The Prison of “I”
Recently a friend of mine text me the following: “Can we just jump to the part where I am a superior being who has overcome all aspects of existential suffering?” This text could not have come in a more perfect moment for me. I, too, was struggling with the fact that most of my suffering is pure, emotional suffering with no real connection to any actual physical pain. This type of suffering comes as a direct result of own preconceived thoughts and imaginations of how our lives should be in any particular moment in time.
So what keeps us trapped in a life of emotional suffering? The simple answer is because we choose to live in a prison of ego: The prison of “I”.
The word “ego” is Latin for “I” or the self. From the moment we are born, we begin to receive messages about who we are and who we should be or not be in our world. Most of these messages are judgmental and cloaked in fear. “Be a good boy and do this for Mommy.” “What will people think if you wear that?” “You must be stupid for doing that!” These messages imply that if you do not conform, you are a bad person and you will be rejected by someone more important than you or by a group of people more important than you. It is these messages of fear that move us to build up a wall of ego in order to protect ourselves from feeling weak or vulnerable.
To continue to protect ourselves, we begin to make inflexible decisions about who we are and how life should be. And because these decisions are based in fear rather than in self-acceptance, compassion, and love, we begin to push back against the outside messages and fill our minds with statements such as “I will never ... I don’t need ... I only ...” And as we cover ourselves in this impenetrable shell of I, I, I, we begin the suffering in the mind. Because the moment we believe that a particular event must happen or cannot happen in order to be happy, we set ourselves up for disappointment. A mind filled with entitled expectations always leads to disappointment and emotional suffering.
This seemingly constant stream of life disappointments eventually develops into sense of worthlessness. And it is these feelings of worthlessness that creates a hole in our soul … an excruciating hole of emptiness, guilt, and shame. Rather than using neutrality and compassion to evaluate the situation and learn from the disappointment, brick by brick we build up inflexible walls of ego to not feel the hole in our soul. For example, if you have expectations that move you to need people or things in your outer world to make you feel good about yourself, know that these expectations come from the ego, or “I” state of mind. The opposite is just as true. If you have expectations that dictate that no one in your exterior world is allowed to challenge your thoughts in your inner world, your ego is protecting you from disappointment regarding other people’s opinions about you. In either situation, the emptiness remains.
The first step to removing emotional suffering is to break out of the self-made prison of ego and ask yourself, “Do I want to be right, or do I want my peace?” If you want to be right, you will continue to suffer. If you want your peace, let go of your expectations of what you believe you deserve in order to be happy and flow with the situation.
Ego is like the eggshell that a baby chick must crack open and struggle out of in order to be born and become more. Just like with the baby chick, you must fight to break through the hard shell of ego that has you trapped like a prisoner in your own thoughts of suffering. Break through the protective ego shell so that you can become something bigger than yourself. Or you will die inside your eggshell alone in your inner world.
Mother Owl
