To see clearly with universal indifference
What really happens when you overcome the selfish ego
You hear it said often enough that "ego is the enemy", but what does that mean?
Wise thinkers, from East and West, tell us that the ego is the root of fear, anxiety, doubt, anger, and criticism.
If you're even a halfway perceptive human being you know these feelings well.
The ego is well-meaning. That never-ending stream of negative chatter that it broadcasts is intended to keep you safe, secure, and alive.
But it's like a millennial helicopter parent, seeing threats where there are none and blowing them all out of proportion.
The stalking wolves, lurking famines, and deadly exile from the tribe are long gone for most of us. With no real threats to handle the ego gets bored, and idle hands do the Devil's work. It starts looking around for things that it can be worried about, and lordy does it find them.
What's the solution? Eastern traditions, Buddhism being one of the more popular, tell us that desire and attachment are the source of our suffering. The ego is meant to be silenced. Let go of the worldly desires that create all the negativity.
This works. I spent some years practicing these techniques of breathing and mental focus. A quieted ego is indeed a blissful state of "not-self".
But you can't do much with it. Unless you want to sit in meditation for 16 hours a day, it's a dead end. Unless you believe in the Buddhist's theology this isn't too helpful.
What you probably don't know is that Western traditions have their own takes on this problem and their own techniques for handling them. Few today realize that many of Plato's dialogues have their own version of "mental quieting".
I learned this myself some years ago through an essay written by Iris Murdoch.
She wrote of the need for "unselfing" in order to get a clear and accurate understanding of the people and the things around us.
She meant something like the Buddhist's ego-death. It's that fat, greedy ego (her words) that distorts our perceptions and leaves us rolling in the muck of our self-indulgent fantasies.
The remedy to this is overcoming our ego-minds. But how?
Consider Michelangelo chiseling his David out of a solid block of marble. He had to "see" the finished statue before he began the work. The mental picture guided him as he chipped away the stone.
But the statue didn't exist before he did the work. And the mental picture of David changed as the statue took shape. The more he worked, the clearer the image. The clearer the image, the more perfect the statue. (Perfection itself being a shifting and unattainable target.)
Michelangelo saw the image of the completed David in his mind, and that image drew him like a magnetic field pulling iron dust.
What if Michelangelo let his own ego get in the way? Listening to his ego mind as it filled him with doubt, criticism, fear, second-guessing every choice? We'd likely not have any of his art.
Great artists respond to the reality of the artwork that exists outside of their own ego, with its fear and criticism.
Even if they "created" the work, they respond to it as an independent reality.
Notice that this is exactly opposite of the Buddhist's advice to detach from the world.
The artist becomes even more invested in his creation. He participates in its reality, his hands bring it out of the mental realm and into the material.
No artist, no artwork.
It's the greater, deeper, clearer attachment to reality beyond the self that brings us out of ourselves. More attachment, more participation, more involvement, not less.
More, the artist has a responsibility to the work. He owes it an obligation. He cares for the work. We might even say that he loves it, in that sense of universal, dispassionate concern for its well-being.
Unselfing has a moral dimension. Without love and justice, we cannot clearly and accurately see things as they are. We stay locked within our petty desires and irrational fears, distorting the world. Seeing with love and with justice allows us to reach beyond the ego.
And that's about as much of a Valentine's Day message as you'll get from these hands.
- Matt