I'm a lover. I don't like hurting people. I have no desire to do physical violence to anybody. But I love doing violence to broken institutions and broken ways of thinking. I love doing violence to egos. It's what gets me off.
By killing my ego, I'm doing everyone a favor - most of all, myself. I would kill your ego too if I could, because I know it would be the best thing that's ever happened to you, but I can't. That's not how it works. You have to choose to kill it yourself. You're the only one who can kill your own ego.
I don't know if the ego ever completely dies. I'm not that righteous yet. But I do know that you can continually let go of your ego until you hardly even notice it. The ego is like a yappy dog. The less you listen to it, the less it barks, until eventually it gets old and tired and just sits there. That's when your spirit is really free. Sometimes the dog starts barking again, and it feels like there is a great disturbance in the force - I can't find a job, I can't make my rent, I'm out of food stamp credits and I'm down to my last nugget of weed. But you just let these experiences pass through you too. You still feel the pain, but you don't engage with it. You don't fight it. You don't even resist it. You don't get mad it. You just let it pass through you.
Over time, all the disturbances start to feel the same. There are no big or small disturbances. You just recognize that there's been a disturbance, and you let it go. Letting go is a skill, and like any skill it can be mastered. It's like a muscle that gets stronger the more you train it. The stronger your "letting go" mechanism gets, the higher your spirit goes. Every time you let go, your spirit is uplifted and you break through to a new plain of consciousness. You realize that all of your problems are really just one problem - your ego - and that you have the choice to let it go and be free from it at all times.
This means you have no more problems. There will be events, but no problems. You will get stuck in a traffic jam. The neighbor's dog will bark. You might even step in poop every once in a while. But you will just let these things go because they aren't worth sacrificing your happiness for. If you knew there was a meteor headed for you in ten seconds, and there could be, the poop on your shoe would hardly matter. That's an extreme example, but it illustrates the point that there's no sense in worrying about these things. You really could get struck by lightning at any moment. It's happened to people before.
People think that if they let go of their worries, they will have nothing to do. In reality, it's the opposite of that. You will have everything to do, and all the time to do it, because you will no longer be anxious or preoccupied. You will have the calm and presence of mind to chart the appropriate course of action and the focus to executite it one task at a time. This is the key to productivity. You will find that your attitude, energy and efficiency all skyrocket. I know this to be true because I have experienced it myself. You really can let go of everything that bothers you and it really is as glorious as you think it would be. The key is to let go of your ego, and the way to do it is by meditating.
(THANKS READING PART I OF THIS SERIES - I will release the second part tomorrow. Part II goes into the technical details of my meditation practice and talks about the benefits of meditation outside of the work environment.)
