Saturday, December 30, 2017

The Insecure Ego Identity Part two

So, feeding off of part one of this two part blog post, based on my own experiences with insecurity, everything really boils down to identity. Our nervous systems are protecting the perceived sense of identity of who we believe we are. Perhaps it's safe to say that we have no identity in early childhood, and that identity is only created via our interactions with our caregivers. Because we step into this life as a clean slate of Awareness as stated, our True identity, having been blocked out (amnesia), we have an opportunity at an extremely young age, to create an identity on a completely blank canvas.

Yet, consider that we intentionally choose to create an identity that contradicts our true nature prior to coming here. "Prior" to incarnating, we choose to set challenges for ourselves which take place early in our life as a starting point, so that we have the opportunity to 'overcome' them later in life, by stepping into our true power. This is why we identify ourselves with the body/mind. The only way to lose ourselves, is to identify with limitation and survival as a gateway; as a portal to stepping into unlimited potential, which is our true, infinite, eternal nature. In other words, you couldn't find your way home, if you didn't first lose yourself. Isn't this the fun and challenge of the game?

But, let's just consider for a second, how perfect we truly are at our essence. God's true nature is utter and complete perfection, Love beyond any human comprehension, wholeness, completeness, and Oneness without an opposite. Can you possibly fathom what it would be like if part of God was not perfect, if part of god was unworthy or incomplete? The only way that would be possible, is if God itself was somehow separated into parts. There is God (perfection) and there is me (imperfection). I have already taken myself to be something separate from this seamless backdrop of all existence. This Pure Awareness which lightens our experiential play is always here, and always unchanging. But, I see myself as something other than that, because of my strong identification with the story playing in my mind, which I believe to be a true indication of an identity of someone named 'Derek'.

The idea of separation cannot exist, outside of God's own imagination; outside of OUR own imagination. Are we separate from God? Where does this separation exist outside of the narrative/story in our minds that we so strongly take to be true? There is only just THIS. What we call the Present Moment, perhaps we can say.....IS God and IS our true essence. It's the place where we are no longer identified with the streaming narrative running in our minds, but instead allowing of that story to play out on its own, and we are directly present with whatever is happening in our direct experience, including feelings/emotions and sensations in our body, without the narrative describing those sensations. 

Now imagine a world where there IS only pure and utter perfection (the Spirit World), the place we come from 'before' coming into these bodies, where the idea of 'not perfect' is something we can only dream of experiencing, and laugh about, because perfection and imperfection simply do not exist.

The idea of perfection is an implication that there could be something that is NOT perfect. But, anything other than THIS.....can only exist as a potential thought, to be experienced if we so choose to in an incarnate form. Just like unicorns and the devil are not real things that exist here on Earth, and things we can only create through our imagination (movies, books, dreams, etc) if we want to experience them as 'real', the same can be said for imperfection and incompleteness from the perspective of the non physical. The only way imperfection or incompleteness can be experienced from the non physical, is to imagine ourselves as imperfect through......physical incarnation into a human experience. As we would have to mis-identify ourselves with limitation (the mind/body) in order to actually have the real, raw experience of......not feeling like we are already complete. 

Now, imagine waking up in a human body, not knowing who you are, where you are, what you are. Only an intuitive sense of your natural, perfect state. But, that gets pushed away, in place of the desperate needs that have to be met by your caregiver, and thereafter, the beliefs you form based on the perceptions you had with those caregivers. Your experience with your caregivers shows you that you need to act a certain way in order to get their attention, approval, validation and love, and as very small children, getting that was literally, life and death.

We were completely dependent and vulnerable on getting those needs met, or else we would literally, die. Perhaps you were not attended to in the crib when you were crying and you were simply left to cry and scream which made you feel abandoned. Perhaps you had another sibling who meant competition for mom and dad's love for you which made you feel rejected and unworthy. Perhaps, you were abused emotionally, physically and/or sexually, and made to feel less then, unworthy, massive shame and simply not enough. All of these experiences led to the perceptions we had at a young age, and helped form the identity that we believed we were based on the conclusions we came to about ourselves, from these early life experiences.  

But, knowing about our true perfection, which we discussed above, now imagine how painful it would be for anything in existence to perceive itself as.....not already perfect when the truth of perfection is imprinted into the very fabric of existence. This is exactly what we do. We think we are something 'other' than perfection, because we have no recollection of our true nature. We identify with the biological human vehicle as all that we are, and create an identity for ourselves based on how we are perceived by our caregivers, how our caregivers interact with each other, and how we perceive ourselves in relation to our caregivers.

The inkling of intuition that flows through every cell in our body, tells us that we are already perfect. Therefore, to experience ourselves as not getting love, validation, approval; to experience ourselves as being in the wrong place, doing something wrong; to experience ourselves as moving away from love, falling out of alignment with the rest of the world, falling behind, would re-enforce these core beliefs of unworthiness, not enough, imperfection, not whole, and this, therefore, would re-enforce that early sense of insecurity.

For a Being of complete and utter perfection to actually believe itself to be incomplete, not good enough, unworthy; to not already feel secure in its own essence, is simply too painful for that Being to bear, because in essence, there IS only perfection which we again, intuitively sense. Because we haven't a clue of our true nature though; because we so strongly identify with the voice in our head (which is just the voice of survival from early childhood warning us of anything that can go wrong and this is the Ego), we can't allow ourselves to be vulnerable and can't allow ourselves to be exposed, open, raw, and naked. We can't allow ourselves to show weakness. It would jeopardize our entire persona, to be at risk for rejection; to be at risk for scrutiny, for criticism, which we take to be an injustice against.....our core essence. Letting our guard down would be equivalent to dying for a nervous system that is programmed to only protect our sense of 'identity'.

Therefore, it's much safer to shut it out, split off, protect itself from feeling that insecurity, that sense of unworthiness, that sense of incompleteness via ruminating in our thoughts, by trying to control our thoughts. Trying to figure things out with our minds as a form of resisting the actual painful feelings is a form of safe control for the Ego. Trying to prove that that story is not true with our minds. Trying to figure everything out with our minds, so that we avoid the feeling of 'uncertainty'. Uncertainty is death to our survival minds, because for an insecure ego, there is such little trust in life itself, that we ALWAYS want and need to feel secure. In other words, we always need to feel.......in control.

We believe so strongly again, in the story playing through our thoughts, that a single thought, if believed can initiate a cycle of immense pain, when triggered, until we finally get so tired that we have no choice, but to step out of it and surrender.

We believe a thought so strongly that we will do anything to avoid thinking that thought, because the thought re-enforces the core emotional pain stemming from some sort of belief about ourselves that we are too afraid to face, because once again, we think the fear is an indication that there is actually something wrong with the core essence of who we really are.

Or instead, we might believe a worrisome thought which is projecting the worst case scenario on a particular situation we are involved with that has nothing to do with how we are perceived by others. Our thoughts are always based in negativity, because our brains have an evolutionary negativity bias built in as a form of protection from predators. We are literally wired for protection. But, the more we resist those early childhood beliefs and emotions, the more ingrained those beliefs become, and the more our brains will operate from that place of that 'scared child'. Therefore certain situations will simply re-enforce that early childhood insecurity and we will feel like we just want to feel.......safe, secure and loved in that particular moment. As cliche as it is, what we resist with our beliefs, truly does persist.

When we are so identified in our heads, in those thoughts, we actually bypass and suppress what is actually happening. And what is actually happening, is the direct emotional experience in our bodies.

Since childhood, we pushed those emotions away, because we feared what they represented. We simply did not trust in our true nature enough to let go into our direct embodied experience. It was simply not safe enough.

So, in essence, we are too afraid to face some of our thoughts and too afraid to feel those direct feelings in our bodies, not so much because the sensations themselves are dangerous, or the thoughts themselves are dangerous, but because ultimately, we are too afraid of letting go of focusing on the thoughts, which would equate to..... letting go of control and opening ourselves up into full vulnerability and trust.

What if I could fully accept that this person is rejecting me? What if this other person IS moving ahead with their lives, and I am still struggling. What an act of love to honor what I am actually feeling, rather than suppressing that, pushing it away, in order to make myself feel and appear more 'on the same level as they are' to once again appear 'secure'. What if I can fully accept that the situation I am 'stuck in' right now sucks. Can I let go of control, and surrender enough to trust that the answer WILL indeed come when I am no longer resisting through ruminating?

The other option is surrender and fully letting go of control. That would mean we can, through an act of full vulnerability and trust, take our attention away from that movie playing in our minds, and move into that feeling of unworthiness directly in the body, and see first hand, if it really is true.

To allow our thoughts to go by without indulging in them, often feels like death to us, because the ego has no choice, but to surrender control to the higher consciousness (who we really are). But, the Ego doesn't believe in a higher consciousness. It believes this body/mind is all we are.

If I don't entertain or worry about that thought, then I might die. This is exactly what our nervous systems do. Our nervous systems don't know the difference between who we really are, and who we believe we are. We are the ones that dictate that once again at an early age, unconsciously of course.

So, as we can see, we go from creating an identity based in limitation, survival and fear, to the point where the walls start to break down and the cracks of light start to shine through as the pain of living a lie is too much for us and we have simply no choice, but to surrender into the full vulnerability of our Higher Self, and allow the ego to gradually die, or else, true death itself.

"When at last there is nothing left to lose, you are ready. For only then, in the sacred space of humility, are you able to recognize and embrace what has never been lost. It is only when you are convinced that you are hopelessly lost - when you simply do not know where to turn - that you turn within, and the real journey begins.

~ Rasha"

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