Byron Katie + Eckhart Tolle + Karen Horney = Better Health (3)

With all these greatly peaceful and sometimes wise spiritual types denigrating ego and thinking, why do I not just go along? Well, me not going along isn't bothering them--they're peaceful enough. I stick with affirming mind and ego because the disordered habits exist as much as the potential exists. Most people I've met are not just peaceful and I enjoy the process of moving towards peace in all its complexity. There is a difference between peace and inspiration, and I like both.

Byron Katie is one smart woman. Besides being wise or open or whatever, she's sharp as a tack. That precision helps her show others this wonder and love that she's found in ways they can access from their own dismal holes. How often have I felt that I'd accept something good, but only if someone brings it to me? Ha, ha, ha! We either feel like we are willing to go out and work for what we want or we feel like we don't want to do that. Anything but that. We might prefer to feel peaceful over feeling victimized, but we often choose to feel victimized over working with a sense of intimacy with others. This is not rocket science.

Besides the human-enough emotional reactivity, we also have all these family histories and cultural customs in place about HOW we identify with our pain, customs and habits about HOW to grudge, when to grudge, where to grudge, why, and whom to grudge. I LIKE ego because it affirms everything we feel to be valuable about ourselves, our families, our cultures, our planet...but we also have the habits and customs of grudging. Not rocket science. If you are not using your mind to develop, strengthen, and communicate your love, then YOU are wasting your potential and the rest of the world doesn't even matter.

But unraveling the habits is NOT as simple as all that. It could be if other people weren't involved, but we are. Yes, you've had your insights and I've had mine, and yet they don't always match up for some reason. Learning that reason is part of why we're here. I'm your mirror. (Do you like what you see?) And you're mine. I've got to be honest: I don't always like what I see, and I don't always feel the love. I can turn my awareness inward and find that love, but I want to turn my awareness outward and find it as well. Call me selfish in that way, it won't hurt my feelings. I'm not a monk, I'm allowed to be selfish.

This turning outward while holding onto what I feel to be genuine is all about what ego and mind are all about: resilience. Resilient love, not just love. Resilient joy, not just sporadic joy. Sometimes the people I know act like assholes, and yes, I'm one of those people. So it helps to have an understanding, a conceptual definition (a self-identity or philosophy) that includes potential, openness. That allows me to say, "Oh, you're right. I've been acting like an asshole. But I am also certain that I can change." Without that explicit, conscious space for change, I'll feel pressured. And we can't be pressured into love. We can only be pressured into compliance, and that's something Horney rightly listed as neurotic. I love that we can answer: if I am being an asshole now, what can we do about it? First, notice. Second, accept that as what is at the moment. Third, build something inspired, something new from that foundation. Those feelings, that foundation, might be stuck in one place. That simply shows that we can be steadfast. Just living in a foundation is like living in a cave. It's better than nothing, but it's designed to allow even more.

This is where those three degrees come back in. It's easy enough to move from exclusion ("I hate you and all of your kind; there's no way we can live on the same planet") to inclusion (well, maybe we can survive together and possibly even do business) to working out particular power/status relationships ("I don't like that you're richer than me, but if you support the infrastructure of our country, that may not be so bad") to intimacy ("Well, if we're equal enough, we might as well be close"). The stuff that Gandhi talked about or Martin Luther King talked about is not so different from Byron Katie, Eckhart Tolle, and Karen Horney. Besides starting off by trying to not hate one another, we can move in the other direction, we can move from our love outwards. But this is where resilience counts. If we only want everyone to love because we love, then we grudge power relationships, status differentials, and all of the human history that has led up to this situation where inequality is the rule of the day. It's hard to feel victimized by everything or hate everything and still be a messenger of love. Use your ego; I use my ego. Because we are who and what we are, we are not just our pain. Because we are who and what we are, we are not just our egos. And because we are who and what we are, we are not JUST our love, or just openness, or just potential. As a group, we are creative, resilient potential. If the group can be that, I can too.