As February rolled into March, I continued my commitment to my study and my meditation, and I began to notice that the ease and the lightness of the first two months was subsiding. The honeymoon was over, and my ego began to get more and more restless.
You see, one day my ego was the head coach of the championship team, and the next day it was being asked to step down to give a new coach a shot at "taking the team to another level."
My ego was incensed, and more than a little confused and angry. Not having a say in the matter, it was pacing on the sidelines while the new coach took over. And, to be clear, for the ego...this was not over. It wasn’t passively watching either. No, no, no - it was making note of every little thing the new coach did wrong. All the while, anxiously awaiting the moment it would jump in and take over again. My ego was sure the new coach would fail, and it was only a matter of time before it was back in charge again.
The restlessness stemmed from the vacuum created by the loss of my career identity. In the absence of knowing what to DO, the ego was literally going mad. The new coach, my spirit, was asking me to trust, and I desperately wanted to keep listening to my spirit and trusting. But as time went on, that became harder and harder. My ego started to drop not-so-subtle hints that I better “hurry it up” and figure out what the hell I was going to do. Thoughts like “you aren’t contributing financially anymore,” and “Anthony is going to get tired of you not working,” started to creep in. Even though back in reality, Anthony could not have been more supportive, and none of this was coming from him.
I couldn’t see it then, but now I see how intertwined my career and my sense of self-worth were. At this point in the journey, I wasn’t yet strong enough to embody the perspective I needed, and to feel whole just being me sans career - and my ego knew it. This was the opening it could use to work its way back in; to begin to chip away at the progress I had made so that it could get its head coaching job back.
In early March, on a day that seemed pretty normal, the ego came off the bench. Out of nowhere, there I was, screaming at a driver that cut me off and then slammed on his brakes to stop at a red light. At the time, I felt justified in my anger because he had cut me off, and as a result, I almost rear-ended him. I am sure most people would have agreed that my anger was justified. But the intensity of my anger was what scared me. It was excessive and over the top. It was like all that pent-up anger from my ego came bursting out.
It shocked me, I hadn’t felt angry like this in years, much less the past two months. Then, all of a sudden, the anxiety I hadn’t felt for two months came rushing back in. I write about the incident, and the feelings I was having leading up to it, in this journal entry:
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March 14, 2022
This journey is not turning out to be as carefree, painless, and blissful as I had hoped. It started this way, with an immediate release of pain, anxiety, and a feeling of bliss and peace that stayed with me consistently for the first couple of months. I started to think, wow, this whole awakening thing really isn’t that hard, and maybe I have got this thing licked, maybe I have figured this out. I mean one day I had this major opening in my heart and for the rest of the day, I was in complete joy. I had NEVER felt this feeling in my entire life. To describe what I was feeling is impossible. My body was taken over by it, I was smiling from the inside out. I remember giggling over nothing in particular, and I remember not being shaken or disturbed by anything. Nothing could disturb my peace or my joy that day. I was present to talk to anyone and share from whatever place I was in, and my responses were of another place, and yet grounded in this time and place. That feeling did not last beyond that day, although I have had glimpses of it and many hours of feeling at peace. I realize that I keep trying to get back there, but that it’s impossible since all there is, is right now.
I have heard stories of people experiencing an awakening and then going back into their lives and forgetting and being driven by the ego again until the suffering gets so bad that they look for the release of the awakening again. I don’t want to ride this rollercoaster. I have been seeking it for so long and am tired of never finding it. I know that only God’s plan will work, and I am determined to follow it. For now, that means accepting the not knowing. I don’t know the plan, and I WANT to be ok with that. I NEED to be ok with that.
The challenging part for me is that I don’t like not knowing, because then I don’t know what to do. I am listening for God’s plan. My ego is telling me that I will never hear it, that it’s not real, and that it has a great plan. But I know that my ego is wrong. So, I wait patiently for God’s plan to be revealed. Or maybe impatiently…but either way, I wait.
I am over 70 days into my journey, and I would say for the first 50, I was very optimistic and at peace, and over the last twenty, I have been seeing the ego show up in more and more of my life. I have had more anxiety, anger, and fear over the last 20 days, and I am not sure why.
I even had a road rage incident, that I was aware was ridiculous and destroying my peace in the moment, and yet I was not willing to stop it. It was like watching an old video of myself, but it was happening in real-time. What was extraordinary was that after the event I had so much poisonous energy built up inside of me that it led to intense anxiety the rest of the day, and that anxiety bled out intermittently into days following the incident. I had never noticed or become acutely aware of the physiological consequences of getting angry or venting anger into the world, but it took over my body and changed my breathing and my heart rate for a few days. I felt a tightness in my chest – and multiple episodes of feeling panicky as a result, which are my typical anxiety symptoms. I can see now that this was the gift of this incident, if all things can be used for good, then that is the good that came out of this situation – a full realization of the consequences of that behavior and its effects on my body and more importantly, my peace.
This is hard. It turns out that it is so much easier to read a book and do what someone else tells you to do to be “happy.” To find that happiness outside of yourself. But how long does that last when you follow someone else’s plan for your life? How can anyone else know what I am supposed to do, except for God? Only God knows the plan. That happiness found in someone else’s plan is fleeting. To me, happiness is PEACE, and peace meets me in the moment I remember who I am. I am loveable and loving, I am kind, I am joyful, and I am giving. This is heaven. When I forget this, I go back into hell. When we forget this, believing we are that body, that job, that role, our peace is dictated by external things, and our peace hinges on what happens to the body, to the job, or our role. None of us can know what will happen. The unshakeable peace comes from within, and it is our job to remove the blocks to the love within, to create the opening for love to pour out, to shine, to glow, to emanate from our Source through us. We do this through stillness and through listening to our inner guide.
I guess I didn’t know what to expect on my journey to awaken, and I would assume that each person’s experience is somewhat different. I wonder how alike these journeys are. I wonder if others would be willing to share their real experiences, both the peace and joy and the disturbances and struggle. I think if we shared, we would know that we are all the same, and we can see how connected we are, that we are all one. That no one has this thing licked. Or do they? I suspect not.
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This was the beginning of a descent, a descent into what some call the “dark night of the soul.” Of course, I didn’t know it then, and I was still showing up to practice and study every day, but the ego began fighting back and fighting hard. It wanted its job back. It wasn’t going to give up so fast. It wasn’t going down without an epic battle.
The ego began showing up more in my thoughts, influencing my actions, and hijacking my emotions. I wasn’t able to maintain my peace as much as I had in the first couple of months. It began in mid-March and would last through mid-May. It was a battle that would bring me to my knees on many occasions and was filled with fear, confusion, doubt, and lots of anxiety. In short, I became a mess, and I lost nearly all of my peace in the process.
But I never fully gave up. The light was always there. I couldn’t always see it, and when I could it was flickering, but it was always there.