There are certain times of the year when my ego seems to be calling all the shots. Times when my ego feels nothing less than tyrannical, and that I am in a losing battle of 2 steps forward, 3 steps back.
The top 5 are the following:
Thanksgiving
Christmas
Mother's Day
Father's Day
My Birthday.
When I say "ego," I mean all the "my," "me," and "mine" moments. My story. My feelings. My perspective. That hurt me. How could you do that to me. That was mine.
All those moments that, put together, create a self that feels as concrete as New York City.
And as you can see by the list, May through December is when I collect (or maybe hoard) a whole series of "me" moments in a 7 month timeframe, and now, I am heading into what I call the double header: Thanksgiving & Christmas.
I must admit, these times are not what I would call my "best self."
No, in fact they tend to bring out what I would call my own 7 deadly sins.
I know that the word "sin" can bring up a whole lot of Christian baggage for some- like my Catholic friends who still refuse to even set foot on church property.
But here, I am using the word more expansively. More akin to this definition put forth by author Kathleen Norris in her book Acedia & Me:
To comprehend that something is wrong, and choose to do it anyway.
Here are a few of my dysfunctional Mind States and Behaviors or "sins" is you will:
-Self-pity
-Despair & Sorrow
-Helplessness
-Hopelessness
-Crotchety Irritability (Think Scrooge)
-Binge-watching CNN
-Isolating from friends
-Buying clothes I don't need from consignment shops
-Randomly eating whatever food I can find (typically standing up while leaning over the counter)
-Considering drinking more red wine, but then feeling guilty about it because of all the alcoholism that runs in my family.
Okay, so that is actually 10 deadly sins, I guess I have more than most people...But maybe that is why it seems like my ego needs a really strong anti-inflammatory or steroid like prednisone to get the "Me" back down to size.
And the frustrating thing is, I do know how not-useful these Mind States and Behaviors are- I do have insight. I do have awareness. And yet...seemingly like clockwork, down the rabbit hole I go.
Really fast.
It's like dominoes, or better yet, quick sand. The more I struggle with one, say self-pity, the more vulnerable I am to another like isolating.
Just yesterday, in a conversation with my new officemate, I had another reminder that everyone else around me does not fall prey to these same Mind States and Behaviors during the holidays.
We were discussing how where we live in the world, at this time of year we change the clocks back by one hour in order to give us one more hour of light in the morning, and one less hour of light at nighttime when the darkness of late fall and winter are upon us, and then my officemate startled me with this gleeful statement:
You know what changing the clocks always reminds me of?
More darkness? I guessed.
My officemate now beaming with joy, The Holidays!
To which my immediate reaction was: Oh god, you aren't going to decorate our office are you?!
Not that there is anything wrong with that...I quickly added.
The thing is, I would actually love to be that person who is not bothered at all by the Santa Claus-climbing-down-the-chimney wall-hanging my officemate says she plans to bring in.
(No, I mean I really would!)
Because that would mean that I was able to actually untangle myself from all the my, me, and mine that during the holidays get's me as tied up as a dolphin in a fishnet.
It would mean I was actually able to consistently practice the "N" in RAIN, and not let my ego be the captain of my ship during these 5 times of the year.
For those of you who are not familiar with the acronym RAIN, it stands for:
R- Recognize what is happening
A – Allow life to be just as it is
I – Investigate inner experience with kindness
N – Non-Identification.
This acronym is used by many teachers and writers (e.g. Tara Brach, Stephen Cope, Jack Kornfield) who are interested in using strategies from mindfulness and Buddhist psychology to skillfully regulate emotions.
I find RAIN to be very helpful myself, but that pesty "N" for Non-Identification with ego is the one that still trips me up the most- especially during the big 5 I mentioned above..
On her website, Buddhist teacher, author and psychologist Tara Brach says this about Non-Identification:
Non-identification means that your sense of who you are is not fused with or defined by any limited set of emotions, sensations or stories. When identification with the small self is loosened, we begin to intuit and live from the openness and love that express our natural awareness.
What's interesting though, is Ms. Brach suggests that we need not put forth a kind of effort to engage Non-Identification. On the contrary, she writes that if we skillfully practice: Recognize, Allow and Investigate:
the N of RAIN expresses the result: a liberating realization of your natural awareness. There’s nothing to do for this last part of RAIN—realization arises spontaneously, on its own. We simply rest in natural awareness.
What? No efforting. No forcing. No shaming...A total mind shift for me.
It's so hard for me, it makes me wish sometimes that I had a Jesuit Priest friend like Gregory Boyle who works with gang members at an organization called Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, and I'd imagine him saying to me in the midst of my ego-rabbit-hole moment in the most compassionate and loving way as he does in his book Tattoos on the Heart:
Close both eyes; see with the other one. Then, we are no longer saddled by the burden of our persistent judgments, our ceaseless withholding, our constant exclusion. Our sphere has widened, and we find ourselves, quite unexpectedly, in a new, expansive location, in a place of endless acceptance and infinite love.
Spiritual writer Anne Lamott is frequently referring to her Jesuit friend Tom in many of her books, and I have vicariously indulged in several of his wonderful words of advice to Ms. Lamott when she too has described whirlwind moments when she can't seem to get out of her own way.
Like this moment in Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace when Father Tom responds to this statement by Anne Lamott to him:
I want to know what to do. Where we even start.
He says:
We start by being kind to ourselves. We breathe, we eat. We remember that God is present wherever people suffer. God's here with us when we're miserable, and God is in Iraq. The suffering of innocent people draws God close to them.
Yeah, I really wish I had a Jesuit Friend like Father Greg or a Father Tom to help me through these moments when my ego reigns- when I feel as fragile as an eggshell.
In the meantime though, I will continue to follow Tara Brach's advice and practice my Recognize, Allow, and Investigate in RAIN, and maybe one day the liberation of Non-identification will come to break me from the dictatorial chains of ego.
I will also, on occasion, fall back on a proverb by the Ojibwe, a native people of the northern United States and southern Canada:
Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind carries me across the sky.
May it be so.
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