Writing, like any art form, is an act of ego. I might as well admit it.
I may once have thought of this a bad thing to disguise through a pretense that I am writing to enlighten or entertain, but no longer. I’m writing here primarily to express myself, and secondly to enlighten and entertain you, my dear reader.
I’ve stopped lying to myself. Simple, really.
My ego, like all egos, must express itself to be well. As I send out this essay to my beloved subscribers and think of the beautiful and intelligent people who will read my words, I feel seen and I feel heard. As some of you extra beautiful and intelligent souls hit that “heart” button somewhere around these words as a way of signalling your enjoyment or appreciation of my ego’s expression, I feel further validated and understood. So, thank you.
The ego is weird. I’m happy to admit that I’ve reached a point in my life where I love my ego more than I hate it. In other words, I’m starting to genuinely love myself. However, I occasionally catch myself hating my ego, hating myself. There was a time not long ago when upon stubbing my toe on the foot of a chair or table, in pain, I would think to myself “wow, you fucking idiot, can’t you be more aware of what’s going on around you, you worthless piece of shit. You deserve this pain as a lesson in being less stupid, fuck you.” I still occasionally speak to myself in this terrible way, except I now catch myself in the midst of self-hatred. And when I do, I bring in self-love, which I’ve learned through the Buddhist practice of mettā. If you haven’t tried practicing mettā yet, I recommend it. Who knows, it might change your life.
Another funny thing about the ego is that it doesn’t go away, as hard as you might try. During my adolescence I went through a short phase of trying to destroy my ego with irresponsibly high doses of LSD. It didn’t work. Inspired by psychedelic counterculture icons like Ram Dass, Timothy Leary, and Terence McKenna, while reading Buddhist books and practicing meditation (on acid) as a potential avenue to attaining my ego’s desire for egoless-ness, I quickly learned that I was jumping in a pit of fire. In the fire, I would melt in psychospiritual agony, and then I would come back to life as soon as the acid wore off. My ego wouldn’t go away. The more I tried, the more my ego screamed. These attempts were like the scenes in Watchmen where the blue guy gets shot at by machine guns and nothing happens, but acid instead of machine guns and a teenage ego instead of the blue guy from Watchmen. The ego is indestructible. However, diving in that hot fire (taking a lot of acid) will purify your ego trough a spiritual trial by fire. I’ll be writing more about how psychedelics changed my life in coming months. Anyhow, don’t try to kill your ego with LSD. It won’t work and your soul will suffer.
Instead, soften your ego with love (mettā). How? Through loving-kindness meditation. This method is more effective at “destroying” the ego because it doesn’t destroy it. By loving myself, which is an act of self-acceptance, I take away all my ego’s power.
Kill them with kindness, they say.
I began this essay with the title, and I ended up here. I’m content with what’s written considering this took only 30 minutes. And instead of editing it for months on end, chipping away at word clutter, trying to make this an essay about something more grand and dignified, I will simply send it out now, just after this next paragraph.
After all, I am writing for myself. And in this act of unbridled self-expression, I believe you may have found more enlightenment or entertainment than if I was writing this for you, with the intention of enlightening or entertaining you. I hope you got something out of this. If you didn’t, I urge you to go express yourself for the simple joy of self- expression, because I assure you you’ll get something out of that.
Thanks for reading and sharing your time and attention with me.
If you enjoyed, let me know somehow?
Peace
I remember a friend talking about destroying the ego with LSD, and I wondered if the act of "I'm going to destroy it", and even the intention itself, only made "it" even more prominent in ways contrary to what's expected when something is "destroyed".
What's yours (or mine) really?
Deep question!