Ego equal Landfills, A Metaphor
written by Michelle Press
This morning, I awakened to the sound of a trash truck. It's a wonderful thing that we have ways to get trash away from us, out of the vicinity of our water supplies, so that we stay healthy. There is no condemnation of trash or anything when I use this analogy for this article. One can look at anything in the world and observe it to see what condition brought about such technology, the necessity for the technology, our dependence on the technology.
We have an idea about something and we don't know what to do with the idea. Let's say we ask a question, something we perceive as a real problem, wanting an answer desperately, so that we can get ourselves out of our dilemma. It feels bad to be in a dilemma. We know we must do something, but not sure what. So in an effort to solve the problem, we create our own solution, something that will take away the pain. The problem could be anything--from wanting to know what correction of one's brother is, to being faced with serious financial difficulties, to being physically abused. Anything we ask that requires an answer is a problem until we find the answer. Our minds are equally unrestful until we find a solution. The solutions we come up with only add to the problem--we don't find a true resolution, even though we may believe we have temporarily delayed pain. What does this have to do with trash?
In a very real sense, the conditions of our thinking (the ego's thinking) have shown that our minds are like the garbage collection service. Let me explain. Every technology, while very helpful and sometimes vital and necessary, always has at its root the very problem itself, a problem it only increases. Before we had trash service, not so very long ago, we didn't have plastics or the kind of waste we have now. We didn't have food storage in the same way, either. People knew how to store and conserve food, even reusing the same containers over and again, recycling without calling it that. With the invention of the refrigerator came the ability to waste. We stopped planning meals so closely and began storing leftovers. New technologies developed just for leftovers! One thing led to another and now we have great heaps of waste products every day. This is how the ego solves problems. It says, the problem is food storage. What can we do to remedy this problem? Create a refrigerator. Start canning products for city dwellers that can't can food from their own gardens. Then we stop planning our meals and all so closely, we become even less attentive. Now we have leftovers and trash to deal with. It's too much to keep throwing trash in the outhouse. The groundwater will become contaminated. So what to do? Create trash service for this problem. We'll put the trash someplace else! When landfills were created, they had no idea how much more trash would be generated from fast food and fast lifestyles, not to mention increasing population. So now landfills are a constant challenge, to the point where now consumers are being forced to deal with their own trash, recycle. We're coming back to square one.
The ego is like that--it can't find an answer to a problem, so it creates an answer that leaves it even worse off than before. It becomes a vicious cycle until one comes back to square one. If we can't find a solution, we put the problem out of our minds (the landfill) to possibly deal with at a future time. For now, we can't be bothered. We can use all sorts of gimmicks to make ourselves stop thinking about the problem. Either that the problem may just go away if we don't look at it, or that some day the answer may just come, or that we think we've done the Course lesson and realized the problem isn't real. I hear people going about, saying, Oh don't worry your head about it, it's not real anyway! Just remember that! But did the problem go away? No, the person following this advice, remembering the problem isn't real, has truly only put the problem on the back burner, out of mind's sight. But it's waiting there. It hasn't gone away anymore than the landfills have gone away. The landfills are growing, which shows the problems we set aside for future contemplation are doing the same thing.
The good news is that people are being forced to recycle, which shows that more people are beginning to face their problems. The question is, how will we face these problems? Will we continue to develop new systems to deal with them or admit we don't know the answer and insist on application of the Course? Only the Course, or the shifting of perception (miracles), can help. If we are troubled by certain aspects of applying the Course to daily living, it can sometimes help to ask others. But what I've seen in every newsgroup and miracles centers I've encountered so far is much of the same thing--people telling others that there are only illusions. They say this because they themselves don't know how to solve their own problems, this is how they go about it, so you should too. So now we're all in this mess together, affirming each others illusions instead of introducing miracles.
When one asks a question about the Course (or anything else), then lists a series of scenarios that may or may not answer the question, true inquiry is closed. If someone answers in an unexpected way, that person is perceived as a traitor, not affirming the problem, or the hopeful solution. We think we've found the solution and are asking for feedback or agreement if we're right. When someone comes along and says there is another way, others get upset because they want to be right in their own solution. But a solution is never right, even the seeming solution of it's an illusion. It's always of the ego.
All this is one reason I've been hesitant to share commentaries. Commentaries always bother me personally because they are usually off the mark to a degree and often invite dependence on the commentator. People will cling to a commentary for the solution of their problem, not having found the solution for themselves through miracles. It creates dependence, where someone has the solution, the answer, and others need them to help with their problems. I don't want to be another trash collector, just telling someone not to deal with their own trash because the trash doesn't exist. Or worse, that the trash is actually beautiful! LOL! Trash is trash, so we deal with it ourselves, not push it off on someone else to solve for us, and not ignore the trash. If you ignore it long enough, it will overflow to the point that you have to deal with it (maybe you could move elsewhere--?? =)) or be swallowed up by it (perhaps becoming insane in an attempt to avoid dealing with it).
Reincarnation exists because we have our own personal landfills that we have delayed dealing with. We can delay almost endlessly. What we don't deal with makes it necessary to return to the place of our landfill until we empty it completely. This morning when talking to my husband about this, I said, Just think how many lifetimes of landfills we have! We had a good chuckle about that one. =) But really it's a serious issue, even if writing about trash as an analogy is silly.
Finally, recycling alone isn't a solution for the problem. It's still only a temporary solution. We need to look at simplifying our lives so that we don't create the trash in the first place. This is no easy task! This is why miracles are the only true solution, for as soon as a problem surfaces, the miracle shifts it immediately. No illusion to deal with because the miracle has shown it's not truly there.
But to say it's not truly there and to have the miracle show it was never there are two different things.
We must make the demand of ourselves to not settle for any explanations or solutions. In remaining open to another way, the miracle shifts it for us.
We become aware and begin to live differently automatically, without self-enforcement.
Michelle Press
