Ego
One often wonders “who am I going to be now, that I am not the messed up drug addict that ruins family dinners, and cops dope downtown? I won’t be a badass anymore, I’ll become boring”, or “I can’t live like this anymore, but it’s all I know. What sort of person am I going to become, what identity can I latch onto?”
My personal experience with this is an interesting one. I dubbed myself as the artist. I wore ‘artistic’ clothes. I was spiritual. No one understood me. I was a poet. I created a persona of what I thought encompassed a ‘true artist’. I chained smoked cigarettes and read books with big words. I made sure I was too cool for school and everyone knew it, yet I also made sure that I came off extremely humble. I didn’t know who Gwenivere was. I used to be the party girl. Then my friends from college left for school and I had no one to get drunk with. I had to create another identity. How egotistical of me!! I was just getting through though, the day to day routine. When I first came to rehab, I was given a book about boundaries. My counselor went through it with me paragraph by paragraph (a frequent occurrence at rehabs…reading aloud….). I took a sort of ‘quiz’ about myself. It asked me my favorite foods, my favorite movies, my favorite smells and etc. I only knew that I liked the color purple, because I always liked the color purple, and that my favorite food was oatmeal because I was anorexic and it sounded cool. Really, whose favorite food is actually oatmeal? I was just so lost…an incredibly sad place to be. I was living in a fantasy world in my head.
Why create an identity? Most people I encounter have some sort of story about themselves and who they are, generated by their ego, if they are aware or not. To be clear, I am not referring to outsiders objectifying a person but a person objectifying themselves. False sense of selves and identities are created because what if you really knew who I am? What if I knew who I really am? We are just loving creatures by nature. Loving creatures by nature that have a difficult time recognizing an ego and false sense of self we create. It’s a defense mechanism, being vulnerable is a scary place to be. When I first went to rehab a huge factor of getting better was to step outside my comfort zone. Because my comfort zone was hiding under my red, comfy-cloud like comforter with peace and Febreeze, with the occasional Beyonce playing the background.
Stepping outside of my comfort zone, meant exploring my ‘scary’ self. I thought no one would accept me, a common theme for addicts. I didn’t know who I was. I still get caught up in different identities. When I just want to tap into my spiritual sense of self, where the external BS doesn’t matter anymore. Yes, it matters to extent, money to live, (not to be confused with living for money.) looking presentable matters. Relying and living for that will get old. So what then? How long will these outside sources keep me sane and content. Not for long, especially since I am a seeker like a lot of addicts are as well.
AA’s goal is to help a person transcend, hence the spiritual experience. Keep in mind one might not need AA to transcend and can practice and create their own principles to figure it out by themselves. Yet, structure is necessity for some.
Personally, I have learned that spirituality and tapping into my pure loving form of self has become extremely important to me. Even for me the highly cynical. Yet, I have had un-dismissible experiences that ultimately deter me from feeling any different. Shedding the ego and the false identity is really what AA is aiming for. The spiritual principals are respectable. We can unlatch from the ego to find ourselves in a spiritual place. An unclouded mind really, when everything is seen far more clearly. Getting there is a great question. For me, I always check my motives. Am I being covetous? Sometimes, very much so without even thinking. That is where I get in most trouble, when my desires override logic.
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Filed under: Life, Spirituality · Tags: ego, identity, insecurity, loving self, spiritual self, Spirituality
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