Gasshō
Initially, most egocentric, karmically conditioned,
self-hating humans experience egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate as “just
me.” Those attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, behaviors, and the voices yammering
away in my head are “just who I am.” Because we’re heavily conditioned to
believe we think for ourselves and make our own decisions, it can take a fair
amount of time to realize we’re utterly controlled by an ego survival system we’re
programmed to assume is free-thinking, autonomously acting “me.”
Those of us who have, blessedly, made our away to awareness
practice have had a chance to step back (disidentify) and recognize the
brainwashing program we were trained with through at least one lifetime. With more
practice we can recognize what is conditioning from socialization by family,
education, and culture, and what is likely a karmic orientation playing itself
out as an over-arching process.
Herein lies the danger.
In the first situation (“it’s just who I am”), we give all
of our attention to egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate because we don’t
know anything else is possible. In the second case (I’ve seen the brainwashing
system for what it is), we give all our attention to egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate
even though we know something else is
possible.
Here’s how we can make a different, conscious, choice should
we choose to.
We can basically be in one of two states: identified (with egocentric
karmic conditioning/self-hate), or disidentified (stepped back from
ego-identity into awareness.)
If you are:
~~listening to a conversation in your head
~~trying to figure something out
~~feeling bad
~~attempting to “see where you are”
~~being right
~~making others wrong
~~trying to get what you want
~~attempting to conceal something
~~wanting it to be different than it is
~~avoiding something,
you are identified with egocentric karmic
conditioning/self-hate.
If you are:
~~here
~~present
~~noticing/observing
~~aware and paying attention,
you are likely not identified with egocentric karmic
conditioning/self-hate.
If you have been practicing long enough to be aware that the
focus of attention has gone to any of the processes in the first list, you are
ready to drop that and redirect attention to what you choose as your focus in
thisherenow. No hesitating, no noodling, no wondering, no second-guessing, no
better ideas—just drop it! There is nothing more for you to learn from karmic
conditioning.
It can be very helpful to choose ahead of time what you want
to redirect the focus of attention to when you disidentify. In the absence of a
focus, habit will sweep us back into having attention on egocentric karmic
conditioning/self-hate. So here’s a suggestion: Make it something larger than
“you.” Let your focus be on something ego-identity will have a hard time
hijacking. Unconditional love, peace, compassion, generosity, gratitude—all
good choices. And for all the extra time you’ll have when ego-I isn’t dragging
you into conversations of self-hating gloom and doom or behaviors of
distraction, find something in service to others that lights you up.
Gasshō
Cheri
