Sunday Sermon [Self Concept]

Hola mi gente…
I made a grave error yesterday. I took on a paint job that I know, deep down inside, stresses my back in a way I can’t handle. Today it took me two hours to get up from the bed. The job isn’t finished and I can’t possibly continue, so I’ve called a friend who could use the cash.

* * *

I'm going to make a seawall
with my small happiness...
I don't want the sea to know
that pains go through my breast.

-- Julia de Burgos

Let me begin with the following advice, and keep in mind I almost never offer advice, for I find it disabling and condescending. But let me offer this if just this once:

Don’t allow life to harden your heart.

Perhaps you have been hurt many times. I also know that you may despair of ever finding someone who will love and understand you. I’ve been there, I know what that feels like.

And sometimes your broken heart surrenders to anxiety, anger, resentment, and blame. And yes, I know there are sick people out there, Hungry Ghosts, who in their mad grab for an emotional fix will do or say anything. Theirs is a painful hell.

But if you look under your hard-won armor, you will find a softness, a living vulnerability.

My sad heart teaches me compassion. So, in a very real way, those who have hurt me taught me to love. In fact, I have come to the realization that no one can truly hurt me, whoever I am. Yes, if I allow it, there are people who can hurt my self-concept and make me doubt my self-esteem, but that’s small. In truth, the divine spark of which I am made -- of which we are all made of -- can never be hurt. My Higher Self encompasses and embraces their madness. The throbbing of my heart is a profound blessing that I can turn into a tool for living my life as an offering. And let’s get real: the only true prayer is to live our life as an offering of our deepest gifts.

Your ego is a thought borne of fear. You see, my dear reader, it goes this way: you are a unsteady collection of coincidences held together by a desperate and irrational clinging. There is no center -- no center at all. Everything depends on everything else, your body depends on the ecology, your thoughts depend on whatever conditioned debris floats in from the media, your emotions are mostly from the reptilian end of your DNA. Your intellect is a chemical computer that can’t add up a zillionth as fast as a pocket calculator. Even your best side is a superficial piece of social conditioning that will fall apart as soon as your significant other leaves with the money in the bank account, or the economy fails and you get the sack, or they give you the news about your brain tumor. To name this combination of self-pity, vanity, and despair self is not only the height of conceit, it is also proof that we’re a deluded species.

The ego is merely a belief system we create to shield ourselves from the pain and hurt of life. It is but a figment of your mind. It is such a small part, that if you would reflect upon the larger whole, it would resemble the smallest sunbeam of a vast Sun, or an almost imperceptible ripple that calls itself The Ocean.

It’s our seawall and we can no sooner hide our pain from the ocean as cover the sky with our hand.

Don’t accept this little, defended, fenced-off aspect as who you are. In fact, the sun and the ocean are nothing compared to your true Higher Self.

The sad thing is that you believe that without the ego all would be lost, while in reality without this clinging to ego all would be Love.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…