Ergo Ego

 

“Come to the edge of your limitation,” she urged, “and then leap; you shall feel free.”

 

“But I am afraid,” he responded.

 

“Ego,” she said. “Get past your fear.”

 

“But I am uncertain,” he reasoned.

 

“Ego,” she said. “Get past insecurity.”

 

“But I am not strong enough, healthy enough, settled, enlightened enough,” he averred.

 

“Ego,” she repeated. “These things will always be with you, but they contain you in your smallness of self-centredness; they capture you in your sense of imperfection; they garb you in clothes of vanity, however subliminal, as your ego demands that you be aware of your physical limitations, yes, but does not free your mind and spirit to be bigger than the moment.”

 

“Bigger than the moment?”

 

“Yes. Small ego is irritable, insecure, vain, anxious, uncertain, belligerent, obstinate, and whatever else does not allow for being ‘larger than the moment.’ Large ego is inclusive, absorptive, assimilative, understanding, compassionate, and holistic. Why fragment yourself in bits of enlightenment when you can come to the edge of your limitations, and in allowing for a paradigm shift, let go? Then shall you be at peace.”

 

“Be at peace? Sounds like R.I.P. (ha!) I’d rather be alive.”

 

“Yes. Yet peace while alive is about complete acceptance of the circumstances. Like the age old prayer: grant me strength to change the things I can, courage to let live the things I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

 

“That’s not how it goes.”

 

“Yes. But the sense of it is the thing offered here. So accept that much. Needing perfection is for material things, like building bridges and designing cars and making aeroplanes fly. Accepting imperfection is for spiritual things, like faith, and hope, and insight, and enlightenment, and wisdom too. One makes paradigm shifts incrementally, independent necessarily of one’s age. And the grade levels of one’s insight are not a lockstep, like being in regular school. In our lives one may be in grade three in mathematics, but at university level in reading. Accepting that much differentiation for each of us, and most especially of the self, is the primary root of compassion. And compassion, like enlightenment, is not a product, but an ongoing journey. So… come to the edge of your limitations, one by one, and let them go.”

 

“Hmm. Tomorrow.”

 

“Tomorrow and tomorrow creeps on this petty pace, from day to day.”

 

“That’s from Macbeth.”

 

“Indeed. The operative word here is ‘petty’. A myriad of petty things inveigles the perceived needs of our egos. We are so very concerned about how we are perceived by others, even if we are in strange crowds. But to let go of all that and to be concerned for, interested in, and loving of others truly begins with loving the self sufficiently enough to let go of one’s limitations. So then, be larger than the moment. Go to the edge. And grow beyond.