Kabbalah Schooling, days 2 & 3.
My ego is a jerk.
Before we get to that, though, a little bit about what lesson two was about. Basically, the concept of the lecture was to open me up about whether my desires for my life were about immediate gratification or lasting fulfillment. I found myself stumped on this one, because naturally some of the things I want include financial freedom and a successful career… but my reason for wanting those things isn’t so much because I believe they’re the end all and be all or that I should be defined by them, so much as I want to have those things so that I don’t have to worry about them and can continue to focus on how I can expand to be of service to others (in a charitable sense, in a spiritual sense, whatever.) It took me a while to understand that there was a difference between my version of material wishing and the kind of material wishing that goes, “If I get a Mercedes, then finally everyone will see how successful I am and like me!” Yeah… no.
However. Lesson three decided to kick my ass in a way I thought it’d already been kicked, but I guess not. The essential message of lesson three was to learn how to see your blind spots. Not just the stuff that you take for granted or good things about yourself that you don’t acknowledge, but the cycles you repeat that are more detrimental to you than they are good. And one of the cycles I repeat is my sometimes desperate need for people to like me and validate me.
Welcome to my ego. Like I said, it’s a jerk.
So sitting here typing this out, I feel embarrassed and uncomfortable because I don’t really want to share this stuff with anyone. Now, I don’t really expect anything to come of sharing it. My ego, on the other hand, really wants you to e-mail me and tell me I’m good, I’m not weird, I’m loveable, I’m a hard worker, I’m a good writer, and whatever else kind of praise you could lavish on me. And that’s not to say that I don’t enjoy getting compliments – compliments are nice. But my ego is like this endless pit of nonsense. It can never get enough.
That’s been the theme of my whole week: teaching my ego to stop being such a life suck. It started with an interviewee who was mad at me for an article. The fact that he was mad at me turned my stomach, and I kept desperately trying to understand what it was that I could do to make him happy… so that he would stop being mad. So that he wouldn’t complain about me to other people, and make them not like me too. The whole time I was going through this experience I was thinking, “Why am I working so hard at this? Really?” It didn’t dawn on me until Saturday why that was, but I’ll get to that.
The next incident came from someone reading my blog who decided that I hadn’t written about them enough, or in the light they wanted to be written in… one of the two or maybe both, it wasn’t really clear to me. But at any rate, after I got off the phone with them I felt compelled to write something hugely long and glowing to make everything better… because god forbid someone not like me or think I’m a good person (not to mention, that issue really had nothing to do with me – it was their own ego trip.) I had to stop myself and think: was I doing this for me or for someone else to like me? When I realized it was the latter, all the internal chatter stopped.
Then came Saturday. As part of my Artist’s Way program, I’ve committed to taking myself on a date every week to do something fun that gets me out of the office and gives my brain a chance to have a rest. This week’s date was to go antiquing. I stopped in at this cool store that imports all its wares from overseas and wound up having a chat with the guy that worked there, discussing the finer points of Eat, Pray, Love. He thought she was overly self-centered. I told him, “Of course she was – it’s a memoirs about her life!” And then as an afterthought I added, “Gee, I wrote a memoirs, and I’m afraid to tell you that because you might call me self-centered too!”
As the words fell out of my mouth and tumbled onto the floor, I felt like an ass. It was like I was watching myself from another angle, or on TV. I wanted to shout, “No, don’t say that!” But there it was – my ego saying, “Hey! First you can tell me that I’m not self-centered, I’m actually great. And next, you can ask me where to get my book and what I wrote about, and tell me how great that is, too!”
Ugh. Ugh! Goddamn ego. It behaves so selfishly and needy and annoyingly. I mean, thank goodness that I’m so conscious of this inherent need in me, and now I can change that… but still – I hate when it plays itself out in such ugly, public ways. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Attention-seekingly dumb. To add insult to injury, I had to write about that experience in a notebook and write about what I would’ve done differently now that I know (like… not frigging bringing it up in the first place, because the conversation had nothing to do with me? Yeah, that might work.)
So you might be asking, “Okay, but what’s wrong with seeking attention or telling people about your book or whatever?” It’s all in the matter of how it’s done. I know when I’m acting in a way where I crave validation and someone telling me I’m awesome. It’s easy to do that. It’s harder to just stand in your center and be who you are, and allow people to be attracted to that. For example, on Friday I was out with friends and this woman kept gravitating toward me, saying she wanted to talk to me. I’m all for making new friends, as were the group I was with, so she hung out at our table for a while and shared that she was having a birthday. Then she asked me what my passion was. I said writing. She asked me what I’ve written, and I told her some of the things I’d done and told her about the book.
Tears filled her eyes. “Hi,” she said, indicating she was a survivor. “Wow. Thank you for writing that. I’m going to go get your book.”
And that’s the difference. I wasn’t looking for it, I wasn’t craving it. I was just telling her who I am, and she acknowledged and accepted me without me having to be pushy or needy for it.
Tomorrow’s lesson? Creating fulfillment.
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