Which is really 'the rich life?' Posted by John on January 11, 1999 at 16:03:03:
When I was a very young man, I had a sweet life. I got to live in all of the places I dreamed about--Casablanca, Madrid, Paris, Florence, Mexico City. I was paid American wages, and I lived rich. I had a penthouse in Casablanca, with three balconies, overlooking the Boulevard de Lorraine, where I lived for a wonderful year. I drove around Europe in a new Alfa Romeo. Wherever I wished to, I stopped and stayed. I did as I pleased. I guess you could call that a sweet life. But when I look at many photographs taken then, some of them pictures of me, wherever it is that my face shows up, I can see that I am tense, uptight, driven, posing, putting on an act. I can see that I am hollow. There's nobody home inside. I am striving. I am struggling. I am persistently intense. There is no awareness within. There is no center, no presence, no *being*, no mindful awareness.
I can see that I am sound asleep, caught up in an intense struggle with the world around me. Even when I worked for the morning paper in Honolulu, it was a sweet life. When I took my lunch break, I drove over to the beach, had a swim, ate my lunch, laid around in the sun and had plenty of time to get back to my desk for any assignments that afternoon. I had a sweet life, but I didn't know what living is. Again the pictures show me as it was: empty, no awareness, driven, uptight, striving, struggling with the world around me--even lying there on the beach--I lived in personality wars all the time.
Now, whenever I see my *self* struggling with the world around me, I try to wake up on it and see if there is anything else I can do, other than struggling. Those things in life that come up and bother us . . . they still *do* bother me. But as soon as I notice that I'm being bothered about anything, I immediately have a host of resources to throw into the game, to not be bothered and struggling about it any more.
I wouldn't trade the relative poverty of my life now for the riches of the life that I had as a young man. For one thing, now I wake up and realize that since I am being bothered or upset about something, my ego *has to be in the game*. Without the ego being in the game, there is *no such thing as being bothered and upset*. This is the way I get my riches now. I have a *rich life*. I look for what lies *underneath* my ego--in the essence and true self of my being. Then I try to get out of my ego and into that! And I keep trying until I do. For example, here are a few things that the ego wants:
Dictator: "I want to be in control of you."
Con Artist: "I want to be admired by you."
Judge: "I want you to agree that I'm right, and change."
Rebel: "I want you to stop spoiling the beauty of it."
Doormat: "I want you to ease up, and let me just lie here."
Believer: "I want to depend on you to give me security."
Martyr: "I want you to give me back as much as I give you."
Kind Helper: "I want you to be well, and not take any chances."
Contemplate these eight examples, if you will, and see if you can recognize any of them that may come up from time to time in you.
When these automatic ego needs don't have to be in the game, one has nothing to be bothered or upset about in one's relationship with another person. One is then simply in the position of relating with things *as they are*. That, in itself, can be tough. Yet, at least one is "*dealing with* the problem,"--reality, that is--instead of "*dealing from* your ego-reactions to the problem," if you see what I mean.
These automatic ego-reactions to problems may constantly tend to come up in anyone's life. They come up when we are wanting to control the other, impress the other, punish the other, reject the other, be left in peace by the other, depend on the other, be loved back by the other, or be able to stop worrying about the other. Clearly, it takes waking up in mindfulness from sleep and contemplating this, to be able to begin perceiving this.
The ego emerges when we want other people to be who we want them to be, instead of who they just happen to be being. And when we are doing that . . . . . we become bothered or upset. That's when we begin to start manipulating. The desires that come up in us are in our egos. The manipulations that we do are in our personalities. When one starts manipulating, the other manipulates back. *This* is the "personality war" that I am speaking about, that permeates ordinary human relations in sleep.
The ego emerges when we are wanting the other person to be who we are wanting them to be. This sheds further light on Martin Buber's definition of love: "Love is caring enough to take the sometimes painful experience of letting the other person be who they are." Do you see how these go together? Ego is comparable to Buber's "I and it," where one treats the other person as an object to be manipulated as one wants. True self is comparable to Buber's "I and Thou," in which one honors the being of the other person, and let's them be whoever they are--leaving them free to choose, too.
One might say, "Well, how would I ever get anything done with other people, if I didn't want them to be the way that I want them to be instead of the way that they are? How could I ever get along without manipulating? My kids, all the one's I love, my friends, my co-workers, boss, employees, strangers, people I hang out with where I go to have fun? How could I live with any of these people without trying to manipulate them to be who I want them to be? . . . . . Well . . . . . there is a way.
Part of the secret lies in first learning and then honestly telling other people who you really are, by sharing sincerely about what you like with them--yet, without wanting them to change for you! You simply be who you are, outfront. Let them get to know who you are. Then, let the chips fall where they may. See what happens.
The awareness game depends on this and other strategies for the peace, harmony, companionship, cameraderie, collaboration, friendship and love that this game is supposed to be aiming at for students anywhere who may choose to play it.
You can speak up, sensitively, for who you are. You have to be very careful about leaving others free to choose to be who they are. This takes sensitivity, too. It is a bold game (that can often be exciting) for breaking through the ego entanglements that people often get into with each other, and establishing the harmony of true-self relating that is always possible instead.
At the heart of this is mindful experience-sharing instead of the usual manipulations. That is, you can always give saying who you are and letting others be who they are some practice play in your life, and see what comes of it for you, if you have a little patience with it. It is like "a new roll of the dice." Everybody gets to be who they are in the awareness game. And there can be harmony, too, perhaps, as they are getting to know each other. At least, they are getting to know you, if you will drop the manipulations and let them.
One of the most interesting things in this world, to me, is that there *are* other ways of approaching the upsets that humans have with each other, other ways than the usual arguments, fights, and wars that we get into when we become upset. The personality war doesn't have to go on unchallenged. And we *do have* the resources for trying out these other ways in the strengths and qualities of the essential true self that we were each born with (no matter what the complicated nature of one's life might be now).
It has taken me a rather long time over the course of my life to catch on more and more fully to these other ways of relating with troubling situations in life. I sure wish I could have known--when I lived in Casablanca, and Paris, and Honolulu in those younger years--that I had an ego. That would have explained so much to me. I could have had such a better time back then. I got to live in all those places, yet I "wasn't really there," if you know what I mean. There was "nobody home inside." I wasn't *really alive* while the living was going on. I wasn't awake. I wasn't *there* to take the full opportunity of it. It was all being asleep . . . . . non-vital like the photographs of it are today. I didn't know that I had an ego that was pulling my life into all those uptight and unhappy channels that made up the day-to-day story of my life, the "melodrama" of those years. I was so troubled by every *thing*, struggling with the world. And then, a few years after that, I was to meet Mits, and begin catching on.
Nowadays, as a coach of these kinds of things long afterwards, I certainly can say with sincerity to students that the sooner in life that a person catches on that it's their ego that pulls their life into upsets and suffering, the better. The best things in life really *don't* come along with all that ego stuff. At least, that's the way I experience it now. The best things in life come with what the true self likes, and is interested in. But to really start finding this out, one has to learn to recognize and step aside from the ego now and then. Mindfulness practice is the only way I know of to begin being able to do this.
Coach
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