How many times during a single week do you ask, “When am I going to find that tiny something that’s going to finally bring me happiness?”
You are far from being alone on this one—stand in the center of any mall or downtown and 85% of the bodies walking by resemble Hollywood Zombies lurking through the streets of nowhere willing to bite but knowing it won’t make things right.
Ever heard of the term: Lose yourself to find yourself?
As extremely difficult as it comes across, the act of letting go of the need to emphasize your form takes from your hallow halls of unrehearsed and well hidden depressions and turns them into incredible opportunities of growth.
Outside our comfortable shores the rest of the world is brilliant when describing American’s as egomaniacs. What we see, we’ve get. What we can’t own pulls us deep below. Jobs, video games, hot cars, speedy recoveries to a national financial crisis…life would be so much better if everything around us didn’t infect or affect our way of living.
That’s ego…
Author and fellow spiritualist Eckhart Tolle scratches into the chalkboards hanging loosely inside our skull, “The true need is not ego.”
By learning to let go of what you assume makes you look, feel and come across as being an object much bigger than People Magazine’s sexiest people on earth—a truer self starts to emerge.
I grew up hating my stepfather. I couldn’t stand the idea my mother fell deeply in love with a man who didn’t live in an unforgettably beautiful house with perfectly painted walls, three or four bathrooms and a garage that featured a real basketball court rather than a makeshift chunk of plywood. My eighth birthday party was spent sitting on the chunked up concrete driveway blessed with grease stains and a 2x8 plank stretched between two sawhorses being the table for the few that showed up to eat off. The only gift I got was a broken clock which the stepfather exclaimed, “It’s the greatest gift anyone can have! Learn how to fix it and become wiser on your journey to getting my age.”
The man always came across as being powerfully happy. Absolutely no ego. He’d create something with his hands in the wood shed and people gasped at its grand beauty only to see him look around at his tiny helpers and say, “These are the real stars, they brought me your ideas.”
When face to face with a crushing blow to the ego, we feel horrible, as if we’ve just lost something. But according to Tolle, the opposite has occurred. Losing yourself to find yourself is the proper path to chase. We all work in patterns! Your workday followed by the chapters written at home create a continuation of nothing more than the same thing over and over again. When you let go of a pattern, you de-emphasize who you are on the level of form and who you are beyond form.
You become less by becoming more.
A good example…I’ve ghosted a radio career for thirty years and haven’t moved an inch when it comes to gaining ground on my childhood dreams. The only thing I’ve accomplished is the art of making other people happy. Every day my ego screams, “You’re a failure! Even if you gave 10% of your dedication away it’s still 300 times more than the average Joe Blow and what have you gotten for it? I do 100 pushups a day to crack the snake skin on my back so I can break free of these feelings.” Ego...
As Mom always says, “Get over it and get back in the real world.”
She’s right! In the real world, most people have dealt with or are currently facing the beast with no idea how to stop bumping into its shadow. A magazine article recently unveiled a 2009 American crisis—mothers who are secret alcoholics—they are drunk by day and dry by night. While drunk, some of them drive and in a few states they’ve gotten into fatal car accidents shocking their family’s when it’s learned their blood alcohol level was triple the legal limit.
We are addicted to how other people see us.
Obviously the stepfather wasn’t because that house should’ve been featured on reality TV’s Extreme Makeover.
We pull off daily enhancers to heighten the ego—the act of creating an impression has sickened the workplace—a world blessed with constant change so in reality knowledge isn’t really power or you’d see less people getting canned in the upper ranks of corporate managing.
Learning how to identify the ego button is incredibly easy—if you feel the urge to become angry when someone asks you to do something….ego. If you are easily offended because those hot new shoes or laptop didn’t get the approval of your friends…ego. If lots of time has been spent trying to mentally and physically get things right without complaining….ego. If your passion is to come across and or appear important at home, work or while playing…ego.
Look for the patterns. I laugh a hearty laugh when I look back at the events of this past summer. For nearly two years I protested the act of wearing my second degree black belt in class, calling it a major ego magnet. I was out to prove martial arts meant more than the color of
your belt. Then I decided to step up and take my 3rd degree test—two weeks after the announcement I was hit by a heart attack. My ego has had a horrible time trying to adjust to the idea that it didn't get fed. Only to learn, a body that doesn’t want to work the way it once did is a journey in but not without.
Look for the patterns then shatter one. Know the feeling of what its like to hold less while feeling like you own more.
Getting back to living…steal my art.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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