Friday 15 May 2015

The Ego and Its Naked Ambition

After last week’s blog some of you may be feeling a little love cold; I am here to tell you it is a beautiful warm and sunny spring day; it’s time to warm-up
                 The Boy Who Wore Clothes
(Excerpt)

A race of proud men
Resided in the polar
To clothes they said nyet
However bad the weather
No matter how inclement

In the windswept bleak
Lost in an icy desert
On a glacial scarp
Men of unyielding custom
It was adieu to their garb


Clothing was comfort
It would make them soft and weak
Make them chumps and simps
Sissies, milksops, and wussies
Make of them cry-baby wimps 


Some have adopted the idea that to be spiritual is remove oneself from the world of pleasure and comfort, to deny the pull of our desires and to seek out suffering. To defeat the ego by attacking from without. That is if we lob enough challenges at our ego it will crumble. Admittedly suffering has since the dawn of consciousness contributed to fuller awareness. As much my ego would like it to be to the contrary, there is the pattern. But it is not for you to seek out the suffering. You will not defeat fire by walking into it and pretending it doesn’t burn. Your ego is strengthened by your resistance to it.

But creation depends on duality you say … denying the dark is wearing blinders. 

Creation isn’t so much about duality; humans invent dualities to aid in understanding a very complex universe. It may be more useful to think of creations as being about contrast. There is no denying some things feel darker than others; existence needs the contrast to exist and evolve; for the creator … which is you … to arrive at a preference and feed it with positive thought and feeling. But you do not need to seek out shadows. Be open to receiving and just the right amount of contrast will find you and challenge you in just the right way. Acknowledge that something feels bad and figure out what you need to do to feel better … not what the world needs to do to make you feel better … but what you can do to feel better and most of the time you’ll feel better.

The Boy Who Wore Clothes
cont.

Then a boy was born
Surely he’d been switched at birth
An iconoclast
A snivelling malcontent
Nude, he’d face no arctic blast

With a hairless face
He took shelter with the gals
Til puberty hit
At his first crack of alto 
With wool, he began to knit

He grew strong and tall
His voice lowered two octaves
He’d face the tundra
Onto the vain plains he went
Clad in a hat and muffla

Even with his yarn 
Things were bitterly gelid
Limbs and loins tingled
To lift his spirits he sang
Apropos, balls a’jingle

Enough is enough 
Our clothed rebel did chatter
No more ice trauma
Half of us is frostbitten  
Gord’s in a frozen coma

We all need comfort 
Let’s wrap the boys in woollen
Become good axe-men
Get some lumber; light a fire
Snuggle up with the women

Now some of the men
Saw the truth in his lament
The wiser brethren
Brushed the snow from their shoulders
Went in; made some good lovin’

Alas for a few
Their beards had grown ever long
Frozen with virtue
They couldn’t move if they’d wanted
An army of ice statues

Don’t worry every ice statue will eventually melt and then the fun of spring can begin. But springtime for the soul comes only when you allow it. For the Buddha this came when he gave up self-denial and isolation for a mouthful of pudding. 

Chances are you did not manifest into physical form to maintain a spiritual holding pattern; if you did that’s great; but if you are constantly suffering, you did not manifest in physical form to maintain a spiritual holding pattern; you came here to create and to co-create at that. Acknowledge the dark contrast with acceptance; embrace your desires with delight and then let them both go … that’s non-attachment … trust the universe will keep delivering and you’ll be amazed by what comes back to you. 


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