Chapter 23 of A Year to Live talks about our letting go of control regarding the need to be independent. Last week I had another bout of depression and anxiety because of an arthritis flare-up with increased pain and edema. However, I saw the rheumatologist again and am back on track with medications. I wonder if all this has something to do with my needing to be in control of my life, wondering if my ego is playing tricks with me again. Louise Hay in her book, You Can Heal Your Life, states that arthritis is related to the feeling of being unloved, feeling self-critical and filled with resentment. I want to look at this as well.
Letting go of control is another subject that has many layers. Many times, when a person is dying, they lose the ability to care for their own needs – feeding themselves, moving from bed to chair and to the toilet, taking care of toileting needs, dressing themselves, etc. Levine suggests that even before we are dying, we can practice letting go of control of being independent with our basic needs by allowing a partner to lead while dancing, feeding us while we keep our hands slack, moving about the house blindfolded, and spending time doing nothing. In other books, Levine describes taking care of a person who is dying and no longer able to do basic things for themselves. He talks about caring for people dying of AIDS back in the 1980s and 1990s. He saw this as a profound level of service to another. Since we don’t know how or when we will die, and we don’t know what our physical or mental abilities will be like when we are dying, this is probably an important topic to discuss with our loved ones who may or may not be willing and able to provide this service for us – this is in addition to the written documents stating our desires for care at that time.
Even so, when I wake up in the morning with renewed pain and edema, I know that I am not dying of it, but living becomes a struggle. It feels as though I have fallen in the “hole” again. Do you remember that poem?
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost… I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find the way out.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I’m in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I see it is there.
I still fall in… it’s a habit
My eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I walk around it.
I walk down another street.
In my meditation experiences, which I continue to do with Deepak Chopra even when I feel the pain of arthritis, Chopra reminds me that the ego is what keeps me stuck in the past. The subconscious in the form of ego stores past fears and concerns in memories from the past and these bubble up and contaminate the present. My ego is what keeps me asking “why?” Why is this happening to me? Why am I not living a healthy old age? Why am I suffering with arthritis? Perhaps my ego is what continues to bring up current issues of pain and struggle in the form of the inflammation, pain and edema of arthritis. I know that I have had many events and situations in the past filled with anger, grief and guilt, high-stress life-style, heavy drinking, and negative attitude, plus feeling unloved, critical and resentful. all of which contribute to inflammation — mentally and physically. Perhaps I need to be more conscious of letting go of the thoughts and feelings of past events and memories so that I can live more joyfully and healthfully in the present.
When I consider the topic of letting go, other levels come to mind. For example, one of Ram Dass’s teachers, Neem Karoli Baba, taught a process in which we ask ourselves the question “Who am I?” over and over again until we realize that we are much more, deeper, more meaningful, than all the roles we play, our ego stories. I remember trying to do this process during a healing retreat many years ago. I found myself thinking about the roles I played: daughter, mother, friend, student, teacher, physical therapist, and many more. At some point I reached a moment when my mind went blank, and I didn’t have any more answers to the question. Instead of going on into my spiritual dimensions, as I was supposed to do, I quit. My understanding is that with a teacher I would have been forced to keep answering until I reached some meaning deeper than the superficial roles that I play. Have you ever tried to do this exercise?
Now that I think more about it, I know that I would have even more roles to name, plus mental attitudes and characteristics, plus emotional aspects of myself, and might even go a little deeper into the spiritual process. Who am I? I am not only a physical, emotional/mental being with an ego; I am also a spiritual being with an ability to move deeply into the Silence, to be aware of Awareness—aspects of myself that I have shared in previous blogs.
Another level of letting go of control occurs when learning to meditate. I remember, years ago, contemplating letting go of the thoughts and feelings that came up for me as I tried to sit quietly and focus on my breathing. Even focusing on breathing is a kind of letting go. I breathe in, I breathe out. I can control, somewhat, the kind and extent of the breath I take in and let go of, but basically my body breathes itself without my having to think about it. As I became more adept at meditating and studied with various teachers, I learned that trying to reach a goal of “enlightenment” requires a degree of letting go of my ego’s need for control.
How does the ego gain such control of life? I know that ego develops early in life as we learn to become more independent from our primary care giver, for me it was my mother. We are born completely dependent on someone to care for us, to provide the necessary food, water, warmth, sleep, and security. As we gradually become able to do things for ourselves, we demand more autonomy. (the terrible twos, and the rebellious teen years for example) As young adults we often move away from our families of origin and seek other people, friends, lovers, spouses with whom we continue to create our lives. The ego keeps us believing that we are separate beings, and it creates the “stories” we tell about ourselves to help us feel safe and in control.
This is a natural process and one that we depend upon to survive in the physical world of sensory experiences. However, the ego tends to control us rather than the other way around. We tend to live in automatic mode—our thoughts and feelings automatically react to present circumstances influenced heavily by past events, thoughts, and feelings. What we did in the past is still there in our subconscious, and automatic reactions bubble up into every-day life. If we want to learn how to think and feel and act in the present moment, for example, in love instead of fear, then we need to learn to let go of our ego’s strong control and allow ourselves to rest in the spiritual realm of awareness, just be in the present moment. And we must do this over and over again. The ego never lets go of control entirely while we are in a physical body.
The truth is that when we die, we let go of everything we know, all of our roles, all of our control, all material things, all memories, thoughts, and feelings, everything. So it seems to me that this kind of inquiry will be helpful to me in the long run when I am actively dying, assuming that I am still conscious. Learning to let go of control at its various levels is an important aspect of business of being human, this living, and dying, process.
Self-inquiry questions:
1. What do you understand as the role of ego in your life? How automatic are your reactions or responses to daily events?
2. Do you find the images of “the hole” helpful to life’s events? Are you able to “find a new street?
3. Have you heard of the meditation practice of asking yourself “Who am I?” What happens for you when you do this practice?
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