From My Shell and Into Paradise

By the ego’s measure, I’ll always come up short. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll get exactly what I want. I’ll receive the pats on the back that I so crave. But it will never be enough. The problem with the ego’s measure – or the metric as it’s called – is that it’s one that the ego decides upon and designs. Let’s look at that design.

Th ego’s yardstick is usually one of externals. It measures me by things like reputation, achievement, success, money, sex, popularity, body image, approval. These metrics are associated with the false self, with the persona I project to the world. The other thing they have in common is that they’re mostly quantitative, although they also have qualitative aspects. Because they’re quantities, they can be compared on a scale to the amounts of these same things that others have. I have more money or less than you. I’m more popular than she is. I’m better looking than him. I haven’t done as much with my life as they have. These traits have an objective aspect. They can be measured. How many likes does my post have? How many followers do you have? When you use these yardsticks as measures, you’re more, better than, less than, excellent, superior, A+, or you deserve a failing grade.

Our problems are often tied in with these measures. They contribute to a sense of not being good enough, which we compensate for by trying to be better than others. Superiority, competition, pride; these motivations contribute to many of our problems. We want more so we go to war, either personally or nationally. She snubbed me so I’ll get her back by talking about how she sleeps around. I mean, people shoot servers over getting the wrong order at the fast-food counter or being cut off in traffic. And underneath it all, we engage in these little wars because we feel less than. Who do they think they are? really means Don’t they know who I think I am? In poker, there’s s saying: strength means weakness. A big bet often compensates for a weak hand. Or, to borrow a line from The Maltese Falcon: The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with competition. In fact, the advancement of humanity in some ways depends on it. Yet when it’s motivated by a feeling of being one down, the wins it brings never fill the hole inside. I can tell when I’m trying to fill that hole with the wrong things. I never end up feeling whole. I just want more.

We live in a relative world populated with subjective egos which can’t help but feel one up or one down. The ego keeps the score. That sense of judgment is our starting point, our default position. We’re always looking out at the world comparing ourselves to others. Is there a better way? Is there another way to look at ourselves?

Humans can imagine a concept which none of the other animals can envision, and that is the infinite. The infinite has no relative measure. It is this and that. It’s you and the other guy (or girl). Therefore, the infinite doesn’t compare. it can’t compare because nothing compares to the infinite. It can’t keep score in the way our egos seem condemned to do.

The infinite has zero to do with the measures we take of ourselves and make against one another. To measure anyone or anything is to act against it. To measure is to belittle, since you’ll eventually find something bigger or greater than the thing measured. I used to think mountains were majestic, as compared to myself. When I flew over the Rockies in an airplane, the mountains seemed puny, and I lost the sense of majesty. The infinite can’t be measured, so it can never be acted against. You can never make it small.

When we try on the robe of the infinite and embrace ourselves and others with it, we stop judging. We stop comparing. There is no measure in the endless, no measure but the all. It is the all. It gives itself to all, for all. That’s the only way out of the ego’s measure. It is eternally resilient. Only the infinite remains  invulnerable to any of the internal injuries we suffer when we compare ourselves to others.

My self-esteem is derived from the way I feel about myself. It, too, is relative and subjective. It changes from moment to moment, based on the ego’s measure of how well it thinks I’m doing, on how much I have. My self-worth, on the other hand, comes from my indivisibility from the infinite which surrounds me. My real value never changes. It’s never moved one inch, since it can’t be measured in miles or parsecs of space. It’s beyond quantification.

Most self-help focuses on repairing self-esteem. It tries to rehabilitate the ego. Reading this book or going to that seminar is self-improvement designed to repair the way the ego regards itself. It doesn’t really work because the ego never gets any better. The ego can’t improve. The best we can hope for is that it gets smaller over time; that it deflates and has a smaller surface area, so that it doesn’t bump up against so many other egos and things and feel slighted, exalted, less than, more than.

To exaggerate the ego’s sense of its own importance misses the point. For nothing is ever really good enough for the ego; no amount of praise or adulation or money or power. The ego doesn’t need to be rebuilt. It needs to be depersonalized. I need to realize that nothing that happens to me is any of my business, since what happens, what someone else says or does, is never really personal. What the ego regards as injury is just other egos acting out of their own stories about what somebody or something else did to them. To heal is to realize that nothing that ever happens in life is ever personal, or really any of my business. The ego needs not to take every damned thing so seriously, especially itself. In this, there is healing.

To laugh at myself. To say why not me? when something seems to happen to me. To embrace it all, without exception or expectation. In these acts of surrender, I let go of finite measure, and embrace the laughing infinite as it seeks to tease me out of my shell and into paradise.

© 2022 by Michael C. Just

Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.

You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23

Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002

Four of his short stories have recently been published online:

Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)

The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW

I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October

Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within