Letting go of the story of “me”

 I had a dream the other day, I was in a soccer competition and twice managed to steal the ball from my opponents and scored, advancing to the next level each time. The rush I experienced felt familiar. I spent my youth as a soccer player and afterwards used academics and the financial industry as an outlet to compete with the best, intellectually this time around.

That’s how the notion of the “me” gets programmed. We perceive the highs as us and want to see the lows as the outlier and wish it away. The spiritual quest is the letting go of this conditioning and the insight that life’s ups and downs don’t define us. We realize that the story of “me” was not real and we are free to let go of this story altogether.

Do you know the story of the scorpion and the holy man? A passer-by sees a man rescuing a scorpion but the moment he lifts the scorpion out of the water he gets stung and drops it in agony, only to rescue it again a moment later. When the passer-by asked him what was going on, he shrugged his shoulders and said, it’s the nature of the scorpion to sting and my nature to save!

Our nature is not written in stone—or in the dna in this case—it’s something to be mindful of as it gets activated but it doesn’t define us. The dissolution of self is the realization that body, mind and world are One; the observer is the observed. Everything that life confronts us with is a stepping stone to leave the conditioning behind as long as we acknowledge its existence.

The holy man got hung up on his holiness title that’s why life put him in a painful time-loop to encourage him to let go—of the scorpion as well as his holiness. Likewise, I acknowledge my competitive conditioning but no longer feel compelled to participate in the story of “me.” Universal Consciousness is in charge. There is a time to “win” and a time to “lose”.

#spirituality #awakening #competition