Posts Tagged ‘ego’

By Seamus Anthony

Do you suffer from a lack of self-confidence? Is so you should know that learning to meditate effectively can really help you to build your self-confidence levels up.

I recently started doing stand-up comedy as a hobby. Many people I know commented that I must have such strong levels of self-confidence to even consider such folly!

They are correct.

Despite my dubious comedic material, the reason I can go through with it (even though I still get very nervous before getting up on stage) is because I do actually have a lot of self-confidence and yes, a major reason I have this personality trait is due to meditation.

Allow me to explain.

How Meditation Helps You Become More Self-Confident

It is a sad fact of life that as we grow from childhood to adulthood, we invariably go through various degrees of emotional trauma. This is true even for those of us with relatively stable upbringings; think about how horrible kids at school were to you sometimes. This stuff all takes it toll on our developing minds and to protect ourselves from unwanted emotional pain, we build up defensive emotional walls.

These defenses can manifest as aggressive or assertive personality traits – or they can manifest as low self-esteem. By adopting an image of yourself as a person who is not very confident, your ego feels safer knowing that you won’t volunteer to put yourself in the limelight (i.e. in danger of being criticized or mocked).

Now while this may (or may not) have helped you to cope throughout school and your adult life so far, you may be aware that in fact your lack of self-confidence is limiting your ability to shine, to enjoy living the full expression of your talents and abilities. And yes, it may be stopping you from showing them all (dammit) just how good you could be … if only you could find the guts to stand up and be counted.

Using Meditation To Over-Ride the Ego and Find Your Self-Confidence

When you learn how to meditate effectively, interesting things happen.

For starters, if all goes well, you will begin to relax.

And I mean really relax.

At this stage you will feel at peace, and forget about your problems, even if it is just for a little while as you meditate.

Then as you go deeper and deeper, you will begin to bypass the fearful “ego” part of your personality and begin to get in touch with that part of your being that is at peace, happy and free.

You may not believe that there is a part of you that is so carefree and happy – but believe me it is true. It’s just that you may have never bypassed your fearful, wounded mind enough to experience this level of contented awareness that lies at the core of us all.

I could write forever about this process, but in the context of this post, it is enough to say that if you have never meditated successfully enough to have felt this state of being, then it would be well worth your while to explore this phenomenon (by reading and more importantly, meditating) until you get in touch with what I am trying to describe.

When you reach this blissful stage of meditation, you begin to see things from a different perspective. You will begin to understand life from a universal perspective, your own life with all it’s troubles will not seem as urgent and all-encompassing, but rather you will see how small you really are in the grand scheme of things and how this is not something to fear but rather is just fine.

You are a tiny little speck in a vast, vast universe – and that’s ok with you. It’s how it should be.

Go even deeper and you will understand how in fact you are not just a speck – a separate part of the universe – but (woo-woo as it does sound) you are in fact ALL of the universe. Everything is One Thing and you are that One Thing and in a certain way (not the egoistic Christian way) you are in fact eternal.

Then your meditative thoughts may turn to your problems of self-confidence. And suddenly you will not feel so concerned about what people think of you anymore.

And when you are no longer meditating but are back in the “real world” facing your self-confidence issues, you will find that regular meditation will help you with “mind skills”, mental abilities (almost like mild super-powers) to over-ride your ingrained patterns of low self-confidence and rise above your low-self esteem.

Because if you are all of the Universe, and if everybody else that you know is One with you, then what is there to fear?

Nothing.

Fear has no place in your life.

It is a mirage.

Let it go.

Stand up tall, with confidence – and live your life to fullest!

Photo by Kalandraka

By Seamus Anthony

Here is a slightly exaggerated list of the reasons why my music career kind of stalled …

1) Either by fluke or an initial burst of hard work, achieve a minor level of proficiency and/or success and then decide you have made it already, that the world owes you continued growth, success and adulation, and that you don’t need to try anymore.

2) Foster and fertilise your ego until it becomes so inflated that you can’t see around it anymore.

3) Believe your own hype.

4) Get stuck into drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes until you are both psychologically and physiologically addicted to both. Allow the unchecked consumption of these vices to eat up all of your cash, and destroy your health and your grip on reality. Eat badly and allow your fitness levels to plunge, and your body image to go to pot.

5) Don’t listen to other musicians and learn from them. Don’t listen to many different kinds of music. Don’t constantly read and research, ask questions, pay attention to what the Pros do, or invest any time whatsoever into learning new skills. And NEVER practice. Fail completely to plan your career in advance, and be very careful to utterly neglect to utilize any strategy or common sense whatsoever as you go about your business. MOST IMPORTANTLY – ALWAYS REFUSE POINT BLANK TO GET INVOLVED IN ANYTHING THAT EVEN VAGUELY RESEMBLES HARD WORK.

6) Believe every two bit, self-deluded, no-hoper Manager/Agent/Record Company Owner/Publisher and all of the lies and empty promises they feed you. Be eager to hand control of your career over to them, and happily let them go about destroying any chance you have of getting anywhere worthwhile.

7) Be impatient, irritable, irresponsible, unreliable, dishonest and lazy.

8 ) Pay no heed to the way you treat others. Forget who your real friends are, and disown your family. Harbour bitter, long-standing grudges against other people, and never, ever, try and see things from another person’s perspective. Always be rude and disrespectful.

9) Rampantly cheat on your lover, and then lie through your teeth to them about it. Use your perceived  status to use up and hurt both your lover and those you cheat on your lover with.

10) Pay no attention to your financials; just let someone deal with that because you are an Artist and it is beneath you to have to think about money. Then, expect to always have all of your material needs met, at no cost to yourself, even when you have done nothing to earn this. Get angry, throw public tantrums and lay blame every which way but on yourself when you don’t get what you want immediately.

11) Make it clear to your fellow musicians that you alone are the star of the show. Get rid of any great musicians who have the balls to upstage you, or stand up to you and threaten your out-of-control, massively insecure ego. Resolutely keep using any crap musicians that you like to have around because they can somehow manage to swallow your bullshit (and smile while they chew), even if it’s obvious that they have absolutely no talent.

12) Blindly believe that your music is perfect in every way, and that anyone who provides you with any constructive criticism is a moronic philistine with bad taste and no idea about anything. Let the praises of the easily impressionable bloat your feelings of self-worth until you are in danger of bursting.

13) When things aren’t going your way, give into self-defeatism and depression, crawl into your hole, and self-medicate the pain away.

14) As the years slip past without any real progress being made, begin to foster massive feelings of cancerous resentment against the world and everyone in it. Let bitterness be your guide as you feel the disease of  long-term disappointment  stagnate in your veins and your heart grow black with despair.

15) Learn to counter your feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing by negatively  criticizing others. Try to keep your gasping ego alive through feeble attempts to make yourself look better at other people’s expense.

16) When you have children, project your limiting beliefs onto them from an early age so that they may follow in your footsteps and likewise become masters of Zen and The Art Of NOT Becoming A Rock Star.

17) Die at an early age a broken, substance abusing, unhappy soul without a friend in the world and a family who hates your guts – because you were always nasty to them and don’t have any money to leave them when you go.

By Steve Mills

Many eastern spiritual texts put forward the idea that you must learn to have a full awareness of your whole self. While our self looks like it is an integrated whole from one level, scratch the surface (via meditation or other methods of self-enquiry) and you will find a whole heap of different parts of your personality, all striving to express themselves. The one that stands out the most initially is the Ego, the self-important, self-centric aspect of our personality . The ego (which is a modern western psychological term I might add) has been given a fairly bad rap in the modern “new age” scene.

image by Swiss Bones

Somewhere along the way, our Western minds have turned this into the ridiculous notion that to be happy you must get rid of, or even completely destroy the ego.

My own personal experience has brought me to a different understanding. I believe that there is no reason to destroy what is essentially a part of yourself. The real power is in learning to integrate this and all of the other interesting and unique parts of your personality into a functioning whole.

People go through life without a second thought to the idea that there are separate parts of their self, which manifest themselves at different times and in different situations. The ego is just one of these parts, the one that thinks that it is separate from the rest of creation, and that IT is the most important thing in the known Universe.

And quite frankly, it is good to have this instinct kick in from time to time. It stops you getting walked all over, gives you the confidence to claim your place in the world and also to create and express yourself. Knowing that YOU are you, what your place in the world is has a profound importance to our whole selves. But it also has a negative side of selfishness, aggressive behavior and helping us justify doing things that may not always work out best for everybody involved.

The image that makes the concepts more tangible for me is the Yin-Yang. Your personality is in constant flux, and each part must be in harmony with the other for balance. The Ego, or separate, selfish self must be brought into balance with your quiet, inner, calm, connected observer self. Let one part express itself too much and you become overbearing, self-important and obtuse. Too much of the other and you become meek, mild and can have no meaningful interaction with the outside world.

Hey, and don’t get too beat up if you find yourself acting like a complete tool from time to time. Seriously, everyone does it!

DYNAMIC balance means that even though you may find yourself at one end of the Ego scale, you have the self awareness to bring yourself down to a centered state at the appropriate time.

Of course it is not as clear cut as all that, and these are only arbitrary labels that we have placed on very strange and complex phenomena. But at least it gives you a framework to get our talking monkey-brains around and be able to see where all of the pieces fit in.

So in order to address this all important balance, here are my top 5 strategies to keep your ego in proportion.

1 Realise your size in proportion to the universe

When it comes down to it, you are a tiny speck on a tiny speck, floating in a vast sea of nothing more giant and unfathomable then you could ever get your head around. The very notion that what you do on a daily basis affects things at the scales that really seem to matter in the universe is wishful thinking gone crazy. As Seamus put it in his excellent “Looking through the wrong end of the telescope“: You. Don’t. Know. Anything. About. Anything.

The liberation and true freedom of insignificance is yours to grasp at any time. When the ego gets up and starts jumping up and down about its importance, just keep this fact in mind to bring it all back to perspective.

2 Realise that you are where you are only through the help of others

The network of other people you build up around you in friends, co-workers, family and neighbors is one of the most fundamental assets in life. Think that you have accomplished so much in your life? Sure, a lot was done by you, but there is no way anyone could get anything done without the help, co-operation and support of people around them. All of life is a team exercise.

3 Understand that everyone is just as important as you

A lot of the ego’s jumping up and down, complaining and self importance is because it believes it is more important than ANYONE else in the world. You know why so many people in traffic jams start getting irate and honking their horns? It is because each of those people think their journey is more important than the person in front of them. Next time you feel the anger and indignation that the ego fires up when it feels like it is being threatened, just remind yourself that everyone, and everything is just as important as you in the universe. No more, and no less.

4 Realise the inherent impermanence in all things

As I stated before in the “Impermanence Top 40“, today’s front page news is tomorrow’s forgotten fact. So many events in our life that the Ego blows up into monumental proportions seem trivial the next day, and are forgotten next week. Nothing lasts forever, and nothing remains in the same state as it is now for even a second. Strive for your goals, and enjoy the journey. But realise that everything is just a castle in the sand, to be washed out to sea by the waves of time.

5 Realise that humour is the true currency of the universe.

Just about anything in life has a funny side to it, when looked at from a certain perspective. The greatest way to disarm the Ego is to see the inherent humour in everything. When we laugh, we see the connectedness of things, the joy in everyday life and realise that the world is not such a serious place after all.

Humour is all about connectedness, it shows us how previously unthought-of concepts are connected in unexpected ways. It connects us to others in the shared experience of having a laugh and goofing off for a while. Next time you find yourself acting from ego, have a laugh.

… the trick is getting in touch with this truth so that you feel it.

By Seamus Anthony

If you read a lot of Zen stuff, enlightenment stuff, you’ll come across the idea that we are all inherently enlightened, and I believe that this is true.

But also true is that most people don’t usually feel anything like they’re enlightened at all.

In fact most people either don’t even know what enlightenment is or they believe that it’s something “up there” that they cannot hope to achieve. Well, we’re not the first but we at Rebel Zen are here to tell you that it is true – you ARE enlightened but you just don’t know it yet.

Getting in Touch with Your Inherent Enlightenment

At the core of your being, underneath all of the emotions, moods, thoughts, opinions, and physical sensations is your True Self or your soul. Your True Self knows that it is one with all of creation, the Universe, God. It exists in a permanent state of peace that cannot be shaken even when you are in the midst of the worst possible crises imaginable. It is NOT the part of you that freaks out because somebody is pointing a gun at your head (or more likely, because the new guy in the office is using your favourite damn coffee mug). This part of you, much more readily accessible, is your ego.

So how can you get in touch with your True Self? Here’s some ideas:

1. Forget All of Your Assumptions About What Enlightenment Actually Is
   The reason I never turn to strangers at the pub and say “Hi, I’m Seamus and I’m enlightened” is because I don’t really want to be branded a complete tosser, such are most people’s assumptions about what it means to be enlightened.

   But the truth is I do consider myself to ‘be enlightened’ and so are you. The difference between me, and some really advanced spiritual practitioner, and your average crack-addict street thug is that I fall in the middle there somewhere in terms of being in touch with my True Self.

   What this means in practical terms is that I spend most of my time being aware of the calm, expansive, connected-to-the-universe part of me and am able to tap into this to be a very calm, confident, disgustingly chirpy individual most of the time.

   And then sometimes I lose touch with that and blow my stack, or become overcome with fear or get the blues. But increasingly less as my ability to walk in the light grows.

   Sorry I know phrases like “walk in the light” are pretty lame but it is sometimes hard to describe such an intangible feeling without resorting to cliches. (And besides, it’s getting late and I wanna watch a DVD, ok?)

2. Learn To Meditate:
   This may not be groundbreaking news for every reader of this blog, but for newbies it is the logical place to start.

   When you meditate you quieten the loud voices of the ego, move out of ‘fight or flight response’ and learn to increase your awareness of a deeper calmer You underneath all that noise and emotion. This chilled-out version of you goes by many names, I prefer True Self. I go into more detail about this ‘most bodacious’ aspect of You later in this list.

   It goes beyond the scope of this post to teach you how to meditate, but there’s plenty of instruction out there. If you don’t already meditate, make a note to investigate this further later because once you know how to meditate then you will be able to …

3. Realise that Existence is Just An Onion …
   
   Okay, I’m being funny, but what I mean here is twofold. The first meaning is that if you want to experience your inherent enlightenment (and believe me you can) then you’ll need to peel back the ‘onion layers’ of your mind to find the still, calm ’space of good feeling’ that lies at the core of your being. This is where your True Self abides. Again, more on the True Self later

   The second level to the onion wisecrack is…

4. Discover That Life Is Just A Zany Dream.
   I know that people feel real pain and hunger and that on a practical level this sort of flippant New Age talk may not do the disadvantaged any immediate good*, but nevertheless, on a philosophical level, we all grow up to believe that we know What Life Is.

   We can see it, right? It’s right in front of us. We read about it. We are animals on a planet in a galaxy in the universe.

   Hello! We DON’T know What Life Is and for all we know we could be little bugs living inside a gigantic onion. And hey! Maybe that enormous onion is about to be sliced up and sprinkled over some kind of unfathomable cosmic pizza and slid into a big, hot quantum oven!

   Ok. Probably not. But still, don’t fall into the trap of assuming that we know what it’s all about. We don’t. And we never will. And enlightenment is about knowing that we don’t know, not suddenly knowing all the secrets to the meaning of life.

   That’s all she wrote about that, dude, so don’t believe the hype. Gurus who tell you that they know all the answers need to read the next point…

5. Keep A Leash On Your Ego:
   Realise that your ego doesn’t need to freak out every time something happens. It is healthy and normal to get upset when you’re in the midst of a car crash, it is not healthy to lose it when somebody else steals the sweet car park nearest the supermarket doors. Your ego is an idiot (so is mine by the way) and needs to be kept on a leash like my big dumb dog does. Otherwise, like my dog, your ego will go and crap in the worst possible spot right when everybody is looking. It’ll go jumping up at strangers and stealing candy bars off children.

   But how to you control your ego?

6. Become Aware That Your Ego Is Not All Of You:
   It’s just a part of you, and a bit of a stupid part too. An evolutionary throwback that unfortunately most people in this world still let run the show. Really, on an emotional level, humans as a collective species are pretty much operating at the level of cavemen (albeit cavemen with really impressive toys).

   Become aware that you can observe your ego even when it is going about its usual business. If you practice you can even take a step back into True Self while your ego is throwing a hissy-fit and actually observe “yourself” having a tanty with a sense of wry, detached humour. Which part of you stops you from murdering your husband when you are having a row? Not your ego that’s for sure.

   I put “yourself” in quotes because we often make the mistake of thinking that “I lost my temper”. The whole of you did not lose your temper, only the ego did, it’s just that most of us have been raised to fully identify with that little bit of our minds even though it actually makes no sense to do so.

   Know that there’s a wide, expansive, calm, intelligent part of your mind quietly waiting for you to come home to it and hear what it has to say. Your True self.

   The ego is loud and demanding. It’s impatient. The True Self is quiet and patient. It knows that it makes no difference if the ego gets what it wants or not because in the end your True self is eternal, only the ego faces certain death.

7. Realise that Only the Ego dies, but your True Self is eternal.
   The True Self is eternal because it is a seamless part of the whole and we all know that when ‘we’ die, the Whole goes on. Part of the reason the ego behaves the way it does is because it knows it is going to die and it HATES that idea. You may also feel a bit scared at times about dying, but know that your True Self goes on, just your ego dies when your physical body expires.

   Logic tell me that conscious awareness of myself as an individual therefore ceases then too, but of course my ego likes to believe that I will still ‘be me’ afterwards; that I will be like “Oh, I am still here, my True Self, just off on a nice fuzzy journey somewhere new.”

   Hey – maybe. But then again, maybe not.
   Hell, what do I know?
   We’ll all find out soon enough I guess but meantime…

8. Deliberately Notice How Magical Life Is Again
   I think part of growing older can be that we forget to see this natural world that we live in as it really is: an incredible miracle full of mystery, magic and wonder.

   Just look at your hand! Look at your cat! Look at anything and see again, like you would have when you were a child, what an incredible, amazing, wondrous mystery Life is.

   Part of finding true, deep and lasting happiness is learning to live in the moment as much as you can and when you are living in the present, you cannot fail but to see how incredible it all is. It’s like you develop a kind of mild super-power of the eyes. It actually reminds me of when I was younger and silly enough to drop the odd tab of acid, not that I am recommending that (it’s unhealthy for the body) but anyway, those who have been there will know that I am talking about a Way of Seeing that brings you acute awareness of the pure magic that surrounds us everyday.

   If you are thinking “What is this freakin’ hippy on about? I am looking around me now and all I see is my Dad’s butt-crack as he bends over to get at the last beer in the fridge (and there’s nothing magical about that let me tell you)” then I advise you to learn to meditate and especially try meditating on nature. Just sit there and stare at a beautiful flower for half an hour or as long as it takes before you suddenly get what I mean. Then look around you. Even your Dad’s arse will look better from then on.

   And whether life is feeling magical to you or not at all …

9. Be Grateful for Your Chance At Life
   And be grateful for all the things in your life. Even those things you would sooner live without.

   We’ve all got aspects of our lives that we would rather just disappeared and I don’t know how it works but I have found that if you consciously practice gratitude for everything in your life, even the ‘bad’ stuff, you will more easily and more often connect with your True Self and enjoy the fruits of your inherent enlightenment: peace of mind and deep happiness.

   If you are having trouble with the idea of being grateful for your hemorrhoids then …

10. Practice Non-Judgement
    Every time you judge something as “bad” you disconnect yourself from the flow of the Universe, from your True Self. This can be a very, very hard skill to put into practice and I doubt you or I will ever manage to practice non-judgement 100% of the time. For instance I’d be happy to bet a dollar that if I were to poke you in the eye, you’d judge that as a pretty crap move on my behalf. And this inherent tendency is useful on a level. If you remained impartial about oncoming buses or falling pianos then you wouldn’t be around very long!

    But it is amazing how much angst we put ourselves through by taking such strong stands against minor things. Things like “what she said” or “what he did” or even truly small things like “I don’t like brussel sprouts” (guilty of that one myself).

    Fuck it. Eat the sprouts. Forget what she said. Dismiss what he did. Don’t waste your energy and time getting all pent up over it when you could be experiencing the peace and joy of enlightenment, or, for that matter, a Mars Bar.

    Judgment causes a disconnect between your consciousness and your True Self, who is at peace with all and judges nothing. So next time it rains, catch yourself hunching up and frowning. Truly, be still! What does it matter? Is rain a bad thing? No way! You know that. It’s awesome! It isn’t acid; it’s a life giving miracle! So stand up straight and revel in it until you get to the bus shelter, and you will have proven to yourself that you truly are a fully enlightened soul. Enjoy that feeling, and gratefully share it around

*BTW – Metaphysical discourse, or fluffy New Age talk, may not be much use when you’re starving or in the middle of a war, BUT if the majority of people realised their inherent enlightenment then such problems would disappear because all those overblown egos that cause all of these problems would lose their hold on the puppet strings of power. That’s why we must strive to help people get in touch with their True Selves, because if we eventually reach critical mass, then we finally WILL solve the problems of the world. And maybe the new Age of Connectivity is going to herald that change. Make it so.

By Steven Mills

There is nothing better then finding that you have carved out a spare hour in the day to sit and meditate.

The daily worries of the world have started to float away, and the big thoughts that fill your normal waking mind have started to quieten down. A slow, easy feeling of peace works its way over your body as you focus on the simpleness of in breath and out breath. You begin to focus on nothing, to pull your observing mind out of the “stream of consciousness” and begin to notice your thoughts as something separate.

Then you start to hear them.

“Oh yes doing well, yes quieten down the thoughts” says one.

“You really should be doing that blog post and not meditating” says the next.

“Sounds like a truck outside, wait.. wait… no it’s a bloody leaf blower!” complains a third voice.

It’s the small voices of the mind, the thoughts that during waking life dictate your actions and way of thinking, but now in meditation serve to distract you from your aim of letting go and giving the mind a rest.

In the still silence of meditation each of these small voices begins to sound very loud. And while you would think on a Zenish blog such as this I would be all against the annoying babble of the ego, I have come to have a small sense of respect for this misunderstood aspect of my psyche.

The way that I see it, each of those voices is a mini revolution in your head. It is your mind, or more accurately your ego rebelling against the idea of being quiet. The ego will do anything to get you to stop focusing on something else, but instead go back to how you spend a lot the other hours of your waking life, focusing on it. It puts on characters, it puts on plays. It will start to talk to you like yoda.

It will send you off on strange mental journeys to remember what you had for lunch on the 3rd of April in 2004. It will try to convince you that are 232 better things that you could be doing with your time right at this very minute. It will try to send you to sleep; it will try to make you uncomfortable. Some call it monkey mind, but more often then not it acts more like King Kong then a friendly chimp.

So you can see that while you start to quieten down these voices, the ego part of you starts rebelling against the observer.

An internal war escalates, with both sides digging in and upping the ante from minute to minute. The harder you directly fight the inner voices and forces of the ego, the harder it will fight back.  If you continue to fight it will end up in full on war, with all of your attention being used to quell the voices and associated images, and none left to focus on the object of your mediation. And you thought this stuff was all peace and love?

Well, instead of fighting this inner rebel, the thing to do is to accept him. Let go of the idea chasing all of the voices down and let them speak. As they do though, imagine that the volume on each is turning down, and that the voice is slowly floating away.

Allow them to say what they have to say, but don’t buy into the story that they are telling you.

I have heard it said many a time that every person on this planet has a story tell. If you sat down with a pensioner from Melbourne, an office worker in Berlin or a 12 year old kid in Beijing, each would have a unique and compelling tale to tell. I bet that you also have an interesting story regarding your life and your place in the world.

You possess a chronicled history of your past, a unique viewpoint on the present and a predictive prophecy about what you assume is going to happen to you in the future.

Everyday when you wake up you listen to the story of what today might be like, and the story of what occurred yesterday. We are constantly re-telling this life story to ourselves, checking it against our immediate reality in order to make decisions, evaluate what other people are doing and to know our cultural place in certain situations.

This story is the blueprint that the voice inside your head, your inner narrator, uses to explain to you what you are seeing, thinking and doing in the present moment.

When we start to meditate, one of the first challenges we come up against is how to work with this inner narrator, to detach the observer part of us from the narrator part, so that we can begin to see the stream of consciousness for what it is… a story. This inner narrator is the ego, the part of the mind that will do anything to remain in control. As we go deeper into meditation, the ego/narrator will begin to recite parts of your story in order to get you to listen. It will tell you that you should be thinking about money, it will say that it was unfair that that guy pushed in line at the supermarket last week, and that you should go out for dinner on the weekend.

The ego is like Uncle Bob that you have to sit next to at a family BBQ because all of the other chairs are taken. You are trying to relax and enjoy your steak and beer, and he is constantly waffling on about what he did last week, what he thinks about a vast array of mind numbingly boring topics and why he likes to wear blue socks. It is a never ending stream of inane chatter.

We listen to the ego telling this tale to us all day, and one of the ways that meditation benefits us is by giving the poor observer part of us 5 minutes break to start to collect its own thoughts, and not listen to Mr Ego’s waffling 24 hours a day. So what can we do?

SEE IT FOR WHAT IT IS.

While there are many ways to detach from our thoughts during meditation, I find one of the techniques that has worked for me is to label each thought as “Story” as it arises. When thoughts break into my meditation space, I can push them away by the thought “Story”, and they are not picked up by my observer and listened to. By coming to the realization that most thoughts are just the ego playing the role of narrator, I can keep a Zen-like perspective with them and see that the thoughts are not reality at all. They are just an interesting tale constructed by your ego to keep your attention focussed on it, rather than the timeless, universal, limitless real you that lies beyond.

KEEP IT IN PERSPECTIVE

By learning this perspective about ones thoughts during meditation, you gain a valuable skill. Instead of constantly referring to the story of your past to determine what you should do, now you can break this conditioning and start to live more in the now. You can take the circumstances and events of your life on face value, and not be trapped in past negative behaviours, or do things just because “that’s how I have always done them.” Now I am not suggesting that you should be ignoring the story all of the time, here at Rebel Zen we are all about keeping and enhancing the one thing that makes you different and unique in the world, your personality and “Youness.” I am just asking that you recognise your inner narrative and are mindful of it.