Thought, ideas, dogma, beliefs, identity––this more than anything––keep us trapped in a form. Anything that threatens that form seems like death to thought, to the mind, to the ego. We react by retreating deeper and deeper into dogma, into our identity. We seek to affirm our false identity and we seek to make others respect our identity, requiring that they address us as if our identity is real. But that identity is going to end, like everything under the sun ends. The ending of that thought is perceived as death.
The ending of the false ego is perceived as a threat. Thus, I become unyielding. I become closed off to my surroundings. I become dull and lifeless.
That’s what happens to a lot of us when we feel the lightning that comes with the end of thought, and we encroach ourselves more and more into our dull ego, our plastic identity, because we are afraid of not being who we think we are.
Such rigidity is misplaced. Rigidity and strength should be applied, not to the identity, but to the discipline of being aware, of being true to oneself, of knowing that it is not the identity, but death itself, that will forever be with us.
” but death itself, that will forever be with us”…my meatpuppet identity overheard that thought and knew it was true.
So did mine, Tamara! So did mine. 🙂