Over the years people have often given me deep compliments about how I have done or said something that was important to them (im=in; portar=carry). I also carry many people and their essence in me too. Recently it has upped a level. People say beautiful things to me, and I have developed the confidence to say beautiful things to others without expecting (or fearing) a change in relationship. I am learning to appreciate others in subtler ways than I have before.
This is not to say I am not still a massive egoic lighthouse screaming out for attention, but that it has less hold over me. I am becoming aware that this ego game doesn’t end. Ad nauseum. I’ve found it a pretty sure sign with people who believe they have no ego, no shadow, that the ego has won. Unless the person is illuminated, but I don’t appear to be in that social network.
Aside from the egomaniac in me, I am feeling more confident in myself, in my being. Not in my trickster ego etc, but in what is inside: what is inside of me and isn’t necessarily me. I feel more settled in ‘It’/Myself. And I’m noticing that it has effects on people around me, often on a profound level. On a life altering level. It is fulfilling and wondrous and inspiring. And it is not me. It is my relationship with ‘It’. It is me inviting ‘It’ to come along to the party with me. For me, it is also life altering.
And like all relationships it needs work – and I’ve been doing it. For fifteen years I did ‘Vipassana’ which, for me, was a wonderful path and prepared me. But I felt something was missing. A something more than sensations. This is not to say that Vipassana is a limited path. No way. Just my path was to lead me to ‘A Course in Miracles’.
I’ve been doing the daily practises for two and a half years. <– My ego said that. It’s not true. I completed the daily practises and I read the course material every day. I sometimes get lazy. But I would say, honestly, that at least once a day I now ‘check in’. Maybe only for five minutes, sometimes an hour, I go ‘there’. I find the place in me that is light, calm and loving. I have developed (a daily) relationship with ‘It’. ‘It’ is Eternal. ‘It’ is always there. It is just what ‘me’ isn’t. I have to make the effort to stop, pause, remember, sink into the extraordinary reassuring bathing of inner light.
And that, I believe is what is giving me confidence. That is what I believe creates these wonderful messages that I receive from others. I have talked to my therapist about receiving and letting in the messages because I’m afraid of becoming inflated (I really don’t trust my ever-present but non-eternal ego). She recommends that I let them in fifty-percent.
As I do I find the messages of love from others deeply life-affirming in a strange way that allows me to care less about my own life. I find the messages nourishing my egoic needs so it calms down a bit. I find myself opening up in my heart and becoming more able to appreciate this relationship I’m developing with Self, which in turn opens me to the relationships I’m developing with people and the world – Ad Infinitum which I am hoping will slip slide into the stillness of Ad Aeternus.
