Journal - Grace in Light and Shadow

Ego and Soul: It’s a Symbiotic Relationship

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Sarah ElizabethFebruary 20, 2023

copyright © 2013 Sarah Elizabeth Malinak, all rights reserved.

or two days I felt crestfallen, aimless, depressed. Before that I’d had weeks of feeling invigorated, productive, involved. During those two days, I could not talk myself out of how bad I felt. It didn’t make sense and I couldn’t make sense of it. It frightened me because, if I couldn’t think my way out of it, when would it end?

Finally, late at night on day two of this strange melancholy, the reason for it dawned on me…

I’d recently experienced a situation where I received a great deal of praise and recognition from people about whom I care deeply. Our investment in each other went on for weeks, keeping my cell phone busy with calls, texts, and voice mails. The situation not only made me feel appreciated and recognized, it made me feel needed.

When the attention came to its natural end, I created an excuse to continue feeling needed by a few of the participants. It didn’t take long for me to realize what I really needed was to let go. So I did.

It was not long after deciding to let go that I woke up feeling aimless and depressed. I tried to think my way out of those feelings for two days, to no avail. I was grateful when the truth finally tapped on my shoulder, a like a little bird getting my attention, illuminating what was really going on.

The experience of feeling recognized and being needed for an extended period of time fed my ego in a big way. It was as if my ego got to belly up to an all you can eat buffet every single day for weeks! When the endless buffet disappeared, my ego remained full for awhile but eventually got hungry for more recognition, praise, and opportunities to feel needed with no promise of fulfillment any time soon. And so aimlessness, emptiness, and a sense of depression became companions until I was able to name what was really going on.

The following day relief was followed by purposefulness and productivity. I felt energized and hopeful. I was also curious. Why did it help – that realization that my ego, in desperation for further recognition, had clobbered me with depression? Shouldn’t it have made my ego more desperate for attention rather than making it shush and settle down?

Once the gig was up and the ego caught, I sallied forth as if I’d received a super-duper-fast-acting medicine! Although my ego had held me hostage in depression for forty-eight hours, once I knew what was really going on, it yielded in an instant, accepting defeat!

It occurs to me the ego is strongest when it operates unseen through the subconscious. It also operates very quickly and subtly when it feels desperate to be in charge. Our symbiotic relationship gets stickier as I unconsciously give my ego free reign.

When I do not pay attention and let it feed on the illusion that my worth is found in being needed, it’s like I turn my attention away from my soul, away from what’s real, and exist for awhile in the ego’s illusion; which makes the ego feel all puffed up but also insecure. Like a child given too much sugar, when the ego coaxes me to look outside myself to find meaning and purpose, and suddenly it is no longer fed, it goes into withdrawal and hunger, throwing a temper tantrum to get the adult’s (to get my) attention.

I remember that as a teenager and young adult, whenever I would feel really lousy and worthless, I’d get busy helping someone else in order to feel needed and better. You might recognize that as advice some people give as a way to walk out of feeling bad about or sorry for ourselves. And during that 48-hour melancholy, I considered doing just that, looking for another project where I could feel needed.

On a soul level, though, I knew the way out was to be with it, honor it, and look forward to one day understanding the gifts in it. Sure enough, on the second night and in the shower when I wasn’t thinking about much of anything, the answer to why I felt so bad popped up in my imagination. “Your ego’s been getting off on all the recognition and feeling needed. Feeling aimless and depressed is just an extension of that ego conversation.”

Then “poof!” I felt better. I felt better right then and there. And I woke up the next day ready to get back to living my life.

(Please be assured, I am not saying that all depression is an ego conversation. I have suffered from clinical depression and it was not an ego conversation. I am saying that last week my ego hooked me through feelings of aimlessness and depression as a defense response inside me.)

So, on a soul level, I saw what was going on, in the seeing took my power back, and the ego was either defeated or soothed or both. Like magic – like grace – my ego was happy to go silent and watchful.

It’s as if when I let the soul lead, the ego can relax and trust me to take care of my own life. But when I become blind to how the ego’s been made the stronger one, like an insecure child asked to be the adult, it will act out until I wake up to the problem. Therefore, when I am soulfully strong, the ego can relax and let me lead.

I have learned through the years, when a relationship or life isn’t working, to ask myself, “Is this an ego conversation?” This particular melancholy taught me that, even with feelings, if it isn’t working for me try asking, “Could this be the result of an ego conversation?” If so, freedom is a breath away!

Coping with Grief after Alzheimer’s

Posted on September 6, 2013 by Sarah ElizabethFebruary 20, 2023

Because I’ve written about my mother’s journey through Alzheimer’s disease here, I wanted to acknowledge her passing here as well. I thought that when she made her transition I would experience joy for her suffering to be over and relief that my own suffering over her condition had come to an end.

But, for me, that turned out to be a myth I picked up somewhere along the way. Toward the very end, I feared her death because, even though she was hardly really with us at that point, having some part of her seemed better than not having her at all.

When I got the phone call that she had died I had two responses. One was to review over and over our last meeting a few days previous. I don’t know what I was looking for there but I couldn’t let it go. The next response was to get really busy helping plan and carry out her Celebration of Life service. That comprised six days.

On the seventh day, back home here in Asheville, I decided to go to a movie and relax. When I got out of the movie, on the way to my car a terrible sadness filled me – a sadness accompanied by a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. In the days that followed that feeling came up again and again until I finally began answering it with, “I am not, in fact, a motherless child!”

As a child of divorce and having gone through my own divorce many years ago, I have experienced grief. Because of incidents in my childhood, grief has been a constant, though usually quiet, companion my whole life long. But this grief is different and it gives me respect and compassion for anyone whose experience is different from mine.

We really do not know how grief affects others. It’s the number one reason that presence is absolutely the most important gift we can give someone who is grieving. No words can match the gift of simply showing up, listening, paying attention and, perhaps, seeing something that needs to be gotten done and doing it.

In fact, something we can do for ourselves when experiencing grief is to show up and be present to ourselves, giving ourselves as much love, compassion, and tenderness as can allowed in any given moment.

Thank you for reading this blog entry and the others where I’ve explored Alzheimer’s and my response to our situation. In the days ahead, I look forward to renewed energy, creativity, and a new and purposeful focus on topics I can share here at Grace in Light and Shadow – because, thank God, Grace doesn’t leave anything untouched.

Blessings,

Sarah

Enlightenment Must be Like Falling in Love

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Sarah ElizabethFebruary 20, 2023

ecently Joseph was out of town and so I took advantage of this to indulge in the BBC’s 4-hour 2009 version of Jane Austen’s Emma. It was delightful. One of my favorite things about the story is how you get to witness two people waking up to the fact that they are head over heels in love with each other and they don’t know when or how it happened. All they know is that it is so and now they have a whole new perspective on life.

I liked the way Romola Garai as Emma and Jonny Lee Miller as George Knightley had the time and luxury to let us experience these two as close family friends who had become like kin slowly recognize their longing for each other.

Between his brother and her sister marrying and producing a lot of children and the effect their age difference had on their friendship, their blossoming romantic love taking them by surprise and finally being acted on was scrumptious.

As I pondered the gift of falling in love with someone who returns the love, it occurred to me that falling in love like this is pure grace. It can’t be forced, seduced, chased after, or pursued. You can be aggressive, attempting to conquer your love interest, and have some modicum of success (depending on your definition of success)…

But the drop everything, butterflies-filling-the-belly, heady experience of falling in love with someone who falls in love with you is pure grace. And when it happens, your whole perspective on life changes – in an instant!

That’s the piece that can rub parents and friends a little raw. Suddenly you have passion and loyalty for a person who is brand new in your life (unless he or she has been a friend for years) and may be a stranger to your friends and family. Even if your new love is an old friend and everyone knows this person, being in love and in a relationship changes and challenges all the other relationships. But you don’t really care because your perspective on your life changed in an instant of awareness.

photograph by Sarah Elizabeth Malinak

It dawned on me that this is what enlightenment must be like. A moment of grace when one’s perspective simply shifts and you experience all of life from the perspective of God, eternity, Unity, no-self, or however you describe the Truth of Being.

All the gurus, enlightened, and awakening teachers ultimately say that, in the end, austerities, meditation practices, and winnowing of the personality do not make enlightenment occur. When it happens, it is all grace. And when it happens, one lives from a new perspective unlike any perspective found here in the illusion…Like falling in love.