It occurred to me some time ago that it is totally possible to eliminate anything negative from yourself by simply deciding you're done with it and sticking to that solid decision. Our minds have the capacity to eliminate terrible shit in an instant. And it truly works! Have you ever known someone who smoked cigarettes for decades or had a terrible habit they had had for years upon years and one day they DECIDED to be done with that habit and they were legitimately done and never did it again? Mind over fucking matter! On the flip side you might see someone else in a predicament with a bad habit they've had for, let's say, a month and they tell you they just can't do it without help and medication or a professional intervention to get through quitting. Or worse, that they just can't quit. Call it an addictive personality or whatever you'd like (it is what I’d call a limiting belief), but these are the people who need to work on the strength of their minds. I was one of those people and I have worked my ass off to strengthen my mind and if I can do it, anyone can.
We are all here to learn lessons and improve and we all do it in our own time. The examples I used here were not to belittle anyone or say those with strong minds are better than those who need extra help. We are all doing our best and we all have different circumstances to work with. There are limiting beliefs out there that paralyze people in horrendous ways. I lived that within myself for entirely too long. So my heart and compassion go out to the "weaker-minded" because at a point in my life, my mind was amongst the weakest of the weak. But the ego likes to keep you that way. I learned of the egoic mind and it's immense power over us all after reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I highly recommend it. I'll be honest, too... That book changed my fucking life in ways I don't have enough time left in this entire lifetime to explain. I mean mind blowing shit!
Eckhart talks about how the ego affects us and makes us identify with it and outer things that are absolutely not our identity. These outer things make us feel less than in so many ways and they make us feel like we won't be happy until we obtain whatever material items we desire or the status in life our ego makes us identify with. It is a powerful force that is often perpetuated by our world societies. It isn't the easiest thing to break free of, but it is NOT impossible for anyone.
Here's a bit about my personal experience with the egoic mind and what it helped me realize in my life and how I was able to finally complete my dark night of soul (death of the ego, but more like transmutation since energy is infinite) journey and let my ego finally leave me.
I had this identity. It was more of a series of identities that defined various parts of me. And boy did I take them seriously. I was bipolar with clinical anxiety and social anxiety and always an open book because mental health awareness depended on me. I am a self-proclaimed rock singer (to this day) and singing anything but rock after that decision was fucking sacrilege! I was the colored hair girl. Bright blue and purple or pink or turquoise! I was THAT chick with the awesome hair and everyone knew it and I received DAILY compliments from strangers validating my ‘identity’! These were all massive ways I identified and labeled myself. It all made me who I was or so I thought... Although these were my identities, in reality (which is a completely relative term, by my interpretation) none of them defined who I was, although I let them define me for a long ass time.
It bred limitations and sooooo many excuses! When I’m moody, it must be my bipolar acting up. I was asked to do PAID studio session work singing r&b or pop and I was appalled at the idea of not singing rock and turned it down with my nose in the air. I reluctantly colored my hair back to its natural deep dark brown color and immediately felt ugly and like everyone would hate it cause it wasn't "me"! That last one never actually happened! I got a wonderful compliment from a complete stranger, who told me that I was gorgeous within 15 minutes of leaving the damn salon with my "boring" brown hair. In that moment, I needed some validation that I wasn't as ugly as I felt and that teenage girl who told me I was gorgeous was literally an angel sent to me on this earth and I cried my eyes out once I was alone, because showed me, in that moment, that it was all going to be ok no matter what.
Most of these identities were superficial and surface, but they definitely perpetuated my inner turmoil and the larger battles I still fight to this day. I have always been filled with shame and guilt because my "identity" as I knew it always kept me in a place of never feeling good enough. That stemmed from needing outer validation that bipolar disorder was why I was acting crazy and it was OK that I was crazy cause I was bipolar or that my hair was really cool or that I was a really good rock singer. If I didn't have that validation I was completely ashamed of myself. Well, oftentimes, no one could validate my self-inflicted misery, so it left me in a position for many many years where I was miserable and thought very little of myself. And that became a habit and another identity, but an internal one. And although I blamed others day in and day out for my downtrodden feelings, it was ALWAYS all just me refusing to love myself.
All of that leads me to what happened on that fateful day, Tuesday, February 9, 2021! I realized that all of the guilt and shame I constantly felt on a day to day basis was all being caused by said ego and the identities this ego had given me and that I accepted long ago. I have been diligently toiling away at ridding myself of these identities and releasing limiting belief after limiting belief, but it took me a long time to realize that it did not have to be a process. All it ever was, was a decision. Or more so, a series of them in my case with many more needing to be made! I decided last night that the ego I had held so tightly to for so many years no longer was serving me in any good way. I have no regrets and I am grateful for the lessons (no matter how difficult some were) I learned in dealing with my egoic self for so long. I don’t fully understand what all of this means for me specifically yet, because it has been literally than 24 hours since it happened for me (or since I made it happen for me), but I do know that I have been searching for the guilt and the shame within myself since last night and miraculously, I don’t have it. It just isn’t there. A weight has been lifted off of my shoulders and my breathing is now a bit easier. This human experience journey can be a bitch, as we all know, but wow… when cool shit like this happens, you realize how neat and unique of an experience it really is.
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