The Buddha Habit (tm) - Awakened, the little differences

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Letting go of your ego is difficult when our entire lives have led to the creation of our identity and who we think we are. You have personality traits that you've known your whole life. You think they define who "you" are, "This is me, it's just the way I am" and you feel like you can't change. What I'm starting to realize are the little differences in how I react to things now vs. how I have usually reacted to them my entire life. For example, when my wife cut me off while I was talking about something it used to upset me. I felt as if she didn't feel what I was talking about was important and I thought it was so rude. I used to fume about it and completely disconnect. She would notice and then react in kind telling me to quit pouting about it and it would escalate from there. It's a good example of how emotions of the ego create conflict. What I'm slowly realizing is that if you let go of your ego, there is no need for conflict. There is no one to be offended, the other is doing merely what they want to do and the situation is as it is. There is no "right or wrong". The trick is to catch your egoic emotions welling up within your mind. It is difficult as your thoughts can very quickly run away from you and lead to strong emotions in reaction to some event. With practice you can catch any emotion and instead of reacting to it, merely watch yourself feeling this emotion, then watch it slowly dissipate. For example, say during a conversation with someone I start to feel envy of someone else's achievements. Instead of creating fantasies of my own future successes, some other "story" in my head or feeling inferior make something up in response, I just focus on watching myself feeling envious. It is almost as if I'm saying to myself, "Oh, you're doing that thing that you've done your entire life". Before I know it, I'm no longer feeling envious or inferior. I re-focus my attention back on the person I am talking with and am able to be happy for them, smile and listen intently, giving them my full attention.

Another example is that I used to worry about money and the future all the time. All the "What if?" scenarios that used to play like horror movies in my head would keep me up at night. Now when I start to generate those thoughts, I catch myself going down that path and stop it by merely watch those thoughts of anxiety. Slowly the thoughts dissipate, as I am no longer following that energetic path of thinking. Sadhguru has a wonderful technique where you breathe in and recite, "I am not my body", exhale and recite,"I am not even my mind" while you focus on your Third Eye. I find this a powerful tool to break a strong cycle of thinking.

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I remembering hearing from someone that when you're awakened it is so subtle, you question whether you have changed or not. You don't really feel that different, you have the same thoughts and emotional reactions that you did before. But the way you deal with them has changed. Instead of mindlessly reacting to a situation, I find myself falling silent, internally watching my emotions, then letting go of any emotional reaction I might have normally countered with from the situation. I find my life now to be very peaceful and without conflict almost all of the time. We all have patterns of thought or of behavior we've been repeating our whole lives. It is your mind that keeps repeating these behaviors. Once you start to practice letting go of your ego, it fundamentally starts to change who you used to think you were. Things you used to think were unchangeable in yourself are no longer so.

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You realize that you create your reality of who you are and want to be with your thoughts at this present moment. Once you realize this, you are unbound from the past and who you "thought" you were. "Who I am" is just a conceptual belief in your mind. Any associations you had with any identity of self, religion, political affiliation, race, groups, et al are all just conceptual beliefs in your mind that you created and are letting define you. It is these concepts of separation that create division between me and you, us and them and are the basis of all conflicts in this world.