All the Difference - is On the Inside
This piece is a very long, meandering series of reflections based on my own experience. Don't try and take it all in at once - you might get indigestion!
There is all the difference in the world between the Heartland and Egoland. It is the difference between heaven and hell, or - for example - between the atmosphere of a music festival and that of a war.
Mardi Gras in Spanish Town, Baton Rouge, 1982
But while heaven and hell have been much depicted, and conjured up to frighten and inspire, and while the music festival/warzone contrast is easily imagined, and can be shown in pictures or recordings, the difference between being in the Heartland and being in Egoland is all on the inside, knowable only by the feelings. It is not externally visible.
All the difference, between living a life that feels enjoyable, meaningful and like a gift, and living one that feels like a daily burden and uphill struggle, or a bit of a disapppointment, or a series of messes - all this crucial, decisive difference has nothing to do with anything anyone else can see.
It depends on how I am feeling, and on my inner attitude to what's happening, on the tone of voice that prevails in my mind - and on the absence of other tones of voice!
What makes all the difference to my life, what really matters to me, lies inside my thoughts, behind (or below) my impulses – is hidden in my heart, and only knowable by my heart, and my senses.
Loving, attentive and accepting thoughts and attitudes (received and given, given and received) produce trust, security, resilience, joy – life, in other words, and more life.
'Friends'
Whereas hostile, fearful, or judgemental thoughts and attitudes on the one hand, and evasive, insincere ones on the other, have toxic effects on us - they allow fears to spread, and lead to the shut-down of the heart.
There is all the difference too between tendentious rhetoric (egoland):
and the neutrality, detachment and clarity of inner truth (heartland).
Again, the difference between the two is discerned by the feelings.
Towards or Away From
One way of picturing this ‘all the difference’ theme is the two-faced Janus profile, with one silhouette facing left, the other right.
We may see these profiles as one facing backwards (towards the past) and the other forwards (into the future). I am thinking of them here as one facing towards the heart, and one away from the heart, from our own feelings, the inner truth of any situation, from reality.
I think this is the central, decisive choice of direction that each of us can make in our life - whether to face towards our own buried truth, our own inner story, or whether to keep walking away from it, and fending it off.
Anxiety or Acceptance?
This morning, I spotted another ‘all the difference’ in myself – between seeing and accepting the truth as helper and guide, or seeing it apprehensively, as an indicator of problems, snags – just another thing to worry about!
This anxiety-tinged view of reality is what Carol Anthony calls an ego-upgrade, (see Oracle). So, from ‘do I want to accept reality, or suppress and avoid it?’ the issue becomes ‘how - in what spirit – am I accepting insights?’
In the Flow, or All Washed Up?
When I'm in the flow, in my Heartland, I feel free, alive, part of life. When I'm off-centre - in Egoland - it feels as if I'm washed up on the riverbank, watching life flow past, unsure how to get back in, afraid I will never feel I belong.
All the difference between the two feelings is on the inside, invisible to others.
Roomy or Cramped?
In the Heartland, there is plenty space for everyone, so there's no pushing and shoving for position, or to be heard.
When I'm here, I find myself interacting with others spontaneously, intuitively – responding to their feelings as they respond to mine, without need for commentary or discussion. (This may sound idealistic, but it is actually realistic. It is how things actually work, when we open our hearts and let them.)
In Egoland, by contrast, I am both self-conscious and unhealthily focussed on others. I either feel squashed up against them, and needing to fend them off, or anxious about their opinion of me.
When I am in my Heartland, I don't compare myself with others, and therefore I am free from ego’s confusing, self-image based strategies of ‘compensation’.
People ‘trapped’ in Egoland (unwilling/unable* to unlock their inner cell door) are driven to force others to be aware of them in demanding or manipulative ways. These gambits need to be firmly resisted by others, each of whom must deal with their own ego’s urge to respond.
* Willingness engenders capacity,
unwillingness incapacity.
Ego's Isolation Cell
Though each of us has the key in our pockets to open the cell door of ego, and walk out into the fresh air of reality . . .
. . . our heart-key can be hard to find, when we feel under pressure, among all the ingenious, zipped pockets of the complicated, bullet-proof flak jackets ego has issued us with ‘for our protection’!
Here I Am!
One of the ways children can become alienated, or estranged from themselves, is if people (parents or teachers especially) fail to respond to them as they are, and instead seem to fix their attention on someone ‘over there’ – the child they project or imagine, the child in their own minds - rather than the real, present child who is with them. This attitude invites, or rather requires the child to ‘get over there’ and fulfil the adults' expectations, in order to be attended to.
Such failure to perceive or meet children as they are is very common, and is inflicted unconsciously on children, who are sensitive to their parents' projections, and comply. These children's dissociated or contrived behaviour then gets carried into adult life, where it creates problems - not least, with and for their own children.
Developing the firmness of will to stop going ‘over there’, is not easy, but it can be done. (Willingness engenders capacity.) It involves coming to recognise when and how we betray ourselves, in order to receive what we want or need from others.
As I have slowly learned to be more true to my feelings, and stop caving in to my fears of 'what might happen', I have experienced with astonishment, over and over again, that there are no negative repercussions.
In fact, since I have started requiring, and allowing, people to address me as I am, life has become a lot easier and more rewarding.
The end of self-estrangement makes all the difference.
Finding our way back home
Where there’s human life, there’s error, and ego. We all make mistakes, we fall for ego tricks we’re old enough to see through. And so, while we live, we continue to experience both worlds, the world of the true and of the false – Heartland, and Egoland – and the journeys between them. We have to keep remembering how to get back home, when we wander off track.
I have found that when I feel trapped in fear-arousing feelings and inner arguments, the way out is the way in. What we want, after all, is the way in – to life, love, reality, belonging.
In the Heartland I am at home – it is spacious, trustworthy, familiar – and it is even more than personal to me, for I have learned from experience that the Heartland is in tune with the way things work, with what flows and attracts, what feels natural and brings enjoyment, all round. In the Heartland, I feel my freedom to be myself, in unconstrained (but not unconscious) interaction with others who are being themselves.
In Egoland, freedom and spontaneity do not exist, for there is no trust – everything (even within the psyche) is fear-tinged calculation, winners and losers, role playing and gestures (“Will this do?”)
Living in Egoland is like being a dog, straining on a leash – all my muscles and will focussed on pulling – or pushing – beyond, on, into my own discomfort zone, gasping with desperate eagerness produced by the presence of the imagined leash. Ego is my ‘owner’, holding the leash – which is made of fear. (Leash – lash)
Living in the Heartland, still in dog terms, is like being off the leash – I have all the space I need, I feel free to run or rest, or stop and snuffle around, free to play with other dogs and humans if I like, free to enjoy my life. All the difference.
Love and Unlove
Ego doesn’t know about love – can neither give nor receive it. What it substitutes for love is attachment and dependence, and all kinds of exhausting, frustrating, strenuous and futile games. Ego deals in guilt, obligation, and coercion, and in self-images to be lived up (and sunk down) to.
Love – real love – does not generate dependence. Love trusts and respects everyone’s autonomy, allows everyone to be themselves. Real love is given and received voluntarily, in a spontaneous inner movement – because it feels natural and right to. Nothing is extracted by pressure. This is a world away from the contrivance and enervating constraint of ego-sponsored, ego-dominated, or ego-haunted relationships.
Are You In, Are You Out?
- in the words of Joan Armatrading’s 1970s song.
There is all the difference between the two ways of being, though they can be just a breath away from one another – and no-one but the person in question knows where – or how – they are, at any moment.
It is up to me, whether I am in, or out.
‘In’ means in harmony with my own nature, and with the effortless way things work, when I trust life. ‘Out’ means – and feels like – I am carrying the weight of everything that troubles me my shoulders. It also means I am out of step and out of harmony with myself, caught up in a lonely struggle against impossible odds.
I suppose that most people get like this at times - I don't feel ashamed or set apart, in my susceptibility to mental nonsense. And maybe there are benefits in having had to practise recognising when I am drifting off track, and finding my way back - it can help me appreciate how things are for others too.
Out There or In Here?
Egoland, even when I am in it, feels like ‘out there’ – while the Heartland feels like ‘in here’. ‘Out there’, when I’m there, adrift in my fears, I feel like a football, or a balloon, or a buoy, being kicked or blown or buffeted around on the waves of a hostile or indifferent storm/ ocean.
'Out there' I feel under threat, with no autonomy of movement, or integrity of identity, no security – nothing reliable to hold onto.
Often, the way back home seems to be just becoming aware of, and accepting, my real feelings – my anxiety, or panic, my self-doubt or sense of inner pressure - without self-criticism and without shame.
Practising inner truthfulness with myself releases me from ego's scheming and duplicity, which, if listened to, will tie me in unconscious knots, always leaving a loose end it can tug on. (see Threads, below)
Asking for Help
Under ego's pressure, I may well feel unable to be honest and straightforward with myself, because I fear that accepting my feelings will be too painful, or shameful. There is no trust in Egoland, and that means we are at the mercy of our fears.
This is where remembering to ask for help comes in.
In the grip of ego, I may think: ‘it (whatever I am feeling) doesn’t look good’, ‘I’m not allowed to feel this’ - but my fears of my own feelings, or of appearing unfeeling (or wrong) are ego’s door-openers.
If I allow my fears to rule my mind, ego will orchestrate any amount of denial, argument and shameless rewriting of reality to keep me going in circles, caught up in confusion and self-conflict.
Asking for help really works. I don't need to have a belief system about who or what might be listening - the inner act of asking is all I need, all it takes.
Once I remember to ask, help is there immediately, and the way back into my Heartland is just a little thing – a shrug of self-acceptance. “Whatever I am actually feeling must be all right, must be natural and allowed.”
Threads, true and false
My daily journalling has gradually taught me that some thoughts are worth expressing, and seeing where they lead me, while others are not, and need to be laid aside, left alone. This could be described as sensing the difference between true and false threads.
When I pull on a false thread – by listening to an ego-sponsored suggestion, idle musing, clever-sounding theory, mild complaint, or whatever – I soon find myself undermining my wellbeing. If I don't step away smartly at this point, I get into a tangle, and the more I struggle, the more entangled I become.
My sense of a tightening knot – in my stomach or in my mind - is a sure sign that I'm in Egoland. The only thing to be done is to walk away from the whole mess, stop listening to any of it – and, amazingly, it disappears.
Following a true thread leads me on and in, further into some area of feeling and understanding which opens out to me as I go on, bringing a sense of developing clarity and coherence – joining the dots, helping me feel more at home in my life - in my heart, and in the world.
Again, there is all the difference in the world between the two kinds of thought-thread, and between the destinations they lead to – a difference discernible only by our feelings.
***clarity and peace audio here***
The World is Not the Problem
There is all the difference, too, between feeling responsible for sorting out intractable situations, or feeling, in more general terms, that I should be trying to ‘make the world a better place’ (Egoland activity), and attending to my true business – which is to deal with my own errors and bad habits, my own fears and negative thoughts, so I am not so easily bounced into reacting to ego in others.
By dealing with my own sphere, my own feelings, I can do my best to prevent ego in myself from contributing further to the confusion and conflict in the world.
Becoming clearer in myself, learning to be more true to myself and to discipline my ego, has released me from much of my self-conflict, and slowly transformed the way I feel about life – that is, it has transformed my life.
I am not saying I have become immune to self-doubt or anxieties, but I am learning to stop ego hi-jacking the times when I feel vulnerable, so it has become a less frequent, less bullying visitor.
There may indeed be work for me to do in the wider world, but I believe that what's really mine to do comes to me simply and naturally, to be done. There's no need for me to busy myself, trying to be helpful or useful or 'good', in order to 'justify my existence'. If I follow the guidance of my feelings and of real life, of everyday events, I will be enabled to make my contribution.
Clarity – living in the Heartland - frees me from unnecessary burdens and impossible tasks, and opens me up to the immediate and intimate help of events - the natural way the Cosmos works, to everyone’s benefit, when I stop getting in its way.
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