There Is No Spoon

Yesterday's post wasn't actually finished as I still need to answer the question, "What is real here?"

This is a continuation of the discussion I was having with Pema yesterday. She posed this question, "Is ego necessary to sustain passion and bring a project to fruition?" We bantered back and forth and it certainly does seem that ego is necessary for functioning in this material world. How could we possibly exist in physicality if it weren't for the ego? Ego seems to be the glue that allows it all to happen. And yet at the same time, ego also messes everything up. Give ego an inch and it always, ALWAYS takes a mile. It's the nature of the beast. And yet, I suspect that the answer to Pema's question is that yes indeed, we do need to function from ego to garner the passion to succeed in life and manifest our goals.

As handy as ego is, as much as I need it for my creative expression and basic survival, it's also a big pain in the ass, gets in my way and needs to die. Death to the ego! I say this rather tongue-in-cheek as ego busting is what I like to call it. It's a paradox--can't live with it, can't live without it. But as I ponder this dilemma it comes to me that that ego it not so much the problem but rather, attachment to ego. Aw, there's the rub! Attachment rears its ugly head once again. It's sort of like someone with a food addiction. One can't give up eating so one needs to learn how to maintain a healthy relationship with food.

Attachment to ego and it's stories and the pain body it creates is the baggage we carry around in our relationships. Ego isn't real so attachment to an illusion doesn't make a lot of sense. Like in the movie The Matrix--there is no spoon (I've done spoon bending with my mind by the way, like the spoons pictured in this post.) So, what is real? Love. Love is the answer to the question, "What is real here?" and it's all that really matters to me. But, and this is a big BUT, I need my ego to function and I need it to be in tip top condition and so it must be fed--but not a diet of fast junk food. Ego has an addiction and it will eat and eat until it's a big, overweight, malnourished, and diseased pain body telling me all sort of delusional things. If I allow myself to be off guard, lose my awareness and fall for it's trap, it fucks me all up in my relationships. So I need to find a happy medium of sorts. I need to appease ego. It works hard for me and must be compensated. I know that love is all there really is and that's all that really matters to me in my relationships, BUT I also have ego to contend with. This leaves me with the tricky business of balancing my relationship dynamics in a way that feed and satisfy ego enough to leave me free to love. It's sort of like putting your young children in front of the television for an entertaining movie that will hold their attention long enough so mom and dad can sneak off to the bedroom for some much needed lovemaking.