Dear friends,
The reminders are plenty.
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” The Little Prince by Antoine de St. Exupéry
“By our love, the divine may be reached and held, by our thinking, never.” The Cloud of Unknowing, 14th century anonymous Christian mystic
“The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing about.” Pensées, Renée Descartes
If these writers and thinkers are to be believed, most things in life are not solved with the head. Yet, we land up breaking our proverbial head over life’s situations or problems.
Sure, thinking contributes. A lot, arguably. After all, the same Renée Descartes said that our very essence is thinking, in his famous Cogito ergo sum statement or “I think, therefore I am.” Vedanta, my go-to philosophy for everything in life, would counter saying, “I am” suffices. Thinking, while essential, is a troublemaker, especially if we identify ourselves with the thoughts produced. See my blog on Be the thinker, not the thoughts.
In the driver’s seat through our life’s most meaningful insights and decisions, is someone or something else.
What is that entity? That entity that St. Exupéry refers to as “heart” and the 14th century mystic as “love”?
Beyond Ego
First, let’s eliminate what that entity of wisdom is not.
Late American motivational speaker, Wayne Dyer, would say that the driver’s seat is not occupied by the Ego. The Vedanta philosophy would nod in agreement. We must spend our life distancing ourselves from our Ego—that’s the very foundation of Vedanta.
What is the Ego in Vedanta?
Dyer explains:
“I look upon the ego as nothing more than an idea that each of us has about ourselves. That is, the ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one.”
“Shattering the Illusion of Ego”, Beyond Ego
So, the Ego is an idea we harbor, of who we are. But how does this idea about ourself come to be? In our daily lives, we tend to identify with our physical equipment of the body, and our mental equipment of the mind and the intellect, and these three instruments work together to give us an identity and cause the illusion of an Ego.
Ego is like its own person sitting within us helping us make judgments on ourselves—I am kind, I am awkward, I suck at sport, or I am shy and can never speak publicly. We may be all, or one, or some of these attributes at different points in our lives. However, the problem begins when we start believing that these judgments created by our Ego, are our very identity. Then, they become barriers to meeting the Divine or the Heart within us. Our true Self is perfect, a blank slate, and Divine, ever ready to help us accomplish what we want in life.
Meet the Inner Wise Guide
Tibetan lama Sogyal Rinpoche puts it all into brilliant perspective in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying:
“Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to.”
This hidden spiritual being, Rinpoche calls our inner wise guide.
The seat of wisdom or the opposite of Ego is this inner wise guide; what the Vedanta calls the Divine Self or the Divine Consciousness. Therefore, the first step towards living with Heart is to trek within and listen to this wise guide. We all have one—that little voice in us that emerges from time to time, usually drowned out by the noisier Ego. “I really should not be working this hard, I’ll fall sick”. But we do it anyway and lo and behold, we fall sick. Or “My parents are aging; I really should make it a point to visit them more often.” But, we carry on regardless, with the frenetic pace of daily life till it’s too late. “I should not eat this much sugar, I know.” We eat it anyway and feel miserable and unhealthy about it.
“Think of this inner guide as your true Self and allow yourself to listen to this wise guide” Dyer advises.
The Bhagavad Geeta, with its characteristic wisdom, explains that the egocentric idea that we are conditioned by our body, mind, and the intellect is the root cause of suffering in our life. There’s a beautiful verse that Lord Krishna narrates to Arjuna when the latter hesitates to take part in the battle of Kurukshetra:
śhrī bhagavān uvācha
aśhochyān-anvaśhochas-tvaṁ prajñā-vādānśh cha bhāṣhase
gatāsūn-agatāsūnśh-cha nānuśhochanti paṇḍitāḥ
Translation: You have grieved for those that should not be grieved for; yet you speak words of wisdom. The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead.
In a sweeping statement, the Bhagavad Geeta says that none of the experiences of this world are real because they are ever changing and come from some combination of a song and dance by the body, mind, and the intellect. Grief and dejection are the price we pay for our false identification with these instruments. How can we believe or trust something to be true if it is ever changing? Our thoughts and attitudes change constantly. So, can we really rely on the thought of the hour to make deep decisions? That’d be silly.
Meaningful decisions are made by tapping into our inner wise guide or our Self.
So, what are the implications of all of this for our daily life?
There are a few I can think of.
Make room for the unknown in life. Not everything becomes crystal clear in life using our thinking. The fact is, we don’t know more than we know, and the mind and intellect can only take us so far. So, let’s not uniquely live within the chains of our thinking. Of course, we need our mind and our intellect to think, just as we need our body for everything. But we need to drive them to our benefit. You don’t let the car drive you, you drive the car of the body, mind, and intellect, as Swami Dheerananda says. Let’s use them to examine the pros and cons of a situation, sit on them, and let the inner wise guide offer us clarity.
For example, right now, I am trying to choose between a few different writing gigs and the daily uncertainty is causing a bit of angst. On the face of it, they sound good with some pros and cons, but I know in my Heart that as much as I am using reason to sort things out, I have to sit it out and trust that from this unknown, an answer will emerge.
I am particularly prone to being in a rush to get answers right away and the best answers are not found in our thoughts. In fact, never at all. They lie within our Heart, our Divine Self and emerge in silence, not from the noise of our thoughts.
Believe in our inherent goodness and wisdom. We know a lot more than we give ourselves credit for. We can listen to whoever we trust, but chances are most likely, the answers are already within us. We have to learn to listen to them. The belief that we have an inner wise guide and that our Self is good and wise, is key to be able to encounter that Divine in us, that Heart within us. We are ready to beat ourselves up about things, but not as quick to praise ourselves, and that must be reversed to be able to listen to the voice of our inner wise guide.
Make the present your friend. Swami Chinmayananda was once asked, “How do we go beyond the Ego?” He responded:
“The way to go beyond the ego (not kill it) is by selfless meditation, if this is not possible, total absorption in the task at hand, by living in the moment rather than for the moment.”
This works. When confounded with a problem, fold laundry or clean out the fridge or wash the dishes (yes, seriously)—some activity that’s mechanical and that holds your focus tight. The distance between the problem and the present enables you to enter the zone of the Heart and the Divine Self. You might realize the problem is no longer a problem, or have an insight that comes out of nowhere, or continue to enjoy the activity and the moment.
In the stillness of that space precisely, lies the beauty of our Divine, our Heart, and life itself.
Do you agree?
Meaningfully yours,
Anu Prabhala
Well said, Anu-ji. My ego is not my amigo.