Thursday, June 28, 2012

burning the ego

I think we would all like to be a little more humble. I don't think anyone would dislike it if they were described as being humble, but I don't think that most of us desire to BE humbled.  I have had some experiences recently where light was shown on those dark place inside of me and I was horrified by what I saw.  It was one of those moments where your like "I am an awful person."  I am not talking about when we are dragging ourselves through the mud, but where something has happened and we have the realization that we suck.  These haven't been realizations you can brush aside and forget about.  My true self has been shown and there is no going back.
 I have spent almost my whole life on a quest to better myself, well more like perfect myself. I have done everything that I felt was necessary and  it has been hard, it has been painful, and I have been unhappy for most of it.  So to do all this work and find out that I am still a complete and total asshole is a bit disheartening. When our eyes are opened to who we truly and wholly are, humility should be our first, or at the very least, second emotion.  I fully believe that each and everyone of us is unique, beautiful, and sacred. I also believe we are all imperfect, selfish and capable of doing horrible things. To become humble, to be humbled, is not a happy experience. In yoga we talk about Tapas, or fire, as a means to burn away toxins, blocked energy or whatever garbage we are holding onto. All that sounds good and nice, except that when we are talking about Tapas we are usually talking about the burning sensation that has started to develop in your muscles from holding the posture so long, or having done abs to the point where you are sure your body can do no more.  In those moments I think most of us want to tell Tapas to "F Off" and we would like to keep our garbage, thank you very much. It is not easy to continue to do something once it has become uncomfortable, inconvenient, or just plain hard.  So many times in life I have been at the doorstep to some new path or new truth, but it just seems too hard to obtain, I want to turn back, or go around, or perhaps just stay right where I am because what's in front of me seems too hard or too scary. How many times have we been willing to sacrifice growth and wisdom for the sake of comfort and safety? How many of us have seen all that we could be, but at the last second backed out for fear of failure? I was reading one of my old journals a couple nights ago and I had written this quote on the inside of the cover:

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental
To reach for another is to risk involvement
To expose your feeling is to risk exposing your true self
To place your ideas, your dreams before a crown is to risk their loss
To love is to risk not being loved in return
To live is to risk dying
To believe is to risk despair
To try is to risk failure
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing
They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live
Chained by their attitudes they are slaves; they have forfeited their freedom
Only a person who risks is free
-Anonymous Chicago teacher

To grow, to create, to be become new involves risk, it involves stepping out of your comfort zone, and it often involves getting hurt. As I have mentioned before and am sure to mention again and again, I have dealt with depression on and off through a lot of my life and it has truly sucked. I honestly thought at times that I would simply fall over and die. What I have come to realize is that through all that pain and suffering, beauty and life have sprung forth. If I had not suffered for so long I would not be who I am right now.  In those dark times and dark places of my life I did not thank God for my suffering, I was in no way happy, I did not see any future blessing, and often, I simply hoped there would be no future.  I use that word suffer because that's what I did. I was in pain, I felt as though all of my insides were dying and I know that I am not the only one who has felt that way, so many of us walk around carrying these burdens with us.  However, because I felt the way I did, I  was driven forward in life; I was driven to stop hurting, to fight the agony that was overwhelming me.  Most of the things I have done in life were in search of peace and happiness. I have been trying to find a balance in my life. I have had so many blessings on this journey and none of that would have happened had I not spent so many years in pain.  Even now when I am going through a hard time I am not happy. I complain the whole time and drag my feet whining like a small child. I cannot wait for it to be over, then when it is over, and I have received the fruits of my half-assed labor I look back and see what God was doing and realize how silly I was being. Right now I think God is humbling me. I  feel my ego being burned and I don't like it. Although I very much like the idea of being humble, of letting my ego go, it really doesn't feel good during the process. To have my shadow self brought fully into the light is a disappointing and an uncomfortable experience. However I can think of no faster way of destroying my ego, then looking at myself completely and honestly. I will close with this quote from Erwin McManus' book Uprising:


Humility's closest attribute is honesty. Humility doesn't require us to be self-deprecating. Humility is not about having a low self-image or poor self-esteem. Humility is about self-awareness. It is important to be self-aware in relationship to our gifts, talents, skills and intellect, but in regard to our spiritual health, it is far more essential that we are self-aware in the arena of personal character. If you see yourself for who you are and embrace it honestly, humility is the natural result.  God isn't asking you to say something about yourself that isn't true. God is asking that we take a good, long look in the mirror and see ourselves for who we truly are, and then after that, to have the courage to ask for help. 
Our humility allows God's intervention. The word humble comes from humus, which is simply translated "earth" or "dirt." Humility is about coming to grips with our humanity. 

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

freedom

Lately I have been wanting to find more freedom in my life. I want to be free of certain things in myself, but also be free to be myself.  I see different pictures or quotes and I think "I want that!"  I imagine myself running wild through a field with the wind in my hair and not a care in the world. The problem is freedom doesn't just appear on your doorstep, take over all your responsibility's and say "the world is yours." Freedom is not free. There are somethings I believe are freely given, but most things are obtained not given.  I love this story Erwin McManus tells in his book Uprising.

Although the student had the opportunity, he really didn't have the freedom. Opportunity and freedom are not the same thing. Chris's freedom to play the full spectrum of music, to passionately express the music within his soul, was only available to him as a result of years and years of discipline. Discipline can be confused with conformity. Many times we run from discipline or at least resist it because we feel we are being forced to conform in the most negative sense of the word. No one wants to be a clone. No one's life ambition is to be a carbon copy of someone else (except, of course, all those Elvis impersonators). Yet the irony is that when we forsake discipline in our attempt to avoid conformity, we lose our potential to be truly free. 


I was thinking about all this as I was running the other day, sometimes when I run it feels like freedom, it loosens something within me and I will end up sprinting with no effort at all. Most days are not like that though and this was not one of those days. I was tired and longed to feel the freedom of running, but instead I felt like I was dragging myself through the routine and no matter how hard I tried it was not going to get easier.  The thought occurred to me, more than once, that perhaps I was pushing myself too hard and should just walk or head back home, but if I only ran when it felt like I was floating on the earth I would probably never run.  I was thinking about the feeling of floating over the earth as I ran, but the thing is, this is a rather new feeling. I have almost always found joy in running, but the sensation of floating over the earth with ease has only started happening in the last month or so.  I have been working on my form and my energy as I run, I have been observing myself as I run, not just my form, but my thoughts as well. This is taken extra work and energy as well as me setting my ego aside to take a slower pace for the sake of keeping my form.  The fruit of this, of course, is that I have found when everything lines up just so, I can run without any effort at all. It literally feels as though my feet are floating over the earth. All this made me think about freedom and what McManus had said about it.  I thought about it most of the run, about how I view freedom as me running wild in a field, but really freedom looks much more like William Wallace at the end of Braveheart. Freedom takes work, discipline, and effort. Working towards freedom may mean creating boundaries and  disciplines that feel a lot like losing our freedom, but it is through these that we are able to find the freedom to express what lays within our hearts.