Education rarely teaches us how we should properly deal with our “negative” side, the side of us we wish not to show to the outside world. As a result, a lot of people spend their entire life searching for ways to get as far away from it as possible, not knowing how to decently cope with its threatening shadows.
I sincerely doubt if anyone has ever succeeded in getting fully rid of “their other side”… People search for ways to climb up to the Heavens, where “all will be good, peaceful and beautiful”, seemingly without realizing that human life is a balance which is preferably kept in a more or less stable, thus healthy equilibrium between both scales of giving and receiving.
Heightening one scale only results in a lowering of the other one so that when we try to run away towards the Heavens, our flight will be compensated by an equally intensifying darkening of our other side. Most people don’t seem to realize this, until it really breaks through in their life of every day, e.g during a midlife crisis.
There are countless ways to become balanced again, and they usually include the very difficult path of letting go. As an example, I’d like to talk about a friend of mine who’s been close to me for almost thirty years now.
His name is Ego. He consults me daily, yet even though he’s been sitting in front of me for all these years now, it’s only been very recently that his chaotic path forced him to engage in a real dialogue with me. For the longest time he would just ignore me. He knew he could not escape sitting in front of me, but he still had the hardest time of facing me.
In his darker days, I sometimes felt as if he would rather die in agony instead of trying to face me. I always tried talking to him, but then he would just play his little game as if I was invisible to him, as if he was the only one in the room. And yet I noticed he could not completely ignore me because I could see his eyes wandering off to the large window, as if in his mind he was trying to escape from my attempts to connect to him; as if he was trying to escape from me within his unnatural dreams of claiming ownership over me.
One day however, he was behaving more fearful and desperate than before. I was still talking into him when he suddenly looked at me in utter fright. In that second, all his protective shields fell off and he stared at me with the gaze of the being he truly is: a naked baby, screaming with mortifying fear as if he had just entered a strange, alien world full of unknown dangers.
He quickly restored his escapist dream and looked back out of the window. Nevertheless, something had happened. It was there. I saw it. Brief as it was, a first glance had just been made. Apparently he seemed to have reached the end of his dreams. It was only when all of his escapist dreams turned into ashen deserts, when he had reached the end of his alien world, that he finally came to realize the inevitability of the situation: he hád to face me or he had to succumb to self destruction.
Although he had hurt me alright by denying my very existence, I still loved him more than anything. In secret I cried for him during these long years of monologue and utter loneliness. He should have known he was not alone in his battle, yet he still could not embrace me, even though I embraced him with all of my Heart.
He preferred to live his life in a silent suffering because he thought it would always be a lesser pain compared to the pain of confronting me. How narrow-minded can one be! The only thing I have to offer him is unconditional Love! But I can not blame him. Not at all. Because he rejected me all these years, I must probably appear to him as the bare Devil himself, as an endless Night lurking in the dark shadows on his path, ready to suck all life out of him.
And it ís draining him, but instead of putting all the blame on me, he should really blame it on his own actions, on his own choice of living his life in one-sidedness. He chose to live his life one-sidedly, so he should accept the extreme tensions resulting from his choice and not put all the blame onto the “other side”, that part of him which does not fit into his picture of how his one-sided life should have to be.
Yet with this first glance, the winter ice seems to be ready to be melted away in the awakening warmth of spring. Gradually, in time, he extended his frightful glances towards me. I tried to comfort him by giving signs (or symbols as they would have occurred to him) that it is alright and that confronting me is the right way to go.
At first he did not notice them, but then, for some reason, he did start paying attention. It was as if he had finally come to the conclusion that he cannot expect the world to change if he himself is not even daring to become more receptive to the change waiting to unfold within himself. It was as if he was gradually forgetting the layers of clothes he had been wearing which had made him into a man, and was now starting to feel the human being he truly is, that helplessly crying baby, washed upon the unknown shores of a land yet to discover.
And so the balance started to shift again to reach its point of equilibrium. At the moment we are still a long way from that, but some important steps have been made.
With a lot of trial and error, he is learning to see the deeper, healing aspect of redemption which lies beyond the pains and suffering of acknowledging one’s own deep responsibility towards himself and the world. He is learning to acknowledge suffering as a way to step down from his almighty throne and to become Human again amidst other Humans.
Nowadays, we are already having small conversations. Even though he is still very tense and his mind is still very fragile, painful and cloudy, he has somehow found a way to proceed more naturally, more harmoniously with the other side of the balance.
So one day, not so very long ago, he came to me and he told me “I have to confess to you some of the things I have done. I feel compelled to bow deeply towards you and the whole Universe, confess my terrible deeds and humbly ask you for forgiveness”. He was weeping deeply and his tears melted with my own. It was the first time that he was not asking for my attention because he felt pity of himself; for the first time I saw him crying tears, not for himself, but for me, others, the world at large and… Life.
Self-pity and self-absorbance became compassion for others. Of course it was only a very small step on the road to redemption, yet a highly important step, because for the first time in his life, he understood the consequences of his deeds, of his one-sided behaviour, and what his behaviour really meant for the rivers of the Life he was given. Perhaps for the first time, his bitter loneliness melted away into the sweetness of his solitude amongst the people and the world.
He wept, and he wept for so long…
He was genuinely moved to the point of finally letting go, because only now was he able to bow deeply enough to humbly ask to be forgiven so he could finally forgive himself and the world.
And so, he confessed…
I sincerely doubt if anyone has ever succeeded in getting fully rid of “their other side”… People search for ways to climb up to the Heavens, where “all will be good, peaceful and beautiful”, seemingly without realizing that human life is a balance which is preferably kept in a more or less stable, thus healthy equilibrium between both scales of giving and receiving.
Heightening one scale only results in a lowering of the other one so that when we try to run away towards the Heavens, our flight will be compensated by an equally intensifying darkening of our other side. Most people don’t seem to realize this, until it really breaks through in their life of every day, e.g during a midlife crisis.
There are countless ways to become balanced again, and they usually include the very difficult path of letting go. As an example, I’d like to talk about a friend of mine who’s been close to me for almost thirty years now.
His name is Ego. He consults me daily, yet even though he’s been sitting in front of me for all these years now, it’s only been very recently that his chaotic path forced him to engage in a real dialogue with me. For the longest time he would just ignore me. He knew he could not escape sitting in front of me, but he still had the hardest time of facing me.
In his darker days, I sometimes felt as if he would rather die in agony instead of trying to face me. I always tried talking to him, but then he would just play his little game as if I was invisible to him, as if he was the only one in the room. And yet I noticed he could not completely ignore me because I could see his eyes wandering off to the large window, as if in his mind he was trying to escape from my attempts to connect to him; as if he was trying to escape from me within his unnatural dreams of claiming ownership over me.
One day however, he was behaving more fearful and desperate than before. I was still talking into him when he suddenly looked at me in utter fright. In that second, all his protective shields fell off and he stared at me with the gaze of the being he truly is: a naked baby, screaming with mortifying fear as if he had just entered a strange, alien world full of unknown dangers.
He quickly restored his escapist dream and looked back out of the window. Nevertheless, something had happened. It was there. I saw it. Brief as it was, a first glance had just been made. Apparently he seemed to have reached the end of his dreams. It was only when all of his escapist dreams turned into ashen deserts, when he had reached the end of his alien world, that he finally came to realize the inevitability of the situation: he hád to face me or he had to succumb to self destruction.
Although he had hurt me alright by denying my very existence, I still loved him more than anything. In secret I cried for him during these long years of monologue and utter loneliness. He should have known he was not alone in his battle, yet he still could not embrace me, even though I embraced him with all of my Heart.
He preferred to live his life in a silent suffering because he thought it would always be a lesser pain compared to the pain of confronting me. How narrow-minded can one be! The only thing I have to offer him is unconditional Love! But I can not blame him. Not at all. Because he rejected me all these years, I must probably appear to him as the bare Devil himself, as an endless Night lurking in the dark shadows on his path, ready to suck all life out of him.
And it ís draining him, but instead of putting all the blame on me, he should really blame it on his own actions, on his own choice of living his life in one-sidedness. He chose to live his life one-sidedly, so he should accept the extreme tensions resulting from his choice and not put all the blame onto the “other side”, that part of him which does not fit into his picture of how his one-sided life should have to be.
Yet with this first glance, the winter ice seems to be ready to be melted away in the awakening warmth of spring. Gradually, in time, he extended his frightful glances towards me. I tried to comfort him by giving signs (or symbols as they would have occurred to him) that it is alright and that confronting me is the right way to go.
At first he did not notice them, but then, for some reason, he did start paying attention. It was as if he had finally come to the conclusion that he cannot expect the world to change if he himself is not even daring to become more receptive to the change waiting to unfold within himself. It was as if he was gradually forgetting the layers of clothes he had been wearing which had made him into a man, and was now starting to feel the human being he truly is, that helplessly crying baby, washed upon the unknown shores of a land yet to discover.
And so the balance started to shift again to reach its point of equilibrium. At the moment we are still a long way from that, but some important steps have been made.
With a lot of trial and error, he is learning to see the deeper, healing aspect of redemption which lies beyond the pains and suffering of acknowledging one’s own deep responsibility towards himself and the world. He is learning to acknowledge suffering as a way to step down from his almighty throne and to become Human again amidst other Humans.
Nowadays, we are already having small conversations. Even though he is still very tense and his mind is still very fragile, painful and cloudy, he has somehow found a way to proceed more naturally, more harmoniously with the other side of the balance.
So one day, not so very long ago, he came to me and he told me “I have to confess to you some of the things I have done. I feel compelled to bow deeply towards you and the whole Universe, confess my terrible deeds and humbly ask you for forgiveness”. He was weeping deeply and his tears melted with my own. It was the first time that he was not asking for my attention because he felt pity of himself; for the first time I saw him crying tears, not for himself, but for me, others, the world at large and… Life.
Self-pity and self-absorbance became compassion for others. Of course it was only a very small step on the road to redemption, yet a highly important step, because for the first time in his life, he understood the consequences of his deeds, of his one-sided behaviour, and what his behaviour really meant for the rivers of the Life he was given. Perhaps for the first time, his bitter loneliness melted away into the sweetness of his solitude amongst the people and the world.
He wept, and he wept for so long…
He was genuinely moved to the point of finally letting go, because only now was he able to bow deeply enough to humbly ask to be forgiven so he could finally forgive himself and the world.
And so, he confessed…
Apr 28, 2010, 3:29:00 AM
Wow!i feel glad travelling that inner road with you.Much that i appreciate your reconnoitre with your friend i wish hopelessly that many of us could have that.Especially someone with whom i feel so uncomfortable with because of that person's deep attachment to his friend whose name too is EGO.Mostly i stand there all dumbstruck unable to utter anything that would hurt her friend...sometimes i even fake...that is to keep her in good humour because She along with her friend are the types they say neither friendship is good nor is antagonism.Just stay clear and u'll be safe what i'm advised often.So my wish...
Apr 29, 2010, 11:54:00 PM
Welcome aboard Shivani… we are all traveling the same path of human apathy. ‘EGO’ is an arbitrary name I gave to match up to our own sense of self. We all have friends who measure to various degrees of resentment within our small inner circle, group or society in general. We have to deal with this in our own sweet way and in general have the live and let live policy. I bet staying clear and remaining safe is one of the best ways to deal with some specific types. Here’s wishing you the strength to stay clear from such friends.