Befriending the Ego
Tomorrow’s events:
Impro: A Retrospective w/ Keith Johnstone. October 13th @ 1:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
Communitas Club: Series Launch w/ Margaret Amenyo and Peter Limberg. October 13th @ 5:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
Escaping Narcissism: A Rite of Passage to an Entangled Humanity w/ Theodore Taptiklis. October 13th @ 8:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
An event to get excited about:
The Acid Left w/ Adam Ray Adkins. October 15th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP by clicking on the image below.
Adam Ray Adkins visits The Stoa this Thursday to discuss “The Acid Left.”
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October 12, 2020
My inbox was filled with quite a few positive responses after yesterday’s journal entry, probably the most I have ever received from a journal entry. It touched a cord, and I felt something shifted internally with me, and possibly in the “wider field.”
I hear phrases like “wider field” all the time in more spiritually inclined spaces, along with phrases such as “holding space.” I was never quite sure what they meant, but I am starting to get a sense about what they mean.
All the emails I received yesterday warmed my heart, and this one made me chuckle:
The format of this whole thing is so bizarre. Anti-marketing, minimalist web presence, and these crushing journals that I look forward to reading each evening. It's weird and great and maybe exactly the kind of thing we need in this moment of the human experiment. Whatever it is, I surrender to it.
There is a part of me, and it is definitely the egoic part, that gets agitated when I see other digital spaces getting more attention when they are delivering much less then what The Stoa is delivering. To put words to what the ego is feeling: Hey people, we are doing awesome shit over here. Get your head out of your filter bubble ass and get awesome with us already.
Feeling into the ego here, there is that standard “look at me I am awesome” stuff going on, which is okay: the ego does what it needs to do. The fact that this gets activated could be a sign I have more inner-work to do, but it also feels like there is a healthy enough distance for me not to identify with its noise.
Beyond this ego noise, there is also a genuine desire for more people to be aware of this place, in order for them to benefit from it, and for them to receive its fruits. It is not wise to do this in a rushed way though. Too many people, too soon, would be bad for spiritual business.
After reading my last entry, Bonnitta Roy wrote me: That lonely thing is the last strategy that the ego uses to control your greatness. It's the ego's final card. When it's played it means the ego doesn't have anything else (or anything powerful enough) to call you back into your cage.
I like that. My ego wants to seduce me, with its loneliness, in order to get me back in my cage. I have a sense he is jealous of the relationship I have been forming with the daemon. I have been feeling the daemonic energy with great potency these days. Something feels really alive, and this daemonic fire is coursing through my mind-body. It feels sexual, spiritual, and powerful.
If Bonnitta is right, then my ego is protesting with loneliness. I imagine because he does not want to lose me to the world, because if you let yourself listen to the daemon, your life becomes bigger than yourself, and your transpersonal commitment gets revealed to you.
Another thing that annoys me about spiritual scenes, and maybe this is also why I never resonated with Buddhistic stuff, is their ego shaming ways. This might be uncharitable, because I actually never read much Buddhistic stuff, but there is a felt-sense perception around that scene which states: ego = bad.
That is so mean to the ego. The ego on its own is not that bad. It is only “bad” if you are not in the right relationship with it. I want to turn to my ego now and tell it something …
I like you. You’re my only ego I've ever had, and you are the only ego I will ever have. I am a Stoic, and us Stoics do not try to get rid of their egos, or shame them away. So you do not have to worry about that, or feel alone anymore. You are safe with me, and when I smoke cigars and drink whiskey, let us hang, and reflect on how awesome we are.
And yeah man, I am scared as well. Thinking about where the daemon is leading me, where it is leading us. But let us not think about that too much, otherwise we would not be following, and we both know following is really fucking fun. We are in this together, you and I.
And yeah, all the authenticity perverts who are reading this journal right now will be seeing all of this, and that is okay, because I am not ashamed about any of this, and I am not ashamed about the thing I really want to tell you right now:
I think you are fucking awesome.
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