Ego Mind & Here to There
One of the underpinnings of ego mind is its orientation toward here and there. That mind is always thinking in terms of from here to there, past to future, renovation, change, growth – and this crazy idea that it can actually create, control, or choose the experience.
“Which road do I take?” she asked.
“Where do you want to go?” was his response.
“I don’t know” Alice answered.
“Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
This orientation of the mind along with these other thoughts arose in me after a conversation I had with a fairly new student of the Diamond Approach. We were having a cup of jasmine green tea at Peet’s in Walnut Creek, CA and for a couple of hours our conversation roamed all over creation and back again. One book I recommended was Prayers of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus’s Words by Neil Douglas-Klotz. This is one of my favorite books when it comes to discussing the relevance of the Bible.
One of the things I kept noting during our conversation was an underlying orientation of going from here to there, or improving oneself (another form of here to there).
As I slept that night, I kept reflecting on this orientation and when I awoke at 3am, here is what I was in the midst of:
The mind mostly thinks it knows about here and there. It has ideas about here: not good enough, not exciting enough, I’d be happier with more sun or more money, getting real would be wonderful, etc. And it has ideas about there: if I had…, if I could…, if things were…., – I’d be….
But here is the dilemma – the ego mind hasn’t a clue about here or there in a real sense, it only has ideas and fantasies. The mind is rarely in the present in a real way, how can it know the here? The here and there are covered in veils, they’re both
obscured by ideas, prejudices, the past, etc. They really look more like this:
So the first thing that would serve us well is to inquire (explore) here and there.
- Where am I now?
- What are my thoughts, feelings, sensations about where I am?
- Is my sense of here familiar? Is the past intruding on the present?
- Why am I not comfortable or okay with here? What’s that energy like? Can I tolerate it?
When it comes to there, usually the ideas I have about what I want are only the surface of what is really going on. Maybe I think having more money will make me happy. If I look into this, I may discover that I think having more money will give me more freedom, so I don’t want more money, I want freedom – but I think it is money that will get me there. And if I look deeper, maybe I’ll discover that my sense of freedom comes with a sense of being released from the tyranny of having to always be doing. Maybe I’ll realize that what I really want the freedom to be at peace. So it’s not about money or freedom, it’s about peace.
As we deepen our exploration into here and there here’s what begins to happen: here and there begin to become more precise, to merge into the same space/experience. If our inquiry goes deep enough, here is what we are left with:
Look deep into the space between this sentence and the previous one, the answer lies therein.
There to Here?
Links of Interest
[ad#post468]