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August 4

Wrestling with the Ego

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Dear Jeff, I have a question for you.

How do I wrestle with and or quiet the voice of self importance that does not want to allow me to meditate?

I realize just the act of sitting and the commitment to the practice is key and with time...blah blah, but is there a trick to shut up the ego?  

Blessings,

AA 

There is a beauty to our meditation that is unlike other practices I have attempted over the years, and that is the idea of effortlessness. We absolutely refuse to use effort to control the mind or to hold onto the mantra. If the mind has a thought, and it would take effort on my part to keep the mantra rather than to think the thought, I let the mantra go and have the thought, following it down the stream of thoughts until I come to that place where I realize, 'Ah, I'm meditating! Where's the mantra?' This is our ideal. A complete lack of effort. We allow the mind to work the way the mind works. We allow the mantra to arise with the same effortlessness with which we have any other thought. And we recognize that thoughts in meditation are evidence of stresses leaving the body. In fact, if we take a look at our process, we will see that it is not the fact of thoughts in meditation that is bothersome to us; rather it is our idea that they shouldn't be there that is bothersome.

Now here is something that we can actually 'wrestle' with (though not in meditation. No wrestling there.). Nearly everyone who comes to learn Vedic meditation has an idea that the actual practice of meditation, the 20 minutes seated with the eyes closed, should consist of an empty mind; that if I am thinking in meditation, I am doing something wrong. Where did this thought come from? More to the point, why do I believe this thought deserves my attention and my endorsement? Why do I find myself unable to hear the instruction that thoughts in meditation are natural, normal and evidence of stresses leaving the body?

We make the mistake of identifying with the mind. The mind thinks. It explains the world to me. This is its main function. It is not who I am. It uses its history to understand the present, then reduces the present to some idea that will help it, i.e. the ego, be safe. This means that anything new, anything it has not had experience with before, is going to be seen as dangerous. It tells me what I should and shouldn't be doing, and why; but it changes continually. Truth is that which never changes. Our mind is the furthest thing from that.

For example, I try on a pair of pants I haven't worn for a while. They won't button. Oops. Too many Oreos. I feel terrible. Ashamed. Fat. Uncomfortable. Unhappy with myself. What would make me happy? To be thinner. To be able to fit into my pants. In my mind I commit, 100%, to eating properly and getting in shape. I do the research, buy the proper supplements, join the gym, find a food plan that works for me. Then about five days later, or two weeks later, I'm sitting one afternoon, feeling a little blue, a little sorry for myself because I haven't been getting enough attention, and my mind suggests to me that what I really need is a little bit of comfort. And what would be comfort? Yes, indeed. An Oreo. But wait. Remember? I say inside my mind. We agreed that Oreos would be bad, that getting thin would be good. Oh, come on, says my mind. You're an adult. You can have an Oreo. What's one Oreo going to hurt? Really? Are you sure? Yes, really. Geez, you need some comfort. Well okay...

And so I go buy some Oreos. Double Stuff, because if you're going to have one Oreo, it should be a good one. Then I get home and open the pack and have one, and indeed, it tastes great. So great that I have another, and another, and another until I get to the point where I can't eat any more, and that same mind that helped walk me down the path toward Oreo Hell now is using its voice of disgust and judgment, telling me what a hopeless loser I am, I'll never get into those pants, so I might as well give up, and I believe the voice again and agree that I am a hopeless loser, and boy now I really need comfort and there are still some of those Oreos left, and...

There is a place and a function for the ego and for the mind. We are here on this earth as individuals, learning our lessons, learning how to love and to be loved. Walking through it all with the ego is part of the journey.

Meditation gives us the experience of being something other than the ego. This is dangerous to the ego, and so the ego is going to tell us to knock it off in every way it can. What we must foster in ourselves is the experience of watching this happen without identifying with that voice. As we learn to do this, we begin to become aware of something else that we are. Because if I can see the source of this voice as over there, as something other than me, then I am not constrained to identifying with it. This is the beginning of freedom.

And again, in meditation itself, as we sit there for our twenty minutes, we can have mantra and thought, or just mantra, or just thought. In every case we take it as it comes, without effort and without judgment. And we go back to our meditation teacher and report that we're having too many thoughts in meditation, and we let him or her remind us of all the stresses we're letting go of, evidenced by these thoughts in meditation, and remind us that if we must judge our meditation, we judge by how we feel after we're done, not by how many thoughts we're having. After my meditation, do I feel calmer, more relaxed? Do I feel a bit more ready to face my day? Do I feel as if I've done something good for myself? Am I glad I meditated?

Today I will ask myself, if I am not these voices/thoughts in my head, if I am not these opinions, then what am I?

Rock, Racetrack, Death Valley, CA