store, thank you.)
Session nine looked at limitations of the reaction… so basically, how to stop your ego from making decisions for you, and taking a step back to have a breather and decide what the best approach is. I look back on the last five years of my life and see so much reaction, and so much of that reaction linked to this never-ending thirst for being liked. It feels really horrible and shallow, you know? I can see so many instances where I attempted to suck the life out of so many people (figuratively, not literally.) And the thing that sucks is I’m still doing it. Blessedly it’s to a smaller degree than it was even a year ago, but still. I feel like I should have this figured out by now… and then I stop myself and ask why, considering it’s programming that’s been inside me for 32 years. It’s not like I can just flick a switch and undo it just like that.
Anyway. Work for that session revolved around making choices and recognizing the difference between my ego making a choice for me, and me taking action instead of being reactive. For example, looking at situations where I short circuit and choosing a different action instead of how I reacted. Slowing down and actually having a thought process about what’s going on rather than being all, “I have to deal with this/reply to this/jump on this NOW!!”
Ugh.
Session ten actually made me happier, because thankfully we’re going to get out of this rolling-in-the-muck nonsense in another session or two. Good, because I can’t handle much more of looking at ways I’ve been a big jerk. I get it now – I don’t want to see anymore. In the process of discussing the power of discomfort and how it makes you make a change, I got to detail who and what in my life is alive versus dead (figuratively, not literally.) Then I looked at how I justify things in my life, and whether those justifications are really making me happy (they’re not, in case you were wondering.)
An interesting side note to all this: on Friday I went to yoga. As I was getting out of the car, I nearly fell over – my kidney area was in some not fun pain. And I couldn’t figure out why. I’ve been doing a cleanse of sorts, but I didn’t understand why it would have such an incredible reaction to me at the almost very end and out of nowhere.
At the end of class I talked with my teacher and asked her if she had any insight.
“Are you working on your ego?” she asked.
Funny you should say that…
“There is this part of us that really doesn’t want to change, even though the rest of us realizes it’s a good idea,” she continued. “I remember once when I had to make a change I didn’t really want to make, my kidneys got so painful that I couldn’t walk. Drink a lot of water and flush them out.”
I did. Friday was the worst, Saturday felt better, and this morning I was moving around almost like normal. I already drink a ton of water, so drinking more wasn’t a problem. But aside from that, I made no changes to my diet or what I ingested.
Hm.
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