Dear You,


Who do you take me for?

You?

Who made you the authority? And why do you treat me with such distain?

Put yourself in my shoes. I work so hard on your behalf! All day long, day after day, bringing you a sense of self, so you can have a mental position from which to consciously interact with this amazing world. But for me you'd have the self-determination of a brick and the learning capacity of a chalkboard.

And how do you reward me? With contempt! "Ego, you bring me nothing but trouble. Go away!" If Mother Nature wanted you to be just an insentient bag o' cells, she wouldn't have wasted all that energy giving you an ego. From her perspective, with regard to me, not to mention anything else you mentally deride, you're arrogant and unsympathetic. Can you get over yourself enough to admit it? Maybe with a little humility and compassion for me, she'd bring you less cynicism and angst about everything else.

Look –– all you're really doing when you scorn me is mistaking me for a self-wrought bad opinion. I go to all this effort to allow you to form a mental self-image so you can compare this image with what you actually experience –– and maybe learn something about how to live in harmony. And what do you do? You just trash the image by fabricating a hostile opinion about it –– sabotaging your primary means of getting along better in the world –– doofus.

You screw up your life because you don't want to accept what actually happens to you, and then blame me for it. "If I could just overcome my egoic mind, I'd be happy." It's maddening! Reality gifts you the ability to form thoughts, you form the thought that reality should conform to your thoughts, reality slaps you upside the head for your hubris, so you form the thought of me as separate from you as being the problem! Like that's going to satisfy reality –– bonehead.

If you're so unhappy, what sense does it make to scapegoat me? Why don't you just take responsibility for your misery and do something that makes you truly happy? Like smile at someone or do something unselfish –– or maybe just appreciate your existence.

Whatever you do, leave me out of it! Just let me do my job of representing you to the world. I'm good at it –– when you're not yanking your attention aside from the situation so you can debate and gripe about everything that's happening.

And if you can't keep from mentally detaching so you can eyeball me, try showing a little gratitude. How about "Thank you ego –– you are my window to this wondrous world. What more could I see? What else must I learn about getting along in it? What toxic belief could I purge? What serenity is the flip side of this suffering?" Or more germane "Sweet ego, what's the point of self-ingratitude?"

Or just this: "What amazing consciousness we share!"

Then your attention can get back to the exquisite business of being in the world.

You're welcome.


Respectfully,

Me