ego

Parrot at the Australia Zoo
Copyright (c) 2006 Wendee Holtcamp

From this stone
will come a bird - WH

Life isn't as serious as my mind makes it out to be - Eckhart Tolle

I love God. I love how He speaks to me through showing up as a sort of message in Bible passages I read at the right moment or in songs that seem almost like a direct answer or confirmation. Yesterday, I related my struggle to a mountain, and said that I surrendered. These were not just words. The day before I literally scrawled in huge handwriting across my journal the words, I GIVE UP! And I also recognized for the first time my total powerlessness over this certain issue.

Today the last song in church was Mighty to Save by Hillsong United, and part of the lyrics say:

Saviour, He can move the mountains,
My god is mighty to save,
He is mighty to save
Forever author of salvation,
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave

So take me as you find me
All my fears and failures
Fill my life again

I give my life to follow
Everything that i believe in
Now i surrender (and i surrender)

Yep. Wow. I was moved.

I am feeling great today. Again I woke a bit sad, but as soon as I got up, I felt fine. I read a bit in the morning, went to church then went to the gym with the kids. It feels great to be back in my regular routine, and to be home! I was supposed to go to Nacogdoches on Tues-Wed to trap snakes, but that is being rescheduled due to Hurricane Gustav. I'm writing an article on Louisiana pine snakes, which are probably the rarest snake in North America and possibly the rarest vertebrate yet they're not on the Endangered Species List. It's state listed as vulnerable in Texas, and in Louisiana as imperiled to threatened.

I started to re-read Chapter 2 in A New Earth and it really spoke to me given my new realizations. It talks about how a child learns that they are "I" or "me" and what is "mine" and then when you take a toy away, they cry and get upset. Why? It's because the child invests a sense of "mine" and "I" in the toy. Quickly they will forget it and become interested in another toy. But the toy, temporarily, becomes a part of the child's sense of "I" - the ego. And that is what many people do with possessions of various types, including other people in their lives. We sometimes want others as our own, not realizing they are their own people, on their own paths. We can know this in our heads but we don't always act that way.

I also relate to how he says the moment we recognize the ego, it dissolves, at least in that instant. The ego can not stand the light of recognition. As soon as we separate the "voice in our head" from our thoughts and say, that thought is not "me" - but only my ego, only a part of me, and it is not my true essence which is Spirit - then we are able to grow and move beyond the ego's limitations.

The other night I watched this movie, How to Lose Your Lover which had the subtitle "A comedy for the bitter, cynical, hopeless romantic in all of us." I thought MY GOD isn't THAT appropriate for me? LOL. And the even greater irony is that the way the guy goes about first meeting and then doing everything possible to lose his lover, who he actually really likes, is that he wants to rush everything. She resists but then gives in realizing that he has good points. But even though it's a darkish comedy, it's actually exactly what some people, ahem, do...