The Final Performance

The mind is so ego maniacal. So self-important. So Serious. It grasps. It creates drama. It spins stories. It denies. It defends. We attach meanings and interpretations to everything in context of our ego. An ego created to keep us safe and to defend our fragile insecurities, or to prove our fragile insecurities to be true.

Our egos created from the perceptions of our minds –  underdeveloped young minds –  that are very ripe and vulnerable. Pure unpolluted minds that perceptively pick up on everything in our surroundings, in our culture, from our family, our peers, and our teachers. Then – voila – we have created our self-image, the person we think we are.

But is it really who you are? Our ego was created so long ago from that young impressionable mind and we have automatically believed this is who we are. No questions.

You may think you are meek, boisterous, social, anti-social, untalented, inferior, superior, smart, dumb, able, incapable, etc. Is this really true or just the image you have created for yourself from all the feedback and meanings you placed on experiences at a young age? It’s like choosing a role in a play a long time ago – a child role – yet continuing to play that role your entire life. It doesn't fit anymore...

So many of us need to break out of old ego molds because they are no longer serving us or supporting us. We are living false lives, merely an image of ourselves, or rather an image of someone else.

Often, it is difficult situations that have us questioning who we really are, the lives we are living, the behaviours we are engaging in, and the patterns we keep repeating. For some this may be a serious illness, a great loss, an end to a significant relationship, or even a job loss.

The situations, people and experiences that really shake the ground that we stand on and break the very foundation that has supported us. The situations, people and experiences that strip us of our ego and leave it weak, wounded and broken beyond repair.

They are our wake calls. A message from a deeper part of you. Shhhhh….just listen without imposing your mind on to it and you will hear the message you are meant to receive from that deeper part of yourself, your authentic self, your all-knowing self, your soul.

And the broken ego mind will struggle to hold on, to get back to 'normal', yet this ends up causing us more suffering than if we just let it die ... let it go.

If you can let go of how you think things should be, the need to hold on or fight what is, to find right or wrong, drown in self-pity, deny, run from, blame or whatever else you may do to ‘deal’ with difficult emotions, you will be able to heed the message that these painful and challenging situations bring.

Perhaps it is time to build a new ego structure, a new image of yourself.

As painful as it is to let a part of ourselves die, or as easy as it is to judge these parts we don't like, make your old ego's last performance stellar! Allow it to leave with dignity and love. Give it the gratitude and applause it deserves.

Then choose a new role. One that supports you. One that is more aligned with who you REALLY are.

Your whole idea about yourself is borrowed – borrowed from those who have no idea of who they are themselves. ~Osho

Taking the Stairs

You walk into a dark stairwell and the door slams shut behind you. You panic! You stand there with no way out; frozen to the spot…numb. It’s pitch black, you can’t see anything. You can’t hear anything, except the loud fearful thoughts in your head. “What do I do now? Where am I? Where am I going? I am lost. I am scared. How did I get here? I can’t do this. Why did this happen to me? Who is going to rescue me?” And after screaming and fighting and denying that it is really happening, you realize no one is coming to save you.

So you finally start moving forward and up the stairs. The stairs are steep, some are very unstable and you feel like you could fall through them at any time and back down to the bottom. And sometimes you do trip and fall on them, especially when you start going too fast and try to miss some steps in order to get to the top sooner.

You still can’t see where that is though, you still don’t know where you are going and your thoughts get louder and your imagination more wild with images of creatures that could come out and hurt you at any time. So loud are the voices in your head and so vivid the images, that they have now become your reality…they are real. You panic more from this false reality you have created with your thoughts and imagination.

The stairs seem to go on forever. You have become so weak and you resign yourself to believing that you are stuck here forever in this dark, scary stairwell, with no way out. So much energy wasted on your fear-filled, delusional thoughts. You are so caught up in your own delusions and fears, in fact, that you can’t hear the laughter that is coming from the top of the stairs.

Finally as you sit down, exhausted from all your fighting and denying of what is, your mind starts to quiet down and you begin to hear faint voices, perhaps familiar voices of friends, coming from above you. You find some hope and you get back up and start climbing the stairs again. Yes, you continue to meet more fears along the way, but you keep going towards the voices above you. It feels like an eternity, and then you finally reach your destination.

A door is opened. There is a party going on with people you know.

They toast you – the Guest of Honour! Still shaken and confused by your journey, you walk up to a friend and she puts her arms around you and smiles. She knows what you know – the way to the light isn’t easy.

Then, you are given gifts: Clarity. Truth. Authenticity.



Something I read: You have been given a gift of seeing clearly while others around you may not. Allow others their reality, even if it differs from yours. If they are in denial, this is a time to honor that.

Allowing others their process is the best gift you can give someone.

Deluded by delusion

I deluded myself into believing that, that relationship was okay with me. Deluded myself by thinking his behaviours would change because of his love for me, because of my support and understanding. Deluded myself by convincing myself that my thoughts and feelings could be wrong, rather than his, even though he had a lifetime of dysfunctional thinking and behaviours (just 5 years before and for more than half his life he was an active alcoholic, drug abuser and an associate of bikers (his Dad’s gang)).

But still I questioned MY thoughts and feelings. Maybe I am the one that doesn’t understand, doesn’t get it. Maybe his relationship with his ex and even his son isn’t dysfunctional and emotionally unhealthy like I think it is. He’s so convinced that it isn’t. So I keep deluding myself with self doubt, beliefs that it will change (and I did see some progressive healthy change…so maybe I wasn’t being delusional).

Then I deluded myself again after I let go of him. Deluded myself by thinking he must have changed because he has a new gf soon afterward. Deluded myself by thinking I must have been wrong about seeing his behaviours with the ex as codependent and unhealthy because this girl is STILL with him. I MUST BE WRONG.  Deluded myself into thinking that I just wasn’t good enough. I didn’t wait around long enough. I didn’t know what I was talking about. I can’t believe in my own wisdom and instincts.

Throughout the whole relationship I deluded myself. I was questioning my own thoughts and feelings. My own intuition. I tried to override them with excuses, ‘I am not the type to have a conventional relationship,” “he’s like this because he’s had a bad childhood so I will accept it,” “he will realize he needs to change once he sees that he can trust me,” “we are meant to be”…

But that was the fearful codependent girl speaking who believes she’s unworthy, who is very self-doubtful and who clings when she is afraid. Delusion to feed my own unhealthy emotions and wounds. Delusion to keep me from stepping into my power.

Delusion is just another defense mechanism – a very sly one because it is almost undetectable – that keeps us from facing our unwanted wounds, ‘flaws’ and the things that we believe are unacceptable about ourselves. It shields us from hidden aspects of ourselves that we don’t want to feel, such as unloveability or self-loathing. Things we believe we cannot face because we are afraid it will kill our SELF. We cannot live with it. Delusion can even be fear of facing your own strengths!

Although delusion isn’t inherently bad, it was put in place by us to keep us safe at some point because we believed we could not cope with certain feelings or stand up for ourselves, so we shoved the feelings (and maybe even the once upon a time confidence) down more and more as we replaced it with a self we thought was better. A self that kept us safer. A self that fit the role we were put into.

Delusion then became the iron shield that protected us from our greatest fears about ourselves – the ultimate protector. We shoved it all down into a dark cavernous place and labeled it bad, unacceptable, unsafe, unloveable and unlivable.

It’s the big bad monster under our bed that we need protection from. And as we learn, the monster is only a hurt and lonely creature that just needs a friend, and some love and understanding.

But as we held on to these fears,  false beliefs, and roles that seemed to keep us safe, delusion only came to serve as a very high and dense wall – hiding us from ourselves.  In the end we are only fooling ourselves. We are losing ourselves...our authentic selves and our true power.