After reading Tolle, I began to feel tremendously guilty for the way that I had treated people over the years because of how I had so identified with and acted out of my ego, pain body, and emotions. For the first time, I was able to get out of myself, out of my mind. What I saw was a person who was very angry, reactive, unfiltered, rude, and offensive. Actually, what I saw were two persons. I'll just tell you about the first one for now. One was this angry, explosive you-don't-want-to-get-on-his-back-side personality who had burned so many bridges, limited so many opportunities, and had made a very small world for himself. It was that person for whom I felt like I needed to apologize to the entire world, overturn every rock to find every person or group whom that angry person had inflicted insult and injury. I began developing a list, name after name of individuals whom I had yelled at, disrespected, embarrassed, attacked, branded, exploited...I noticed that once I started to list the names and situations, it just kept going and didn't seem to have an end. I even went back and read old e-mails from years ago. They revealed that I had little respect for anyone and little tolerance for situations that inconvenienced me even in the least. I called someone a moron (to their boss) because they told me that I had to sign a financial aid form, which I had asked earlier if I needed to sign and was told no. I constantly belittle people with my tone and didn't limit myself; everyone from classmates, to TAs, to professors, to University employees. No one seemed to be off-limits. The strange thing is that I was so identified with that voice in my head (the mind) and my ego that I had persuaded myself that I was right and everyone else deserved whatever verbal shots I fired. I made up in my mind that my actions were completely warranted. I disrespected a professor. He deserved it. I told a TA in so many words to fuck off. She deserved it.
That got me to thinking. Since the evidence seemed to show that I held a great deal of anger and resentment, where was this coming from? It then dawned on me from reading Tolle that all of what happens to us in life contributes greatly to our pain body and ego. Our pain body is the semi-autonomous negative energy field that every human being has. Some are more active and dense than others. The pain body can only feed off of negative energy. This negative energy can result from a painful childhood (which I had), negative thoughts (which I had), negative predisposition (which I had), and the redoubling of negativity for each experience and thoughts (self-sustaining nature). The pain body becomes active when it needs more negative energy. Then is what happens when we are looking for someone to blame, triggered by a small event in which we overreact, behave irrationally or "out-of-character". The energy of the pain body is composed of both the experiences that we suppress and that we don't suppress and thus keep playing over and over in our minds. In essence, it's all the stuff that makes us think that life sucks.
I had become consumed by my pain, most of which I had learned to suppress but never dealt with. Seeing a lot of violence in the home. Experiencing a lot of instability; different homes, different parents, different settings. Being abandoned and neglected, parentless. Having little family support. Feeling like I had to survive on my own. Feeling the world was out of get me; make me feel less than who I was. While I had not so much identified with all of this in the incessant voice that Tolle talks about, the fact remained that it was still there. The negative energy and emotions were still eating away at me because I hadn't forgiven, I hadn't released all of that negativity. I kept it bottled up inside and it was fuel for my pain body.
My ego on the other hand had also use the pain body for fuel. Because a lot of my human experiences left me in a state of pain, neglect, and self-survival. (That's not to say that it should or shouldn't) I quickly identified with the ego and thus with being a victim/victor, being on top/bottom, being better than/less than, being inferior or superior. Because my identity was so narrow in scope, the least insignificant thing could set me off. Everything became personal. The clerk overcharged me. That was personal. Someone looked at me weird. That was personal. Someone mistook me for someone else. That was personal (and racist I would tell myself). I made small situations into a drama fest. I had to show that I was right. I have to make a point of pointing it out. I had to. I needed to.
What I have come to realize is that the world is whatever you want it to be. If you think life is your enemy, then life will be your enemy. If you look for drama, life will be drama. This self-sustaining prophecy no doubt led me to some depressing moments in life.
So the question that I have now is what do I do? What I take from Tolle is this.
- Being present means allowing yourself to feel whatever anxiety, guilt, pain, anger that you are feeling at the present moment. It doesn't necessarily mean you have a right to be anxious, guilt, pain, and anger. In fact, allow that moment to be what it is. Don't try to make yourself into the victor or victim. Let the feeling be what is it.
- Put space between the feeling (pain, anxiety, etc) and my being/my Consciousness. This allows de-identification with the event. It allows me to step away from the obsession about whatever is consuming my mind. I get in touch with the eternal me, the Conscious me. The feelings may rise up soon after they sort of dissipate. This is fine. Continue the process until the time between intervals become longer and less urgent.
- Affirm my true identity as a timeless, nameless, formless Essence or Presence. It's not so much that the steps that I will take in the future means that I will become a different person, as it will be that the steps that I learn to take will reveal more and more of my true identity. I will accept the present for being the present, but I will also see the present moment (my awakening) as the birth of the real me being able to act though human form.
- Affirm true identity as egoless. The ego wants to make you feel bad for whatever you've done in an unconscious state. It wants to make you into a problem. This doesn't mean that there may or may not be consequences to pay or that you may or may not need or want to seek counseling, but it does mean that making yourself into a problem, obsessing over what coulda, shoulda, woulda takes away from your ability to be in the present. Be grateful that now you are seeing the light.
- Any steps that I want to take to improve my identification with the internal me must be taken on a larger scale. In other words, I can't just say that I will treat neighbors (for example) better, but still choose to treat coworkers like shit. Awakening is who we are to everyone in every situation.
