I so agree, Just. But there are sooooooo many people who just need to be right, no matter what. Ugh!

When you are separating/divorcing and have children, sometimes you have to be happy and be right too. Children always watch, observe and absorb and I was aware of that.

When my husband was carrying on so bad during the separation and divorce, I had to do the "clash of the titans" to let him know that he had physically beat me throughout the marriage, but I was standing up strong now and he would leave us alone and follow the law and the rules--but he kept pushing over the law and the rules.

With everything he did wrong, I put him back in court and before the judge. When he showed up at the home threatening me, I had my young son hide because I didn't know what was about to happen. My son had a chance to see me calmly react, heard his dad threaten me, and then afterwards saw me at the police station afterwards, the police talking to us and protecting us and getting papers served on his dad to get him stopped.

My son had a chance to see that sometimes large family with stronger muscles acting badly with the little family members comes to an end and the little family may not have strong muscles, but can stand up and be right and make the large stronger family behave and live by the law.

Abuse, whether physical or emotional, is unacceptable. Period. We have the right, and obligation to ourselves (and those who are defenseless, e.g. children) to exercise free will and have it removed from us or us from it.

I know I and 99.999999999% of people, couldn't be happy in an abusive environment.

I suspect abuse is the penultimate expression of being right over being happy...

just reading this after having said hello...to myself (smiling)

so I wanted to add, I have been happy for the vast majority of the last few years, but I havent been right, and yanno what? thats set me back on a couple of important things, ok, ONE important thing,

and so, I'm learning that for me, right now, at this point in my life, I need to work more on being right, getting it right, flying right, you know what I mean, than focusing on JUST being happy

make sense?

For any given situation:

There's the point of view the ego thinks is right.

There's the point of view the authentic self knows is right.

The authentic self's perception of right is buried under layer upon layer of the ego's perception of right.

The trick is peeling away all the layers of the ego's right to get to the true self's right, or at least over time inch closer and closer. It's a process, a journey.

oh man, aint that the truth

I wish so much it could be like turning over a new leaf, but it is a process, and the line from here to there isnt ever straight but tangles around itself as it inches forward

my inner rebel resents whats right...a LOT sometimes....but my ego's been humbled over the last few months, she knows she has to get out of the way, she's just so bloody slow !!

:)

Authentic Self's right = Happiness. Love, compassion, acceptance, understanding, living in the moment.

Ego's right = Turmoil. Judgment, criticism, denial, confusion, stuck in the past.

Ego _wants_ to survive. It won't give up easily. It does serve a purpose: Protect us from harm. Unfortunately oftentimes it operates on very old, outdated and sometimes downright bad code! :-)

It's imbedded memories from all our life experiences, good, bad and ugly, working behind the scenes and driving the internal conversations we have with ourselves.

I took this more as people who forsake, or are willing to cause more harm, in order to just be right. Sometimes, there is no right and wrong to a situation...sometimes, you may not like, or agree, with what is happening...but it just IS.

Dang, Simple..... in your last reply, I think you nailed me....I keep trying to put up the false bravado of the ego wherein it should be the brain making the tough decisions after weighing everything out..

I dont mean to hijack this thread, because I know the tack I'm taking is not what was intended in the OP, but me and my ego, we're trying to be friends :)

and JUST in the last week or two, my exercising patience with her, has made her easier to work with

and I'm glad
because we need to coexist, and I'd rather do it peacefully :)

ok, I'm going to bow out now, interested in what others will post

:)

TTMI,

Pretty much, yeah, but the one thing I would add is when ego drives turmoil, drama, emotional pain it's coming from a point of view of what it believes is right based on what should be, not what is. So I don't think it's necessarily malicious, just doing what it thinks it has to do to keep us from emotional harm. The irony is in doing so it often amplifies what it's attempting to mitigate.

John,

Replace brain with consciousness (that's the seat of free will) and you got it! Awareness is the first step on the journey to coming to terms with ego and taking back the driver's seat. :-)

Justine,

Hijack away! :-)

And to your point about coexistence with ego: Mindfulness meditation teaches us to neither deny nor engage ego (all those thoughts that pop into our head). Simply make note of them and gently pull yourself back to your meditative focus. Be a disinterested observer. It gets easier with practice.

The practical application is eventually we can do this in our daily lives. We can disengage from the internal chatter. The judgments, criticisms and victimizations we heap on ourselves and others.

Our consciousness can exercise its free will to reshape our point of view and free us from a lot of emotional turmoil caused by that internal chatter. After all, isn't it really all those things we tell ourselves about a given situation that brings out the negative emotions?

We can see things more clearly, have more love, compassion, understanding and acceptance of ourselves and others.

for whatever reason, as much as I like meditation (and a few other things that are good for me), my time and energy are more limited now than they have been in the past, and so other modes of thinking and acting in my world are more focal




I might as well just put this out there, I'm an old member who's come back with a different name and (wanting very much) a different way of being, because my life almost ended a few months ago...

and so this new chapter, this new chance to get things right (hence my different tack on this thread) is a delicate but pressing matter for me,

my very recent experience in making choices that went against my ego because really theyre the ones I need to make, failed miserably, because i felt like 2 factions inside warring with each other

so at least at this point, rather than being outside of myself, as an impartial observer, I feel very much attached to me, my feelings and my choices...

so heres the weird thing, I've been giving myself permission to let the rebel take over in a diminished way, for a small amount of time, so theres no battle, but rather a collaborative effort involved....does any of this make sense?

cuz if I dont let her have her fun for even a little while everyday, she takes over and then I'm REALLY happy, but really wrong (!!)

so we play, we discuss, we negotiate, we are learning to live with and appreciate each other..

haha...and maybe now I should go join the multiple personalities forum ?!

anyway...as I've stated a few times recently, even a not so great day, is a really great day...I'm happy to be posting here, thanks for the meaty thread Just (hugs)

There are many paths to truth. Or there is no path to truth because it's right under our nose and we need only acknowledge it, feel it, experience it, live it. :-)

Here's a couple of Bruce Lee quotes on Truth:

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.

Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.

"Again let me remind you Jeet Kune Do is just a name used, a boat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to be carried on one's back."



Meditation is only one technique, one pattern, one aid on a journey..

By the way, here's a disclaimer:

All my musings in this thread are all well and good in theory, however my personal experience is it just didn't work all that well for me when I was in the depths of my emotional pain after I was dumped.

If the emotional turmoil is great enough, professional help is advised as a DIY approach can do more harm than good.

For me, now is the time to work on these things in a calmer existence. To put them into practice over silly things like being stuck in traffic, or an annoying coworker, friend or family member, or a stressful work assignment. Seems to be beneficial but I guess time will tell.