Awake in This Life

The more we become aware of ego’s activity, the less important its drama becomes. Climbing higher, we are reminded continually that the ego is rooted in self-concern rather than generosity. Seeing this for what it is allows for us to make increasingly selfless choices. In making deeply selfless decisions we take power from the ego, and then notice that the less power the ego has, the less that the drama being played out on the Stage of Mind matters. Rather than identifying with the actors on the Stage, we begin to notice that our essence is actually the audience of the charade. From here the Big Self, or the Witness, begins to unfold as an unattached awareness of our experience, and here we can then become more acutely aware of ego’s very subtle attempts at controlling what might otherwise be genuine spiritual realization.

For example, instead of experiencing an authentic loving kindness for another person, ego can skillfully disguise this wholesome event as an attachment, and attachments are the “enemy” of Awakening. This egoic deception shows up all the time in romantic relationships when feelings of what we might know to be unconditional, boundless, and freely felt love yield to conditional feelings of clinging, jealousy, fear, and at times even hatred. Like we’ve discussed, this conditional love is simply a negotiation of limits between egos: a quid pro quo, where one ego only gives of itself if another ego gives it what will secure its position of control. Any time we sense this negotiation arise, the ego is inhibiting what might otherwise be an opportunity for Awakening. Whenever feelings are actually rooted in an egoic desire, they can become disguised versions of what we might ordinarily see as pure and wholesome. The Buddhist tradition calls these disguised expressions “near enemies.” The near enemy of true love, for instance, is conditional love. The near enemy of true compassion is pity, the near enemy of sympathetic joy is comparison, and the near enemy of equanimity is indifference. Becoming aware of near enemies can be a challenge, since, for so many of us, we operate in this space of subtlety without knowing it.

As an example, ego separates us from our boundless nature when, instead of experiencing an unadulterated sense of compassion for a person, we instead feel the near enemy of pity for them. Consider a friend who has gone through a tragedy. It is normal to feel pity for them. You are sorry for their loss, but at the same time, there is something that is glad that this loss was something that you didn’t have to endure. Your friend’s experience of tragedy is sensed as being separate from your not-so-tragic experience, which allows for you to feel sorry for them. In the space between you and them, the ego still manages to stay in charge, allowing for pity to arise. Put another way, pity can only exist if we attach to the sense that someone else is having a bad experience while we are not. Ego has us believing that we are separate, in general, from others, and that we are separate, specifically, from other people’s pain. So when we feel separate from another’s experience of pain, ego can get us to a place of feeling pity.

But when an Awakening spawns a boundless connection to all beings, another’s pain is no longer experienced as being separate from our own. When we realize our connectivity to everyone, we see that instead of pity arising, compassion springs forth effortlessly from all of our activity. We become opened to the world not only through others’ pain, but through their happiness as well. Walking this talk means that we see ourselves in every aspect of everyone else. Another being’s pain is our own. We see their situation as one that is ultimately inseparable from our own, so our responses to their circumstances become filled with a much broader, selfless interest than if we were acting to simply alleviate their personal sense of pain.

“Until he extends his circle of compassion,” writes Albert Schweitzer, “to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.” If we truly recognize our connection to everything beyond an intellectual understanding, we can’t help but live the peace we seek. We begin to feel and openly meet every bit of the world. In fact, the higher we climb, the more we can feel. The more we can feel, the more we can empathize with all other beings. The more we can empathize, the more we can see how all beings are simply doing the best they can to get their needs met. This simple observation unifies all of life, and frees up an undivided sense of our place within its flow. Our dealings with those who cross us or those who cross others we care about can be met with greater openness and sensitivity. While they may indeed hurt more than when we lived solely from ego-based separation, we no longer cling to this hurt. This non-clinging frees up our responses to any perceived injustice in ways that are sourced from love rather than fear.

Just as Awakening shows us that we share in each others’ pain, it also shows us that others’ experience of happiness is ultimately shared as well. However, the ego often does an amazing job of getting in the way of this whole process once it starts to compare and contrast itself with others. All too often, our egos see another’s joy as something that it needs for itself; something for which to compete; something to earn, and then covet; something to own. When this happens, there is no room for Enlightenment to unfold, and we radically diminish our ability to live with any kind of true or lasting contentment. When we live lives of comparison we are always trying to keep up, or keep away, from others, which makes the peace of a shared, sympathetic joy impossible. We rush and push for the next object, achievement, or success that might make us feel that much more complete. Instead of recognizing our inherent completion, as we are in this moment, we stay busy keeping score against those with whom we share the life and death experience.

I have a childhood friend whose father always impressed me. He drove the coolest cars, designed and built the most amazing house, and was the most accomplished athlete of any other dad I knew. He was well-traveled, charismatic, brilliant, and infectiously fun to be around. And yet he always seemed so preoccupied with adding more to his life. I remember hearing for the first time the phrase, “keeping up with the Joneses,” and thinking to myself that this guy was the King of All Joneses; the High Scorer of Suburban One-Upmanship. His purchases and way of life allowed him to be the standard bearer for our local leisure class, until suddenly, some years later, it all came crashing down. His marriage fell apart, and shortly thereafter he lost his business. All that he had built had disappeared, his score showing itself to be zero.

I ran into him at a café, shortly after he started to collect the pieces of his life and reshape them into something more stable.

“The amazing thing,” he said, “is that I’m okay.” He then paused, sipped his coffee. “I mean I can’t buy the things that I used to, and I’m single for the first time in nearly thirty years, but I can’t believe that I feel okay about the whole thing.”

I confess that in my egocentric twenty-something nature, I was confused. How do you feel okay about having it all and then losing it all? I didn’t want to put it like that because this was the last guy I wanted to offend. He still had that flash in his grin and despite his circumstances, I was enchanted by his presence just as I had been as a kid. But how does anyone feel “okay” about a situation like his?

“I know that must sound weird,” he answered as if reading my mind, “but I’m free of the whole silly game. So now there’s no need for scorekeeping.”

What a great place that must be. I was amazed at the peace on his face, and even more amazed at the conversations that he and I started having on regular intervals. This former MVP of Conspicuous Consumption became one of my first spiritual guides. Sometimes a few days apart, sometimes months apart, he and I would meet in various spots in the East Bay to discuss life and philosophy as we read contemporary and ancient spiritual texts together. And to this day, the relationship he and I have continues, with our scores each remaining at zero.

And yet this “scorelessness” in no way means that we should avoid caring about anything and start to unplug ourselves from life’s vibrancy. In an “unplugged” relationship to life we find yet another, perhaps pathological, category of egoic clinging. Rather than finding balance and equanimity in the midst of life’s offerings, the ego can get us into a place of withdrawal and indifference. This lack of caring is in fact ego’s clever way of reacting to its basic fear of losing its position of power. The scoreless nature of Enlightenment necessitates the deeply intimate participation in all of life’s offerings, no matter what they might be. Rather than encouraging a withdrawal, Enlightenment necessitates participation. In fact, withdrawal defines the subtle motion that keeps Enlightenment from being realized. Ego, in other words, can stay in charge as long as it can claim indifference to anything from which it withdraws.

I experienced a version of this withdrawal first hand at a monastery in Asia. “I’m here to leave the whole world behind,” I remember one earnest, middle-aged monk telling me. “I want to realize Enlightenment, and then rest in that space for the benefit of all beings,” he added in a wonderfully rich accent with smiles in his eyes. His wish sounded good enough, and his story was an interesting one. He was a father of two and used to be a bartender at an upscale restaurant in Singapore. He went on to tell me that he could no longer remain happy with the distractions of parenthood, sex, drugs, and alcohol. I was a little taken aback at his choice to leave so much of his life behind and asked if he, at least, missed his kids.

“Every minute, and I want not to care anymore,” he replied. After a moment he gave a little sigh then told me that he “needed to get rid of all attachments in order to get to real peace.”

Living in a monastery is one of the many ways we might look for Enlightenment, but regardless of our location or environment we won’t find any equanimity, or evenness of mind, if we simply withdraw from our lives. Avoidance is the same move as greed; it just moves in the opposite direction. Enlightenment therefore only comes to those people who can uncover the stillness that is always and already present in the midst of their busy lives. This is accomplished only when we stop avoiding whatever our current experience might be.

Practicing this can be a challenge, since we’re used to avoiding things in life. What’s more, as we begin to see how the ego subtly gets involved in helping us avoid the fact that we are deeply connected with all things, we often can get overwhelmed. To make this simple, remember that the near enemies—conditional love, pity, comparison, and indifference—are decent enough impulses, but ones that are still diminished by the ego’s need to either gain or avoid. Freeing ourselves from these traps requires us to stay, once again, in the audience of the Stage of Mind rather than getting caught by the ego’s drama. We can feel this catch whenever we sense a division arise in our consciousness; where we can feel the dualism of “in here” as opposed to “out there,” “me” as opposed to “all of us,” which only reaffirms the ego’s attachment to separation. The ego must maintain this wedge between itself and everything else, or it will be seen as irrelevant. Maintaining this wedge is important because if everything is seen as One, there is no need to defend the illusion of separation. This doesn’t mean that we Awaken whenever we become so deeply absorbed in an experience that we lose our sense of personhood. If this were the case, then the unconsciousness associated with drunkenness might lead to much more than embarrassment and bad headaches. Instead, Enlightenment is realized when, and only when, we participate totally, in all of our situations, from a place of conscious Unity with all things, where there is never any division. The moment this is realized, ego is out of work, and the delusion ends.

Becoming aware of ego’s moves, no matter how stealthy and subtle they might be, allows us to begin the experience of deep purification as we incorporate an observing, witnessing orientation into each and every aspect of our day-to-day lives. Love is no longer conditional. Instead, it is experienced as a continual, egoless, spiritual surrender into Infinity. Pity is no longer central to our reaction to others’ pain. Instead, compassion arises as a felt sense of deep, tender connection with all beings in the universally shared experience of birth and death. As this opening in us continues to unfold, any person’s joy begins to fuel our own since, in this Ultimate sense, it is our own. And so is everything else. All things are not separate from us. They are us, and the steadiness that comes from this realization allows for a profoundly powerful manifestation of equanimity to occupy our consciousness in this very life. From this peaceful presence, we can begin to trust in the Infinite’s ability to show up continually as the loving and joyous stillness that lies underneath all experience.