Growing Out of It

I remember a conversation with my roommate who said that one of her male friends complained that he no longer gets the looks from women on the street the way he used to get. So he seemed to be loosing his sex appeal as he was getting older. Yes, looks and our body are certainly things that we all identify with. As as we get older we find that we are losing something. You may call that yet another ego indulgence which we should just ignore, but it doesn't quite work that way. The ego is us; we have to accept the way we feel.

Or take another example. A woman feels threatened at work. Some very good people have been laid off recently and she wonders whether she will be next. Her husband reminds her how good she is at what she does. He reminds her that he is fully employed so she would have time to look for a new job even if she got fired. But no avail, her worries continue. It is as if all the assurance from her spouse just doesn't register.

We spiritual path travelers reflect on our ego. That's what we do because we want to find out what lies beyond. Just don't mistake 'reflecting on' with judging. "Thou shall not be vain" is the voice of the spiritual super ego of our middle-aged guy in the example before. No, you can't just decide that you shouldn't be vain. Many in our spiritual community make that mistake because we think that this is what our 'True Self' wants us to do. Don't presume anything. Embrace the events that are coming your way. Let life - the Tao - take you on a ride to help you let go. Life will peel your ego like an onion if you let it.

 When we feel fear we mostly keep going nevertheless, right? Just as the woman with the murky job employment prospects will probably go back to work the next day and will put her best foot forward. So she "feels the fear and does it anyway" as Susan Jeffers demands in her excellent same-titled book. In the same way, just feel and experience the so-called vanity, the greed, the lust or whatever it is you think interferes with your spiritual path. Just accept whatever it is that is going inside of you without judgement. That way you actually have a shot of growing out of it.