sadeewhip

The following is a question someone asked after reading the “Like water reflects the face…” glob post.

Question:

“Love it, Sadee.  But, what if the ego (who still is generally taking main stage), feels like the heart self is being taken advantage of?  So, like the dishes example….how many times could you do the dishes selflessly before some voice inside, said “wait a minute, here…” you know?  if you are trying to find that “love self” inside, but aren’t surrounded by people always doing the same, how do you prevent yourself from becoming depleted?  This is something that I have been contemplating…

What I suppose is that if you truly learn to give from a place of love,

then ego falls away.

But I haven’t quite figured that one out yet :-)……………”

Answer:

Wow, thank you for this.

You are asking about something very real, and it’s a great question.

First let me say that my main answer is - I don’t know. But I do have some thoughts.

I think the best thing one can do is start to address this by being where you really are.

It is super common for us to try and be something we imagine, like being “selfless” or “living from the heart”. I think it’s worse to try and be what we imagine than to just be who we really are.

Imagining what we should be only works by rejecting or judging the present self, right? Otherwise, why would you need to change anything? This isn’t coming from a place of compassion and love. And if you aren’t in a place of compassion and love with yourself it makes it pretty hard to be all Mother Theresa-y with others.

You ask: “…what if the ego (who still is generally taking main stage), feels like the heart self is being taken advantage of? ”

I think it’s really important to understand that it is not the ego’s job or within the ego’s power to protect the heart self. I think from ego perspective we have all kinds of ideas about how delicate or vulnerable the heart is, but it’s not. So it’s the ego imagining the heart then feeling a need to protect what it imagines.

If you are living mainly from ego, as you say, then the self you are protecting is the ego self and you are getting your feelings hurt and feeling taken for granted. There’s nothing wrong with that. Just be where you really are.

If we start from here - being where you really are-we can say a few things:

• I am living mostly from ego.
• If this is true then my heart-self isn’t running the show.
• If my heart-self isn’t running the show it is because I haven’t developed my heart self enough because when the heart-self is well developed it naturally runs the show more and more without effort. (Ego is super full of effort)
• So, my heart self is not well developed.

If you can agree with this then we can take the next step.

I hear that you would like the heart-self to run the show more - that you experience pain with the ego-self running the show. So you have desire for the heart - to live more from a place of love. (otherwise you never would have asked me anything)

If this is true then I would say this:

Stop fighting the ego and trying to do what you imagine you should do and stop trying to be what you imagine you should be.

Living in a state of self-judgment like this will make it very difficult for you to receive all the love that is around you because you are too focused on your imagination of how things should be versus being in what is really going on. From experience with thousands of humans I think it is safe to say that there is probably a TON of love flying around you that you don’t get pelted by because your vision is filled with imagination rather than reality.

Here’s what you do:

Stop fighting the ego and instead, get to know the heart. You can start by simply saying a prayer - to God, to the Universe, to Santa Claus, whatever, but just pray and in your prayer say three things:

• State your intention to live more from your heart.
• Admit you don’t know how to do this.
• Ask for help.

At the bare minimum you are doing a cognitive behavior technique that will help you change the neuro-pathways in your head. At the biggest there is really a God who hears your prayer and sends you help. Either way, just pray.

When you do have the judgment “I should be Mother Theresa” voice come up, notice it and silently say “I don’t know how to be Mother Theresa but I would like to live more from my own heart. Please help me.”

LEARN from your heart. Let it teach you about it rather than you trying to do what you imagine. If you can be compassionate and gentle with the fact that not living from your heart causes you pain, you will begin to see that the people who hurt you are in the same boat - they are hurting from not living in their hearts either.

Let this be an internal process and not a mental “processing” with whomever you are feeling hurt by. Just notice. And be patient. When you really begin to engage the heart it WILL change you. You are just so used to lots and lots of effort and the heart doesn’t work that way so maybe you wont be able to notice anything at first. But slowly things will change and you will expand and be completely tripped out that the dishes are still not getting done by anyone but you and for some reason it isn’t as big of a deal as it used to be but you can’t figure out why.

Pretty soon love becomes this shield that protects and fortifies you and you start to feel more and more safe and less and less fearful of being hurt. And your ego will feel relieved because it has been trying to do the same thing but it will realize the heart does it better and it will stop making such a fuss.

But your brain is going to think about all this and I’m telling you, the heart doesn’t have a brain but it is a lot smarter than you or I will ever be. Give it some room, learn about its ways, and it will change you. Effortlessly.

And while all this is happening be mature about your emotions by not letting them run the show. Act out as little as possible. Don’t let anger or fear come out and do damage. Self-control that comes from a mature perspective is not restrictive. Rather, we understand the longer-term consequences that come from acting out and we make a choice to restrain the damaging aspects until we mature enough in our understanding and heart-response to no longer have such intense reactions. Self-control simply buys us time to not make things worse, to break the cycle, until our consciousness and love catch-up and we are just naturally less reactive. And don’t worry, you wont become Spock, you will still feel but the feelings will be deeper and more real, not reactive and ego-y. (Ego likes drama)

I think that’s everything. I hope it makes some kind of sense. I so appreciate the opportunity you’ve given me to think more deeply about this and to write about it. Thank you Cheri.