Early this week I was marveling at an epiphany I had. It was not the first time this idea came to mind but it was quite deep to me all the same. I found myself thinking about how much time and energy we spend building our ego and proving ourselves. I call it building up our false self, because realizing our true self would be something all together different.
When we are building the false self we are trying to get the world to see how great we are or how worthy we are. This is the part where many of us will say “yea, I know people who seem to spend their whole lives doing this. That’s what Bob does, always trying to prove.” But wait, forget about Bob. This is what we do. You and me. Even those of us who are working on ourselves. We spend most of our time trying to prove ourselves. We have to make sure everyone knows how much we can get, how much we can achieve, how smart we are, how we are special, kind or different, edgy, self realized, God realized, you name it. We spend most of our energy doing this, proving. Some of us don’t want to be great, just not lesser than. We just want to be worthy and have people understand that we mean well. Others of us are so cool we don’t care what anyone thinks. This is also a way to let the world know just how realized and unattached we are. And our attention is still on how we are perceived all the same. But what happens when we let go of this false self that we have spent so much energy building up and defending.
The answer is we become free. We become free for however long we are able to let go. We don’t worry about what people will think and our dealings become much more pure. We also become one, instruments of God and the Universe. As a matter of fact, in addition to meditating often, it is a good idea to remind ourselves that we are not who we and others have thought us to be. We are simply here to be of service in whatever way the Universe sees fit. We can also think of God working through us as we perform our various activities. We can say “I am just doing what God wants me to do, serving the way that is best for the Universe and all involved.” We can mean well, do our best and not be attached to how the situation works out. We can feel good because if we are judged we know that is not us that is being judged we are just instruments following the plan as we best understand. We are even open to changes in the plan if we are made aware there needs to be. If we move forward in this way, we will find less of our ego involved and feel much more free and happy as we carry out our missions, and live our lives.