Day 328: Culture of Ego

 

Through utilizing the tool of self honesty as self introspection, I began to see that we live in a society where ego, selfishness and self interest is promoted extensively. It has become so pathological that within our interaction with others, we almost feel obliged to feed each others ego’s by finding ways to make others feel good about themselves. We observe and learn from a young age that: “If I can do something to produce this positive feeling within another person, then they will like me and favor me, I will be rewarded and recognized for this.”

 

People need to be reassured that they are special and that the identities they have created for themselves to survive by ‘being somebody in this world’ are in fact real and valid – people need validation. So we commend males on aspects of their masculinity, like for instance how we worship male athletes. We commend women on their femininity, that they are beautiful and pretty. We even try to commend children with over-exaggerated praise, as if they require the same validation that we as adults do.

 

The reason I am writing about this point is that I have seen this tendency in myself, but especially with regards to recognizing and complimenting female ‘beauty’ – appearances. But we all know how deceiving appearances can be. As aforementioned, the reason when tend to feed each others ego’s is because we believe we can somehow benefit from it, and in the case of a male recognizing the beauty of a female, the intent here is to feed their ego’s, which will hopefully reflect well on the male. Blinded by our own selfishness and desire, what we foolishly fail to realize is that we are partaking in a game of selfishness where everybody is secretly competing for their own self interest, their own personal success that does not regard the success of others equally.

 

Naively, I played the game and extensively fed the ego’s of some of the women that I lusted for – not realizing the true, twisted and evil nature of ego, not realizing the game I was playing and the danger I was placing myself in, by believing that I am partaking in something beautiful and wonderful, because maybe my desires were being met for a time, not realizing the ‘monsters’ within both of us that I was feeding. Ego, the larger it gets, can really take on some monstrous proportions, and that is why, once the veil of love and beauty is lifted because the tricks we use in playing this game no longer work and the energy runs out, things turn nasty and what was once a relationship of fake love turns into hate and war.

 

Of course this true nature of ego is hidden from the eyes, and the game is promoted so extensively as ‘normal’, and the feelings that we get from each other when we stimulate our egos is just so intoxicating , that this all can seem very innocent, far from what I have described above. Unfortunately, many who are intoxicated with these feelings or consumed by the shortsightedness of their own self interest will not consider what I am saying, to prevent calamity. Those who have gone through the consequences of participating in these games, and have the self respect to say ‘enough’, may consider and even relate to what is being shared here. Coming from a male who was raised to be obsessed with female beauty and conditioned to worship and pursue it, if it is possible for me to reconsider, then surely anyone can. Ego has become so ‘picture-based’ and ‘look-based’, that every single time we believe we are just recognizing a pretty picture, we should stop to realize and consider that we are actually recognizing and validating much more than just an image, but rather that we are supporting and validating the ‘image and likeness’ of ego.

Day 253: What the hell is wrong with you?!

Today I am writing about self righteousness, as I am noticing it’s outflows in various forms. It is a form of blame, and tends to be experience as like a ‘wtf’ kind of reaction towards others, when I am seeing a point that is fucked, and yet I am reacting to the point because of how it somehow relates to me, where I am somehow living the same point without necessarily realizing it – it is only when it is presented in another, perhaps in a different form, that it becomes obvious because it is not me, it does not have the exact same look and feel as my own shit, but it is the same in essence.

Now it is obviously pointless to live this way because I mean, sure, the whole world is fucked, people are fucked beyond belief, but if we live in judgment and blame, we are literally never going to get anything accomplished in terms of affecting any real change. It is simply not effective to judge and blame others for who they are as what they have become and believe themselves to be, when I have not taken responsibility for my own self as what I have become and who I believe myself to be.

As long as I am reacting – I am ineffective in directing a point, as it shows that I have not yet cleared/directed myself effectively. As long as I am looking to make a point or prove a point, I know that I have abdicated my self-responsibility to such a level that I am actually going out and trying to change the point in others as a form of self righteousness.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become so accustomed to blaming and judging others, within the desire to be special/better than others, within the fear and pursuit of survival, that I have actually created a character of self righteousness that will focus on the mistakes others are making, without first actually implicating myself and looking at where I have made/am making mistakes

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to, within the experience of reacting to others, not take the point back to self and write myself so that I can see how I created this experience for myself, how the negative experience started out as a positive one, based in desire and positive energy as a form of delusion/escapism from reality, and that I have allowed myself to act on such reactions, believing them to be real in self righteousness, rather than sorting myself out, and not being satisfied to move on and speak with others/direct others until I am %100 clear and have directed the point – as until this is done, I am only speaking to my own detriment and the detriment of others 

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to believe the experience of judgment and blame in thought to be real – and that I have not fully embraced my reaction as reflection of myself, being strict in stopping my experience and immediately working it out until I am clear

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to let greed/wants/desires, to not have to change, to be special, to live a life or unequal privilege, sabotage me into wanting to blame others and be superior, while not in fact taking self responsibility for who I am, to rather in this way create a self/world that is best for all life 

I commit myself to, when and as I see myself judging/blaming others, to immediately stop and not give any power/attention thought to more judgment blame, as I see, realize and understand that any and all reactions are in fact about me, and thus to even be effective in directing others and sorting out this shitty experience of judgment/blame, I commit myself to immediately look at my reactions, breathe, and work them out through self writing, taking a moment to step outside of myself and look at how it all started, to write about how I feel as being about me, and not an actual reflection of what I am experiencing of others, committing myself to do this until I am sorted out and clear, and not making any excuses to stop myself or avoid/not take self responsibility as sorting myself out

Thus I commit myself to never again speak out of reaction, or act out of reaction, but to rather give myself the patience, and give to myself/others the support and understanding necessary by always working shit out before I continue to react or act on such reactions or believe them to be real in any way – thus I commit myself to never give power/attention to what others are doing as a form of blame, as all are equally responsible and that which we are angry about/fear in others, we are the same in essence, and thus from this perspective it does not matter what others do, but rather who self is and what self does, because only by supporting self and taking self responsibility on the point for/as self, is one able to then direct others at a physical level in self honesty and common sense

Day 180: Alone – all one

There is no greater experience of aloneness than to have fully accepted that you need and require another outside of yourself in order to live and be happy.

I noticed an interesting thing today about the desire to be with others, which is based in the fear of being alone: that it is a very strange thing because whether we like it or not, being in the company of others is an unavoidable fact of life, and is the very way that our society functions which we depend on for survival. And perhaps some do not like this fact – there are people in this world who claim they don’t like being around others and prefer to be alone and I have been one of these people – however this negativity about people is in fact just the other side of the coin of the way in which we have created positive ideas (for ourselves) in the way that we have defined our relationships with other words. In other words, we often define our relationships to others in a way that primarily benefits us in some way or another. As this is obviously a destructive way of living as it is not based on what is best for all, it will tend to create conflict and all kinds of strife in one’s life. This behavior may continue and eventually one may become sick of it, yet we tend to do this without any real awareness of our starting point in our behavior/interaction with others, and so rather than find effective ways to change our starting point to one that is beneficial and constructive for both sides, one may simply begin to avoid people and prefer to be alone because this aloneness really represents a form of peace from the otherwise known way of interacting with and experiencing relationships with others.

But what one in this situation will notice as I have, is that the avoidance and preferring to be alone and experience these happy ‘alone moments’ is not a solution to the original problem, and so one will still have the desire to experience people, at least to some degree, for the same basic reasons/starting point. So what then happens is that one will begin moving back and forth between the polarities of wanting to be with others and not wanting to be others, in the exact same way that we begin defining some people as ones we like and as others we don’t like, simply based on our experiences with them, and based on our starting point of ‘does this person suits me/my needs or not’.

This might sound harsh to some, but my question is: if all life were equal (and it is, but we simply do not recognize it as such) then why would a person miss another person? If we lived in a world without friends and enemies, then would someone’s absence be perceived as a loss? If we did not have those ‘special people’ in our lives, would we miss anyone as we do now? If survival and making ourselves feel better about ourselves had not become a central part of human life, would we still desire to be with the people that contribute to our survival and make us feel better about ourselves? If you were equal to them, then in their absence, nothing would be lost, because you are their equal – because everyone is their equal. Even in the event of their death, the fact that they are continuing on through death into other life forms that are also valued as equal should be an acceptable fact without sadness, as simply another step in the journey if existence.

While this kind of understanding of life seems beyond me and I’m sure many others at this stage of our life and development (or lack thereof), it is impossible for me to ignore the common sense of these facts. I mean we are all life, how can we miss ourselves? How can we desire to be with ourselves if we are all around? How can we desire to be with ourselves if we are everything?

In the pursuit to satiate my loneliness and desire for another, I have found myself in a desolate wasteland where everything seems so hollow, like there is nothing, nothing but hope that is so fickle and so brittle. Like being haunted by ghosts of the past wherein I believed myself to be alone and separate, that I needed others to fulfill me because I had accepted myself as not enough. And yet when I exorcise these ghosts and live here – actually live and go about my day engaging in all the activities that life may entail – there is no greater living experience of fulfillment because I am simply living as who I am, and within this, recognizing myself here as life, not as an idea or a perception or a feeling, but as an actual living statement of ‘I am here’ – not ‘here with myself’ or ‘here with another’ – I am here as life, as I live.

I forgive myself that I’ve allowed myself to abandon myself in the hope/search for fulfillment and happiness in another to preoccupy me from myself, from ever recognizing myself and living myself fully as who I am, and that I have allowed myself to dishonor and abuse myself through abdicating the life that I have been given to live and exist as which is sacred.

I commit myself to live here in every moment as me through physical actions that are in fact me moving me here as the physical, as life, wherein I live in a way that benefits myself as life to grow and expand myself as I give myself the recognition of who I am by living to my full potential – when and as I see myself going into distractions of the mind that provide me with a feeling/experience of being fulfilled because I am being stimulated and thus being given then experience that there is ‘something more’/’something extra’ to satiate the fear of my inferiority that I am not good enough and cannot be left alone, which I had accepted from a young age – I stop, I breathe, and I do not participate in these desires, as my thoughts/feelings/emotions as energy, to want to further continue participating in accepting and allowing this energy to consume me as how I live.

Day 171: A life of servitude and inferiority: part 3

I commit myself to stop making value judgments on myself/others based on their monetary/status worth within the eyes of the current world system – when and as I see myself having thoughts/judgments about myself/others based on this point – I stop, breathe, and do not participate in such value judgments

When and as I see myself wanting/desiring to act perfect and feeling the need to act perfect and impress others/do something ‘special’ to make an impression on others – I stop, I breathe, I see, realize and understand that this tendency is based on a long established habit of believing that I can only be recognized by the mind as someone ‘special’ who impresses the mind by triggering reactions within the mind – and I do not participate within this want/desire/urge as my thoughts, feelings and emotions

When and as I see myself worrying/fearing what others think of me as judgments – and within this the subsequent urge to prepare myself and behave in a certain way that will change their judgments from negative to positive – I stop, I breathe, I realize that this is only a fear within the belief that I cannot direct the mind here as life – and thus I do not participate within this fear and subsequent desire, as my thoughts, feelings, and emotions about what others may be thinking –rather I breathe here and allow myself to direct myself/others here in the moment

When and as I see myself believing that being alone is better/wanting to be alone/by myself as an escape from the stress/pressure of being around others – I stop, I breathe, I realize that I have associated memories of being alone and relaxing for a moment due to being removed from an environment where I believed that I must act a certain way that is fearful in nature, and thus this is only a perception based on who I believed I must be and thus, the belief that being alone is not real as it is based on a false belief of who I must be around others – thus I do not participate in this temptation of the desire to be alone and away from others, as my thoughts, feelings and emotions

I commit myself to build self trust through the stopping of the tendency to participate within the desire to act in character/fear that I must be some special/impressive character – and by breathing here through this desire and directing myself within the moment as breath as the stopping of participation within these character constructs

I commit myself to recognize/value myself as life as who I am through no longer participating within characters/ideals of perfection as what I believe others want me to be which is based on fear and the belief that I will not be recognized as life – realizing here within life that being recognized as life, starts with me here in the moment, every moment