Ego and Tranquility IV

For many people, then, the beginnings of realization begins in uneasiness, fear, and the judgment that the way they had been (largely unaware) was no good or at least not good enough. This makes spirituality or personal growth a trial, a difficult journey, or something along those lines. We end up with truisms like the idea that life begins at the edges of your comfort zone, as if a life of awareness begins in uneasiness. But this sort of understanding puts us in a living paradox like the ones Zeno loved to create. And we end up fighting our own egos or trailing uneasiness and dissatisfaction along with a cavalier sense of jumping into God-knows-what as what life is really all about. As if cliffdiving with your eyes open will keep you alive if you jump onto submerged rocks. A cavalier attitude with its attendant thrills and streamers of dissatisfaction may not be what clarity is about even though it is what some people decide that their lives are about.

Clarity has an effect on what that intermediate state, or clutch state, feels like. The belief in cliffdiving with eyes open definitely involves intention, but it may lack some degree of clarity if it includes the superstition that eyes being open rather than closed means you won't hit rocks. So there are many people out there preaching the value of intention, which is great, but very intentional people have set up oppressive empires, unethical corporations, and corrupt governments. Tranquil folks have improved their own lives by learning to develop a sense of serenity within themselves, often without influencing many others around them. No one of these influences is paramount. They come together in the same vehicle, though, if they are intentionally incorporated. If tranquility is practiced, we diminish the influence and the need for apathy. If clarity and awareness are developed, we diminish the influence and the need for being shocked into awareness.

An emphasis on clarity keeps us aware that things are changing. An emphasis on tranquility allows us to feel an ultimately undefined and indefinable sense of consistency. Ego, like using a pronoun to signify many things at different times and in different contexts, is a vehicle that is real enough to feel real yet empty enough to fit in all these influences. The interaction between immediate awareness of this moment, ego, and environment allows for the combination of continuity and change that sets us up for seeing the difference between random change and spastic actions as opposed to progress.