The Error of Ego

There is a wisdom that only humility can teach. But it does not come in the form of some factual knowledge - some thing to be possessed or known - that the ego would love to grab hold of and claim as its own. Tis wisdom is merely an opening through which far more than the ego could imagine flows.

I cannot claim to know that wisdom, because my teacher has told me it is not mine to hold or mine to claim and name. It is something that only has existence in letting it go and in giving it away. This wisdom is quite simple in its message: that I am a human, like every other human on this planet. In learning this, through humility, one has to accept that what lives in the most wretched terrorist is also resident in me. It is easy to claim brotherhood with the mystics (and loads of fun for the ego to claim as his understanding!). But to know that I am no different - NO DIFFERENT - than the poorest of the nameless untouchables or than the foulest and most hate-filled zealot, is the humiliating (humbling) lesson.

But least I get ahead of myself, let me walk you through the steps of getting here. For whatever reason and by whatever means, I have been recently opened up to a new level of understanding and feeling emotions. And with that level of perception came the awareness of other people's emotions as well - not some people's emotions, not just my friend's emotions; all people's emotions. It is the one thing we all have in common, irrespective of circumstances, history, culture, gender or any other aspect of life. The bottom line of the human experience is that we are blessed or cursed with that region of our brain that produces emotions.

Now, truth be told, many are not aware of their emotions, or if aware of them, do not know how to access them, or may not know the full extent of what they are and how they work. But we all have them. That translates into something like seeing a picture of a Syrian father grieving the death of his child and knowing full well that you do not need to know his religion or speak his language to
understand his pain or well up with tears.

But if that is true - that we all are given the same capacity of emotion - it levels the playing field. It means that we are actually, on some level, all the same; created the same, evolved the same. We all bleed the same and die the same way. By placing myself apart from, or different from another human (which is what we do when we outcast them, vilify them and make them "them") I am living in the state of egoic superiority and denying my fundamental humanness. I guess I can no longer do that.

And now that I have painted myself into that corner, we are left with the question of what to do. I will try taking that on tomorrow.