Just recently I was faced with some news that upset me. It angered me. It was no doubt a complete trigger to my ego. Like someone just walked in and flicked the on button to that little bastard.
I am learning when that happens, the best thing I can do is just sit with it.
It’s like being in a supermarket with an overtired three-year-old, pissed off they can’t have the four-foot chocolate bar up for display in the candy isle.
We can’t get down on the floor and roll around with the tantrum throwing child, or worse, hand them the oversized candy bar that’s not for sale.
We have to just patently drag them along by the arm until they realize that they are not going to get their way.
The ego, much like the head strong three-year-old, doesn’t know any better. We can’t get angry at the ego any more than we would at the overtired child.
It’s all in our awareness.
It’s at that moment we must sit with our ego. Allow it to rage about listing all the ways the “others” are wrong. Let the ego list all the things we will do and say. Let it make its plans for revenge, while it compiles its inventory of evidence against it.
Let it pout, fuss, kick, and scream until it wears itself out needing a nap, while we stand by and do none of those things.
We will be glad we decided to ‘sit and listen’, rather than just ‘hear and react.’
When the tantrum is done, we will realize that it’s not even worth it to react. The storm of the ego will have passed. It will have forgotten about its denial of the oversized candy bar and the world will continue to spin on its axes.
Except something will have changed… It will spin with us more at ease, with less stress and worry.
For with each ego tantrum we experience without reacting, we will have better prepared ourselves for the next one.
Until they affect us less and less.
You see, when we allow the ego to experience its tantrum in full force, without us reacting to it, it stops the domino effect in its tracks.
We let it stop with us by not triggering any more egos along the way and the world becomes a more peaceful place.
We accepted and because of that we become free.
We accept that things in the world will trigger us. We accept that we will want to react. We accept its our choice not to and because we continue to choose not to… We will always be free.
Freeing all the tortured egos along the way. Creating fewer wars in our families, in our countries and in our world.
Write back soon, love Annie.
