Ah! The Ego...

I was confronted with the realization that I have been allowing my ego to run amuck and really enjoying it in that "misery loves company" sort of way. I mean, what is the fun of complaining if there is nothing to complain about, right?  

This started just around the time that I announced that I was to give a workshop.  Not coincidentally, the topic was about finding your extraordinary life through being in the Now-aka not being in egoic thought.  And so the craziness ensued!  

I will not indulge my ego once again by going into the gory details, but I wanted to illustrate the pattern it took, just incase it may come up again (what are the chances of that, right?).  First, there was the event itself.  I went into it with some ego already- will I fit in? Will this be the place for me? What will it be like?  Anxiety, questions of comparison-good/bad, better/worse, isolation, fear.   Then, everything was interpreted with that energy.  The people were nice, but different.  The speakers were...OK, not great.  I already know what they are talking about and they are missing some key pieces here.  

In other words, instead of going to the event and having a helpful energy and observing  and being aware without judging, I assumed, judged, compared, criticized etc.  I felt strangely uncomfortable and yet superior at the same time.  A little smug.

So, instead of leaving the event and being OK with the difference and choosing that perhaps, this is not the place for me, I decided to return.  I was going to give them one more chance!! I'm so generous!!!  

I returned with my kids- they had free crafts- this is hard to turn down.  Of course, the speaker was sub-par and I had the same feeling- I don't belong with more drama of why this was so!!  Then a big question mark-WHY do I not feel comfortable and in sink with these people?  

After several days of pondering  that one and writing a treatise of my drama to my mentor (he was very helpful in that he didn't get into my drama with me...), I was reading Tolle's Stillness Speaks.  It said that if you are wondering, why is this happening to me?, you are not accepting the situation.  You are in ego and resisting what is.  Then,  it hit me.  I've been on an ego trip for the past week and not even knowing it!!!

I think I just needed to be a little more miserable before I decided to come back to myself.  This is a practice, a life-long practice.  I had told myself that I experienced it and so I'm done and now, I can teach it.  It is a little different for me.  I experienced it, then I forgot, and I come back to experience it, and I teach it to remind myself that I can always come back home and experience it whenever I like.  The teaching is to help others, but it is equally important "to keep me honest", so to speak.  To remind myself of who I really am.  And when I remember who I am, everything else fades away except the extraordinary life situation that I have and the extraordinary Life that I am.