Preparing
for the upcoming “Resistance” email class I’ve been re-reading the previous session.
This activity in conjunction with participating in a variety of retreats has
rekindled a concern I want to draw our attention to.
The
phrase we use most often to distinguish the illusory ego “self” from the
animating principle is egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate (often referred
to as EKC.) In its unabbreviated form it’s a bit of a mind and tongue tangler,
but clarifying when we break it down to its components.
If
we accept the premise that we are the sum total of everything that has produced us, we suspect we did not arrive in
this incarnation free of “predispositions and tendencies.” (All parents will
agree that no two of their children arrived alike; each appeared with a unique
temperament and affect.) When those karmic inclinations encountered current
life circumstances—family, culture, society, time, and place—we began a series
of adjustments that resulted in a complex of processes we have learned to think
of as a constant, consistent, fairly unchanging entity known as “I.”
Believing
that construction, that conglomeration of processes, to be real and true, “I”
works hard to be “who” “I” am and how “I” should be. Maintaining a belief in a
consistent “I” is dependent on looking to the same body of information for
confirmation that what “I” experiences is real and true. The source of that
information is a mind that has been conditioned to believe certain content and
reject all other content.
The
guarantee that “I” looks to conditioned mind and nowhere else for information
resides in a system of “self” hate that punishes every infraction, large or
small, “real” or imaginary. “You will, you won’t, you must, you should, you
shouldn’t, that’s right, that’s wrong, you’re good if, you’re bad when…” On and
on it goes monitoring, judging, assessing, comparing, punishing—controlling.
For
those of us working hard to wake up and end suffering it is essential to devote
ourselves ceaselessly to navigating the obstacle course of fabrications and
ploys egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate uses to trap us in its small,
artificial world.
The
ploy I want to reveal here is the acronym EKC. My first objection is that
people capitalize those letters. Capital letters are an interesting subject
larger than the scope of this message, but suffice it to say I’m discouraged
from capitalizing Monastery while other, in my opinion, far less worthy words
are readily capitalized. Next is my concern that self-hate is left out of the
equation, it has been dropped from the acronym.
But
here’s my real concern: When we fall into a habit of using acronyms it’s a
quick trip to losing sight of the meaning of the words that point to the
object. This is exactly the trap we’ve fallen into with “I.” We have become so
accustomed to that nefarious acronym, we’re completely unaware that we have no
idea what it means.
Now,
I realize in an email class you get a maximum of 50 words for your response and
it’s unfair to ask you to add an extra four words. So, here’s my request:
Please make it ekc/sh (lower case) and always say the full words to yourself
when you write the letters, increasing your chances of not losing sight of just
what we’re up against in our journey toward liberation.
Oh,
and to sign up for the class, if you haven’t already, please go to:
http://registration.livingcompassion.org/email-class-august-24-2012
In
gassho,
Cheri
