Switching off - by Vicky Kelly

Do you find that your mind is often going over things?

Churning about work, family commitments,  what’s coming up, problems that could arise, what your colleagues/clients/friends may think of you? With all that on your mind, it’s reasonable to conclude that your life is very demanding, it’s really important that you don’t drop any balls and that’s why you’re always thinking about stuff.

What if I was to suggest that it’s not about how busy you are, it’s about your ego? 

Let’s get straight what I mean by “Ego” first of all.  I’m not referring to inflated self-importance.  “Ego” is the term I use to describe the sense of self that believes it needs to get life right.  This is different from the sense of self that you experience in stillness (the True Self).

If you’ve every tried to used meditation or yoga as a tool to feel better, that’s because you inherently know that it makes more sense to operate from this place of stillness.  However, the problem is, that in society at the moment, egos are running the show.  We have 7.6 billion egos all trying to get life right, yet all with slightly different thoughts on what “right” is.  The thoughts we have are looking in the wrong direction.  No sooner have we achieved the thing that we thought we needed, then we’ve noticed the way that someone else is doing life, and wonder if their way is more “right” than ours.   Or, we just go into a state of fear over losing whatever condition we’ve acquired!  It doesn’t seem to matter how perfect we get our lives.  The sense of peace and stillness that we seek, doesn’t come.  

That peace can’t come from getting life right.  This is seeking security in a set of conditions – which are, by their nature, insecure.  These conditions can pass at any time.  No matter how hard we work, or how vigilant we are. So, if we want to feel secure, we need to look to something other than our conditions. 

But to what?

This is where I come in.  I work with my clients to encourage an understanding of what that peace really comes from. The sense of self we find in the stillness, which isn’t attached to anything, not even the body.  We’ve all experienced this – the awareness of self, without the awareness of our body – then we are suddenly surprised at how far we’ve driven, or how we managed to make that cup of tea while daydreaming about the weekend. 

Our conditioning teaches us that sense of self comes from within the body.  When we believe that, we believe ourselves to be an ego that needs to get life right.  But there is no right.  And chasing a non-existent right makes it impossible to choose to switch off. 

Surely there has to be another way?! There is. It’s found in the transformational paradigm shift that I share with my clients.  Stop seeing yourself as the Ego, and start seeing yourself as the sense of being that is always present. There’s more to it than that of course, but can you just imagine how you’d feel if you didn’t believe that there was a “right” way to get life?

I work 121 with clients at the Therapy Life Centre, as well as giving workshops.  Check out my events page for what’s coming up.