I’m catching up on my reading pile, and am half way through David Edwards’ excellent A Short Book About Ego… (what comes after the ellipsis is ‘and the remedy of meditation’, which I find to be a touch prescriptive, but the book contains too many sparkling gems to hold any real acrimony towards the proffered ‘one solution’).
I was delighted this morning to learn that he shares a love of The The, especially the track I unpicked earlier this year: True Happiness This Way Lies – he too examines its lyrics in the book, and even met the artist Matt Johnson, to quiz him about it once! 😲
Anyway I haven’t reached the end yet, so I suspect there’ll be more along these lines, but I’m delighted to see that he tackles the “And…?” objection that sometimes arises when we talk of spiritual awakening; of seeing life with clarity.
- “So what? What difference does that make?”
- “How’s that going to pay my bills?”
- “So you’re telling me I have to sit in the dark, meditating all the time, to feel better?”
Ahh, minds. Fighting their corner. All power to ‘em! ✊🏻
There’s a little bit of the text, after he talks about seeing through the blather of ‘righteous egos’ and ‘suffering egos’ where the rubber meets the road, and he offers something beyond just ‘feeling better’:
“And then the irony — the result of this much-derided ‘navel-gazing’, this inactivist pause in our compulsive activism — is that positive pragmatic actions become much more possible … It means we’re freed from pain and ego to respond positively; to talk, take action, to leave, and so on. And to take action out of love and bliss, rather than misery, is an extraordinary thing.”
The mind doesn’t like hearing this, because the mind’s currency is misery. It‘s hard coded to see the ‘wrong’ (by which I mean it creates it, really), so that it can then offer its solutions… and woe betide us if we ignore its advice!
But once we’ve seen through all that—the much vaunted ‘spiritual awakening’, which is no more complicated than getting wise to the mind’s BS—it leaves us way more resourceful; less consumed by hatred and despair; more able to see what’s important; much more likely to find effective ways to respond to everyday—and extraordinary—situations.
(This is why this understanding is just as important in the world of work, productivity & creativity, as it is in more therapeutic applications.)
You know all this, because you’ve experienced it! As I say, in one chapter of my own, forthcoming, book,
“You know very well that you’re at your best when calm and clear-headed, whereas your worst tendencies stem from anxious, insecure thinking.”
So if you ever catch your mind raising objections to slowing down, or calming down, or it starts bleating on about apathy and inactivity, just remember—from your own experience—how much more effective you are in life, when you’re coming from a place of love.
💖
Giles
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Giles P Croft
None of this means you should just ‘put up with things’