The contraction that is you

The wet grass welcomes my feet home as the cool morning air moves across my skin. There is an uncontrollable sigh that forces its way out of my lungs as I raise my coffee to my lips. My favourite part of the day. The part that’s filled with potential. The part that asks “what if” and not “what has happened?”

The world is still quiet, but it’s starting to wake itself up through the bird chirping. The edge of the sky begins to lighten as the sun starts its arc across the heavens. My eyes look upwards into the sky framed by the green energy of the trees in my garden. Sometimes the sky is filled with pink clouds, sometimes it’s completely clear, and sometimes the sun has retreated behind grey rain clouds.

It’s in this moment where who I think I am begins to merge with all that is. For a few brief moments, “I” am free from the sensation or contraction of being me. I know it won’t last because my role in life requires labels of dad, husband, therapist, son, brother, friend, or human. This role, called ego, isn’t a thing. It’s simply a momentary muscular clench in awareness.

If consciousness is the vast open sky above my garden, we seldom notice the sky. We take its existence for granted. We do, however, notice the objects passing through it. A thought (“I might fail”) passes through the consciousness of sky. A thought imprinted through continued exposure when we were young. What follows is a bodily sensation. Neural tension rises, breath shortens, and in that exact moment a phantom centre is born. The open sky contracts into a tight knot labelled “me”. This contracted knot is the ego. Simply a story, a sensation of contraction enforced by the belief “I am separate”. This belief is made of thought. The contraction is made of feeling. Together they pretend to be a self.

In clinic I often ask myself the question, “Who would this person be without their pain and discomfort?” How would their story change if they could understand the contraction of feeling in their body? Who would they have to tell themselves they are now without their pain? Treating babies and children is such a pleasure because the story of ego isn’t fully formed yet and they are happy to return to wholeness. Adults without our need to attach to our imprinted stories are something else.

It’s for this reason that many religious and spiritual traditions wage war against the ego, but you can’t get rid of ego with a left Tinder swipe. The moment you try to excise the ego, you simply give it another job: “I am the one who must eliminate myself”. The contraction tightens. Peace then doesn’t come from attacking the sensation but from recognising its true nature. When a thought (“I might fail”) is met with compassionate attention instead of belief, then the bodily contraction has no power. It dissolves, not because it was destroyed but because it never existed.

This realisation changes everything but also changes nothing. Life still happens and needs to be lived, but the living isn’t hijacked by an imaginary separate self. Emotions and experiences are free to visit without attachment. Fear doesn’t overwhelm and love can flow without asking, “What do I get out of it?” The sense of individuality still remains—our thoughts, memories and preferences—but they pass across the sky instead of collapsing it into a suffocating “I”.

This separate self is the oldest trick in existence: a momentary ripple mistaken for the entire ocean. When you realise this, then the ripple is an invitation to feel where the contraction is. Is it in your stomach, headache, back pain, or in the life you carry in your womb or have carried? Is it solid or a momentary vibration when attention fuses with thoughts of separation? Does it vanish when attention relaxes? In that disappearing, the sky is revealed again; limitless, powerful and intimately quiet.

So ego isn’t something to lose. It’s simply a feeling we keep alive by believing that someone or something can be lost. When we see through this belief, the feeling subsides and all that remains isn’t nothingness but the wholeness that was always pretending to be a part.

Travel well.

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I would however like to continue to share ideas with you and that means time out of clinic. If you have found valuable ideas or thoughts in what I’ve shared with you, please come and grab a coffee, and discuss them with me in person at Blackout Brew Coffeehouse. www.blackoutbrew.co.za

I’m here most Wednesday mornings from 11:00am to 12:00pm. I hate small talk, so we are going to get straight to the deeper, meaningful stuff. Straight in. No kissing.

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