How do we get the ego to relax – allowing us to wake up?
More than once, I have heard A. H. Almaas say that all we need is a good massage for the ego. His point being that fundamentally, the ego is nothing more than a collection of tension patterns in the mind and body.
These patterns become habitual ways of knowing ourselves and relating to the world. They show up as conditioned armoring in the body, an area of deep curiosity for Wilhelm Reich. These tensions and patterns affect how our awareness and perception – what we see and how we see it. Many of the beliefs and attitudes that we feel are conscious choices are nothing more than unconscious creations of these contractions in the psyche.
More and more I notice that during meditation there are periods where I am noticing tension patterns and streams of cycling thoughts, emotions, sensations and energies that I am bringing attention to – then relaxing within them. As an example, I may notice a deepening sense of concentrated awareness and an increasing tension in my forehead, neck or shoulders. When I notice this, I stay with the deepening awareness and at the same time relax the area of tension in the body.
When the tension in the body relaxes, I notice the awareness deepens even more.
One thing I practice relaxing with is the sense of self – that guy who thinks he is meditating. An interesting “mirror reversing” experience can arise where there is more just meditation and not so much someone there meditating.
I think there could be a great demand for ego masseuses. Do you know an ego masseuse you can recommend? What’s the going rate for a 90-minute ego massage – and I don’t mean the type of ego stroking that increases my identification with the sense of a separate self, just the opposite… fade to black!
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