Slowing Down: the Basics (part 1)

Julie Andrews is singing in my head "Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. When you read you begin with ABC, when you sing you begin with Do, Re, Mi… The first three notes just happen to be Do, Re, Mi…"

To Slow Down you begin with … listening to your ego. (tried to make that rhyme in three syllables, but couldn't.)

Surprised?

You start by listening to your ego. There are several reasons for this. First, you start on the layer that you're on, whatever it is. And if your ego is going off, telling you a great story about everything that needs to be fixed, that's the layer you are on.

Second, the ego is programmed like the town crier. When it has a message to deliver it feels obligated to keep delivering that message until it is heard. By listening to the message, and acknowledging it, you let your ego off the hook. It gets to relax.

The third reason to listen to what the ego is saying is that by listening to it you begin to unmask it. The ego's stories are much more powerful when delivered without you noticing.

Have you ever studied or read about subliminal advertising? You know, when frames with pictures of popcorn are inserted into the reel of a movie to make you want to dash out to the lobby for a bucket of buttery, salty goodness? You don't know why you all of a sudden had that craving. You just did, you think. That's kind of what's happening with your ego. It's back there, in the background, where its mechanisms are hidden, so it has great effect. It's the man behind the curtain, if you will, pressing levers and buttons, producing a very compelling picture that you tend to believe is your life.

As long as it operates behind the curtain, or between the frames, it gets to stay in charge. It's not that it necessarily wants to be in charge, any more than the wizard of Oz does. But it thinks it has to be in charge. So it tells its story, it pushes its buttons, it inserts its frames in the movie in order to make you react the way it thinks you are supposed to react.

And for the most part you do. The ego is very clever. And it has the inside scoop on what makes you tick. It knows exactly what story to tell you to keep you within your comfort zone of anxiety and lack.

Just a quick reminder: your ego is not your enemy. It is doing exactly what you have programmed it to do. Slowing Down is not about destroying your ego. It's about changing its programming. Slowing down is about training your ego to let you know what's actually happening in any given moment. This allows you to grow, to get more out of your life, to have more of yourself, to become more whole. Eventually it allows you to approach enlightenment. You don't actually get to enlighten when your ego is in charge, simply because your ego is the one charged with holding up that curtain which keeps you from knowing your Self.

Now back to listening to the ego, and starting to take a look at that curtain.

What is your ego saying? How do you know it's your ego? And what do you do with the message once you hear it?

All you have to do to know what your ego is saying is to listen. It could be telling you a story about how somebody did something that is causing you so much trouble. It could be a regular reminder of who you are – "I am so and so's lover. I wish I had a motorcycle. I don't like peas." It could be that song playing in your head.

Whatever it is, if you start to pay attention you will hear it. It's the layer on top. And a few deeper layers, too. You just have to turn your attention to it. Then you will hear it.

Don't try to get deeper into it until you have actually heard and acknowledged what is up on the surface. What's there? What are you thinking?

How do you know if it is your ego or something/someone else? First you have to listen. If the message you hear is something like "You are Loved. You are One with God. Thank you for bringing your presence into this moment. I am so happy you are here." It probably isn't your ego. You don't do anything with that message other than soak it in because it is the Truth.

If you hear "Aliens have infiltrated the Seattle Center and will soon be taking off in the Space Needle", well, it depends. If that's the sort of thing that sets you right off into paranoia, it's most likely your ego trying to distract you from an emotion it thinks would be too dangerous to feel in this moment. Yes, emotions are more dangerous to the ego than aliens. Much more dangerous.

If, on the other hand, you signed up with the Men in Black, it may be that implant they put in your head, and perhaps you'd better get a move on.

Which brings us to what to do with that message once you hear it. Sometimes the ego's messages are useful, important information. Your ego is the one telling you not to step in front of the bus. It's usually the one telling you "You're late. Leave now!" In both cases you might want to pay attention. Your ego's job is to keep you physically safe. It's very useful that way. The more you pay attention to it when it delivers these messages the clearer they will become. It wants to be useful, so put it to use doing that job.

However, this other job your ego has taken on of keeping you emotionally and socially safe has way more to do with limiting you than with helping you negotiate time and traffic. Your ego wants to keep you safe, within the confines of what is known as your limited human life. It will use all the tools at its disposal to distract you from knowing things that threaten that safety, like what you really feel when your boss hands you another stack of work.

Slowing Down into your thoughts gives you a look at the first line of this distraction. "I'm so mad!" "I hate this." "I don't have enough money." Even "I love her" can be a message from the ego when it comes embedded in lack and/or limitation. All of these messages are designed to reinforce your vision of yourself, and to keep you from noticing this moment and the richness it contains.

So what do you do? Pay attention, listen to the message, acknowledge it and move on. You are slowing down, right? You don't want to engage your ego in a fight by trying to talk it out of the message it's trying to deliver. You don't want to pretend the message isn't there, or your ego will have to turn up the volume. You don't want to jump right into fixing whatever your ego is telling you is wrong. All you have to do is listen, acknowledge, thank it for the message, and then keep slowing down. Even if it is telling you "You are the worst piece of excrement the universe ever laid," listen, acknowledge, thank it for the message, and keep slowing down.

Allow it to tell you the story. You don't need to believe it. Your ego delivers the messages it thinks are important for you to hear. It doesn't often tell you the Truth. Remember, the ego is the one holding up the curtain so you won't see you are God; that you are in charge of your life. Listen. Acknowledge. Keep slowing down.

Another thing to realize about the ego's stories is that they are multi-media. They have images. They have words. And they have chemicals. And thus they feel very real. In order to substantiate its stories the ego releases adrenaline based hormones into your body. You'll recognize them as fear, hatred, need, doubt and such like. Your body gets flooded with these chemically induced emotions and you believe something is terribly wrong. So you try to figure out what to do. When you think about your physical safety this makes great sense. When you think about your emotions it doesn't make quite as much sense. But oh well. We'll get into that more later. For now just consider that as one more reason to listen to the story without taking it quite so seriously. Pay attention, listen, acknowledge with a "thank you for the information" and then keep slowing down.

Next – Slowing Down into your body.

It's all good. It's all God. Slow Down!

Now, where's that popcorn…?

 

The Anxious Ego

Our egos can be so sweet. They're like 4 year olds. You can always read a 4 year olds' emotions. If they're happy, you know it. If they're scared, hungry, itchy, you know it.

Similarly, you can always tell when a human ego feels out of control, or afraid, or in lack. Well, sometimes you have to learn to read the clues. The basic rule is that whenever feelings such as bliss, Joy, Life, Love, Trust, Certainty, Oneness or Self-Aware give way to feelings such as distress, victim, anger, fear, doubt, separation or denial, that's your ego in charge. And most of the time when your ego is in charge it is out of control.

This is actually a good thing. Human egos weren't designed to be in control. They're like the younger brother who was never meant to be king and thus didn't get the training. Or the court jester, or maybe the cook, or a scullery maid. The scullery maid might have fantasies about being royalty – what a lark, not having to clean, good food! But if the scullery maid all of a sudden found herself in charge of not only the whole palace, but the whole kingdom, well, she might find herself a bit out of her depth.

If that metaphor doesn't work for you either (what's so wrong with a scullery maid becoming king?), imagine if you were all of a sudden president of the United States. Movies like "Dave" aside, what would you do in Barrack Obama's shoes? If you didn't have a cabinet or aides to help you figure it all out? Feel just a tad bit overwhelmed?

So imagine, for a moment, that you are your ego, and you all of a sudden find yourself trying to manage a human life. It's a pretty big job, especially an adult human life, with all its responsibilities and obligations and dreams. And what tools do you have? What skills? A bunch of adrenaline-based emotions and the ability to keep your human body safe. Granted, most of us have had training from the moment we were born, or at least started walking, on how to do human life with the ego in charge. Think of every rule you've been taught, every principle absorbed, every delineation between yes and no, good and bad, right and wrong. That's all training for the human ego to be able to run things. The human ego also has the advantage of being like a tremendously powerful supercomputer which can take in all that information, process it, and turn it into predictions, expectations and decisions about what to do, think and say.

But, still, it wasn't meant to be in charge. It was meant to keep you physically safe. Every time something unpredictable comes up it goes on alert. It has to scramble to get back in control. You might know some people who spend most of their time trying to get in control in one way or another. Even when it does feel in control there's the nagging doubt, or awareness, that the control is fleeting. So it works harder, tries to get a better handle on the rules, does everything it can to prevent that feeling of out of control so it won't have failed its job. Even if its job isn't to control your life, its job is to keep you physically safe, and it figures if it's in charge it's going to keep you emotionally and socially safe, too. Which, by the way, is impossible. Especially if you have the spark of Divinity in you, which you do, which wants you to evolve and experience Life.

So who is meant to be in charge? You are, your Divine human. That's the part of you tapped in to all those lovely emotions I listed up above - Love, Trust, Oneness, etc. You are the one that can experience being in the moment. Your ego doesn't even really exist in the moment.

And this is why the ego can seem so sweet. It really is trying its best to do the job. It's just forgotten what its job is supposed to be.

For me the most poignant ego moments come when I've been fully centered in my Self in the present. I've been immersed in Love, Wholeness, Trust, Oneness with everything around me. From here everything feels fabulous, exists both in infinite possibility and also in perfection just how it is.

So it can come as a disappointing shock when I find myself feeling less than again. It could be less than perfect, less than whole, less than appropriate, less than anything. It can feel like I've failed. Why can't I sustain the bliss? Why do I always have to return to lack?

If I catch it quickly enough, while I'm still feeling some of that grace of connection with my Self, I can recognize what's happening with a sort of bemused, benevolent smile. Ahh, I've slipped out of the moment and my ego has stepped back in to take over, and it doesn't know what to do.

It's as if I have suddenly found myself standing on a platform in Michael Phelps' body having yet another gold medal hung around my neck. My ego has absolutely no idea what it did to deserve this. And, what's worse, it has no idea how it will ever be able to make it happen again.

The human ego doesn't know how to do bliss. It can do happy, with the expectation of losing happy any moment. Egos don't know how to do at-one-with. They do competition. They don't know how to do Love. They know how to do need, and longing, and desire.

So they send out distress. They express their doubt. You begin to feel lack again.

Of course, being in the moment and bliss aren't the only times the ego loses its footing as master of the house. That's just the time when it's the sweetest, because then the ego has actually had the experience of letting go. It has had a chance to go be that 4 year old again, with only 4 year old responsibilities. And it takes it a while for it to remember, or reengage, the elaborate structure of controls it created to handle being in charge before.

That is a great time to take a deep breath, slow down again, and appreciate both the ego, for being transparent and for trying so hard to do the job you gave it of managing your life; and to appreciate yourself, because you just stepped out of time for a moment and connected with your higher self. You just suspended judgment long enough to feel Love. You came into yourself. How cool is that?

So your ego comes back in and freaks out. That's okay. Next time it will take longer for it to start you into lack again. Time after that it might be even longer. And if you remember, right then, to slow down again, and embrace your ego like you would a little child, you may be able to get back to that feeling of grace right then, in a way which will help bridge the distance between being in time and being in the Now.

Slowing Down into Not Enough

Today I gardened. It was the first fully sunny day in weeks, or at least that's what it felt like. We have had the sort of weather Seattle is famous for – the weather that makes Seattlites walk around with crazed, desperate looks in their eyes. It's the sort of weather that, after even the most wonderful day or evening with friends and fun and even entertainment, when you walk back to your car in the rain, again, and you have to drive home in the rain, once again, it just makes you want to cry. Or move.

So here I was, today, gardening, soaking up the sunshine like a Kansas prairie soaks up rain after a drought. And, like the dry, dry prairie, I felt like I could only take it in to the top quarter inch of my skin. It felt like the sunshine would have to pour into me for days in order for it to be enough.

Enough. That was my theme today – What is enough? When have I done enough? Am I enough? It took a few rounds of anxiety washing over me before I slowed down enough to recognize it. Then I did. Oh, right! Right now I feel like I'm not enough.

I had a whole host of stories describing how I was not enough in this situation or that – not enough to handle the task of getting my parents' house ready to sell, not even enough to finish weeding this one flower bed, not enough to get what I want, not enough to deserve love…. I also had a whole host of stories explaining that I am, indeed, enough. How could I not be enough?

But neither of those actually mattered. What mattered was that I was feeling "not enough."

Usually when I slow down and feel whatever it is I'm feeling it takes about two seconds and it's done. Compare this to resisting feeling the emotion and/or staying in the drama of the story, both of which can take forever, and slowing down sounds like a great recipe for peace.

And it is. But sometimes something else is going on. It could be the difference between feeling an emotion and facing down a belief. Today this belief that I am not enough kept coming up. It seemed that I had made an agreement with my ego that today I would look at it. Just keep bringing it up until it is done.

My teacher Judy Christenson has taken me through similar beliefs, or habits, before. Last summer, for instance, something came up which I had no idea how to deal with. Her advice was to just notice it and name it – "This is where I'm trying to make everyone else responsible for my self-worth."

So I paid attention and named it, for days. "Oh, this is where I'm trying to make my lover responsible for my self-worth." "Ah, this is where I'm trying to make my son responsible for my self-worth." "Ach! This is where I'm trying to make my work, my friend, this stranger, the weather, my reflections… responsible for my self-worth."

It got to seem kind of ridiculous. And I started to feel a bit desperate. How could anything outside of me give me self-worth? It can't. If nothing else can give it to me, how do I get it?

I actually reached a place of deep despair for about ten minutes. It felt like I had been busted in the most thorough way possible. "You don't get to make anything else responsible for your self-worth!" Fine. Then, really, how do I get self-worth?

That's when some final bit of resistance snapped, and I slowed down the rest of the way into the present moment. And I found it. Not so much self-worth, but Certainty that I exist. In that Certainty the question of do I have self-worth or not felt pretty irrelevant. That's a question the ego asks – "Do I have any worth?" When you are connected to your Self you are You, and those questions just don't matter.

That was a very profound moment for me. And here I am, 8 months later, asking if I am enough. Great.

No, really, great! Bring it on. I suppose it is possible to be human without having these question lingering in the background, or foreground. But it isn't my experience. And I'd much rather name the questions and bring them into the light than have them lurking in the shadows creating havoc. When I pay attention I can begin to give my ego a different assignment. Instead of its shadow job: "prove to me that I am not enough," it gets the helpful job: "show me everywhere that I believe I am not enough."

Then I get to name it. And by naming it accurately, and letting myself feel whatever is there, I get to transform it from resistance to myself into self-knowledge. Taking a cue from Judy my mantra of the day became "This is where I believe I am not enough."

Mantra is a beautiful, powerful thing. For thousands of years Hindus have studied the energy, or Shakti, of sound. They believe that chanting sacred mantras brings you into alignment with your Divine Source and can literally change your life – remove obstacles, bring you abundance, open your heart to God.

That might sound silly. How can chanting words over and over again change anything? The idea is that the sounds of the mantras vibrate at the level of Divine Truth. Speaking, singing or even thinking the mantra brings that vibration into your body and consciousness, and transforms it.

The same sort of vibrational transformation happens when you allow yourself to feel the emotions of this present moment. Again, it is a matter of aligning yourself with the truth. It is the truth of this, your, human moment. This moment is Divine. It is currently the most relevant and important part of your journey, even with all its apparent warts. Speaking the truth of this moment, and feeling it, brings you out of resistance to it, out of resistance to yourself. It brings you right smack into the present and into your Self.

For me, speaking the truth of my moment for the greater part of the afternoon sounded like "This is where I believe I am not enough." Speaking that truth, when it was the truth, brought me right back into my center. The anxiety would disappear.

Any time I felt the wash of anxiety again, or anything disturbing the calm, I checked in. Was this where I believed I wasn't enough? Yep? Okay. "This is where I believe I am not enough."

That took the adrenaline right out of it.

Actually, my mantra started to morph. After an hour or so it sounded more like "This is where I'm not so sure that I'm enough." That one cracked me up.

After five hours I had managed to weed about 1/5^th of the flower bed I was working on, which was one of four main areas that need to be weeded. I checked in and found that rather than feeling stressed out about how much more there was to do, I felt really great.

I actually felt the kind of gratitude for life that people talk about after facing death. Those niggling doubts and lack felt completely irrelevant. This – breathing, feeling the sun, touching the earth, getting to feel what it feels like to believe I am not enough, and then to remember that I Am, and enough doesn't even matter – was enough for me.