This morning the words of Beck Hanson rang in my ears as I reminisced about a song off of the Steropathic Soul Manure album (deep huh). Banjo plays in the background "Today.. has been a fucked up day... Todaaaayyyy has beeen of fucked up daaaayyy! Today has been a FUCKED up day! Look's like tomorrow's gonna be the same ole day...."
This morning it made me smile and laugh to hear to the music, even if only conceptually. This is because I just got hit with a major wave of ego backlash yesterday. I was just watching Leo Gura's video on Actualized.org about ego backlash and of course, as with most video commentaries, I hear them more subconsciously than consciously sometimes. "That's nice; interesting perspective," is what I'd think and tuck it away neatly into my little memory compartment of spiritual wisdom. One thing I like about Leo's videos is that he encourages his viewers to directly experience everything he speaks of to really understand. Usually, this is the form of some kind of exercise like meditation or contemplation of a certain subject. For me this time, I experienced ego backlash full swing and it came at me like a bat out of hell from nowhere.
If you could see my aura yesterday, it was likely red. I woke up with just this angry energy. Several things were misplaced and I fell into a self-destructive pattern. My thoughts were shrouded in pessimism. Negative energy literally poured out of me. The dogs were quite sensitive to this and as soon as I let them out, they took off into the wilderness for several hours, preventing me from leaving to do my work and this only made things worse. This time of year I have to wear heavy boots and snow pants to work in these subfreezing temperatures and it causes me to walk rather slowly. This is sort of how my day went as well; every step was a struggle and there were hidden stumbling blocks under the snow and ice everywhere. Frustration built and mounted until I finally just gave up and resolved to stay at home and not get stuck in the mountains trying to cut Aspen wood (likely scenario). After that, the dogs returned to their kennel and I was able to at least go to the neighbor's across the street and do some fire mitigation work until it started to get dark, which helped release some of that negative energy. However, it still persisted through the evening but was simmering down. It was at this time I realized I was experiencing ego backlash. It made me want to give up my progress.
Over the last few months, I have hit significant milestones in my spiritual journey. I have exposed myself to so much information and new truth. So much so, that going about life as I did before just is not going to cut it. This is not easy, especially for the ego, whose main purpose is to maintain homeostasis in order to ensure survival. This is true in any complex system or organization which has an ego. When you digest new ideas and concepts and incorporate them into your life, values change and you recontextualize a lot of things you knew before. This process can be radically transformational and it may not happen overnight, over a weekend, or even over several months or years; in my case, it was several months. Context has so much to do with what we perceive as "truth." When your perception is significantly changed or recontextualized, the ego freaks out! This likely means death! The ego needs grounding; needs control; requires stability. Yes, a part of you dies in this process. A part of me died yesterday.
Had it not been for the timing of Leo's recent video, I may just have fallen victim to this last wave of ego backlash. It is okay to have a bad day, but it is not okay to stay that way. Mindfulness is your most powerful tool against episodes of ego backlash. It was the only way I got through; being mindful of my own behavior and that this was indeed ego backlash, almost certainly prevented me from making some rather foolish decisions yesterday. Instead, I did nothing but work in my wood yard and a little in the forest across the street, which I find calming. Thankfully I had my girlfriend to chat with and vent during the evening as things were simmering down and she was a great help just being there to listen. I am glad no other people were around to absorb that energy; if it was enough to send the dogs running for the hills, I can only imagine how that negative energy would have been reflected back to me from other people several times larger than I shelled it out.
This morning I woke up later than normal to another very cold single digit morning. The negative energy is now gone. I look at my former self yesterday and laugh at what an angry fool I was, but I really was that way and my ego was on a rampage. In the end, I just kept saying no; I will not give in! I badly wanted to just give in and start over in some cushy corporate job and milk the system for another 50 years until my ego stalls the old clock. I wanted to forget about everything I have become aware of and go back to being a robot for the machine. But I ignored it and with a little encouragement from my friends too, I let the ego starve and fade away. Now it is as if springtime is here, and I no longer need the heavy boots and snow pants that slow me down; I can grace the ground spritely in sandals, having released the dead weight.
