The plight of the ego.

I had gone for a morning walk, and rediscovered a lovely sitting spot by the river. So I sat down and basked in the morning sun, revelling in the nothingness of the moment.

Then I felt a rising anxiety, like a cold chill of an inner cloud, creeping over me. I paused from my reverie, and turned my attention to this little darkness. My attention served as a question, and the darkness revealed its nature through a visual metaphor of grasping hands. Fingers desperately flexing, opening and closing. Desperately looking for something to hold, to cling onto.

“Ah,” I thought. “The 'ego'.”

I've been re-reading a fiction author whose books served as an anchor through some really hard times, and a scene from the most recent book I re-read came to mind. The antagonist had just been freed from the demons which possessed him:

The mindless chatter and constant scheming stopped, all the stress and tension rushed from his body and Khalid was left completely wasted.

When I re-read it a few days ago, I paused on the words "constant scheming" and highlighted it.

In the book, the word “scheming” was used to describe the antagonist's nature a few times, specifically in the context of political espionage:

Before meeting Ray, he'd been determined to escape this rehabilitation program at all costs and return to scheming political espionage.

However, I reflected that most of our minds are trapped in scheming day in, day out anyway.

How to look good. How to find meaning. How to get rich. How to get happy. How to win love and keep it. How to live with purpose. How to avoid suffering. The list goes on.

We are scheming for control… because on some level, we all know… we have none.

The ego's nightmare… and death.

Hence, the desperate grasping of the metaphorical hands. The ego schemes to create what it believes is control and hence certainty over its past, present and future existence.

Because it knows reality—and its death—is never far, so it keeps running, keeps scheming. Keeps throwing up smoke screens to lure, confuse and distract its host: Us.

In a way, we can consider the ego to be its own entity, and we are all possessed of and by one. Our own inner demon.

Like a manifestation of pure selfishness, it is concerned only with its own survival, and it will use anything and anyone to get its way. Including us and anyone else unfortunate enough to cross our paths when we are unaware.

Dropping into a state of nothingness is pure nightmare fuel for our ego. It triggers an immense panic attack in the entity, for in nothingness, there is nothing to grasp. Nothing it can use, to scheme.

It can only look, eye to eye, with its host and the vast, empty nature of reality.

And if its host does not respond to its bantering, bargaining, baiting, the host, too, becomes nothing, and the ego is left to confront its true nature: A being consumed with the belief that it is utterly, utterly separate from all things, alone and abandoned.

And in this, its belief of complete separateness and aloneness, it struggles and fights, not out of malice, but out of sheer heartbreak. For deep down, even the darkest of creatures know that we are not meant to be alone.

When we can observe the nature of pure suffering of our egos without negative or positive judgement, we hold space for the reality and experience of this aspect of us and life.

We can never obliterate the ego, nor do we want or need to. We need only accept it, and we then have power with it. Not over it.

Upon realizing this, my ego stopped struggling and stilled, floating in nothingness, feeling held like a snoozing baby in its mother's arms. It rested, and that's what I want for it. Rest. For it has been fighting for far too long.

At that moment, I opened my eyes, got up, and walked home, after a small nod of thanks to all the spirits of the place and space where I'd stopped.