Use Life Itself to Dissolve Your Identity
From a spiritual perspective, the sense of a permanent self is the bane of one’s existence.
This solid sense of self causes you to suffer, again and again, through its children: attachment, aversion, and ignorance. It desires what you perceive to be pleasant and pushes away what you deem unpleasant.
But this is an endless, hopeless game.
You won’t get what you believe you want, time and again. And due to your ego devotion, you’ll suffer as a result. You might feel frustration, self-doubt, or an obsession to work even harder.
But where will that get you?
Even when you get the prize, the pleasant can turn into the unpleasant and the desirable never lasts.
A rich meal can make your tummy ache and cause you to gain yet another stubborn pound. A loving marriage can transform into a hateful divorce. Your shiny new car can cause severe disappointment once dented by a stranger in a parking lot.
Instead of allowing life to flow, instead of accepting what is, you’re stuck in this constant push and pull, attempting to make life conform to the expectations of your “self.”
Every spiritual great has said you must let go of attachment to this sense of a permanent self—the culprit behind all the suffering. But how can you do that when your identity is so entrenched, so real, so solid?
It’s not easy. But you can find encouragement by looking into the life stories of spiritual teachers who have realized no-self.
Life Wants to Teach You
Adyashanti, a contemporary spiritual teacher, had his first awakening experience at the early age of twenty-five. In his book, The End of Your World, Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment, he recounts feeling it wasn’t complete.
Parts of his ego, he says, remained firmly intact. Adyashanti used his spiritual practices—meditation and self-inquiry—to plug away at what remained of this solid self. But ultimately, he found life itself to be his most powerful ego-destroyer.
A competitive athlete since the age of thirteen, a large part of Adyashanti’s identity centered around being physically fit, even more so than his peers.
But in the year following his awakening experience, Adyashanti became seriously ill. Every time he felt a little better, he tried to bicycle once more only to end up flattened again. This cycle continued until his body completely refused to cooperate and sent him to bed for six months.
Adyashanti finally realized he was no longer an athlete, which surprisingly felt incredibly freeing. He felt the relief of being “nobody” in a sense similar to what he had experienced during his initial realization at twenty-five.
Despite this profound second insight, the “athlete” part of his ego-identity hadn’t met its final blow. Once again, as Adyashanti felt better, he began to exercise. He found great joy riding his bike through the forests and mountains near his home.
But slowly, he found himself slipping into training mode—sneakily reconstructing his athlete persona. Although he had some conscious awareness of what he was doing, he was unable to stop.
A year later, he ended up back in bed for another six-month stint.
After the second six-month illness, Adyashanti let go of the athlete aspect of his identity once and for all. His entire egoic structure didn’t completely dissolve however, just this one aspect.
It took Adyashanti seven years after his initial awakening experience at twenty-five and another disastrous life experience, this time in the romantic realm, to dismantle his false sense of identity and realize no-self.
It wasn’t just life itself that woke him up. He combined meditation (two to four hours a day), self-inquiry, and life confrontations to ultimately let go of his egoic identity. But life knock-downs contributed significantly.
Make Life Your Ally
Many of us use spirituality to avoid the difficult aspects of life, which ironically strengthens the ego all the more.
We want to sit in our cozy meditation spot with the perfect scented candle, the most calming music, and a soft blanket to wrap around our shoulders on chilly days. We seek relaxation and secretly hope for bliss. We dream of receiving the ultimate transmission from our teacher that will transport us into divine-being with little effort on our part.
I don’t blame anyone for wanting this. I did myself.
I studied and practiced Buddhism for more than twenty years. But it didn’t dissolve my ego at all. On the contrary, my identity as the devoted student willing to work twenty-four seven and comply with every single demand from my teacher solidified my sense of self more and more.
I thought (and was told) I would receive magical blessings for all my effort that would absolve the need for years of study and meditation. But eventually I was discarded when the time arrived for a younger crew to come aboard.
I didn’t use this challenging experience to lighten my sense of identity. I suffered and suffered the pain of rejection. I cried for hours on end. How could this happen to me after all those years of devotion?
Eventually, I put my life back together with a new version of egoic identity ready to push on. But life never lets you off the hook.
Eventually, I lost everything: my home in a lava eruption, my marriage, and my spiritual community.
I may not have been an exemplary spiritual practitioner, but fortunately the wisdom of the teachings softened this blow. Still, I clung to the past, cried buckets of tears, and suffered more than I needed to.
I could have died without ever getting the main lesson. Most people do.
But I finally get it! Make life your spiritual ally. Let its painful lessons dismantle your ego, not build it up.
Final Thoughts
Don’t blame yourself if you cling to your identity through thick and thin. Ego contains Herculean strength whether it manifests as narcissism, low-self esteem, or victimhood.
Even after an awakening experience, it took Adyashanti seven years of difficult life lessons to get to no-self. It’s taken me far longer to accept life as my ally on the spiritual path and the potential destroyer of the false self.
Life is your ally too. It will continue to show you what you need to learn to evolve spiritually. But will you see? Will you listen? Will you learn?
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