On Saturday night I attended my twenty year high school reunion. I hadn’t meant to go. You see, I’m still supposed to be in Indonesia but I just came home due to spending a week in bed on a remote island in the Mentawai’s, sleeping 20 hours a day with high fever.
On day 7 of shivering and shaking with a feverish chill I couldn’t think of anything but a warm dry bed at Mum’s house and some good clean first world food. I took a boat ride to a ferry to another night of feverish sleep in a Padang hotel, then executed a highly unpleasant three flight journey back to Adelaide, sleeping most of the way.
I was better in a few days so when the weekend rolled around and the “Class of 99 High School Reunion” popped into my Facebook notifications I threw on some clothes, borrowed my Step Dad’s car and drove into town.
The reunion
I was nervous. I’d had a quick look on Facebook at all the “Going” and “Maybe” profiles and I was slightly panicked at my lack of remembering. There were women with multiple children and last names I didn’t recognise and I had willed myself to recall them without success. I didn’t want to make an ass of myself by having to ask for names and memories.
I walked into the Tavern and easily recognised a few faces. Some were familiar but harder to recall. I immediately grabbed a glass of Bird In Hand Rose, despite my loose commitment to not drink this year, and began to chat. I went on to execute my fear, making an ass of myself by having to ask for a few names, but with each one gained I settled in. The longer I stayed the warmer I became as memories and feelings bubbled out from the deepest recesses of my being. I knew these people and they knew me.
As we chatted we bridged the gap that time had placed between us. We caught up on what we’d missed: careers and children and travels and lessons learned. But none of it really mattered. Despite the extra kilos and lines around the eyes, the essence of who we were, who we had always been, remained the same.
The Ego vs Personality
Each of us has an ego. It is the sense of self that carries us through the world and we need it to function. The ego helps us categorise ourselves against others, to gauge where we stand, to know what is expected of us, and to play out the roles we take. This sense of self can be healthy or unhealthy, inflated or deflated, expansive or limiting, empowering or demeaning yet it is not inherently real. We make up our sense of self in order to play this game we call life.
Beyond all our made-up ideas of who we are, who we want to be and who we think the other person across from us is, there is something deeper: the unwavering essence of who we are. This part we could call our personality, or our such-ness, or our is-ness. It is the unique and unchanging blueprint we were built with. Like a snowflake falling, no two are alike.
No matter how many years pass nor what we have learned and experienced in those years, what we have gained and lost, what tragedies and successes had befallen us, this blueprint is left unchanged. It is what can never be outgrown, outrun, covered up or beaten out of us. It is who we are.
Reflecting on our unchanging essence
As I drove home that night I reflected on our uniqueness and on the unchanging nature of our essence. I will always be me, as long as I inhabit this body and perhaps beyond it too. During the monthlong Vipassana retreat I attended in March a teacher said that even after enlightenment there is still a personality. In fact, after liberation from the ego the personality is the only thing that remains. While the sense of self leaves us, our essence does not.
This is an important reflection. It is vital to our sense of contentment in the world to truly grasp that we can never escape ourselves. We can drink and eat and travel and run and hide but in the end, you will always be there with yourself. You will never find a place where you are not and so if you do not accept yourself completely you will never be at peace.
Unconditional love for who you are
You cannot love another if you cannot love the very being that is always with you. You cannot move past hate and intolerance and judgment if you hate and judge and condemn who you are. In all of our efforts to become better people, heal past wounds and affect change in our life there is one thing you can never alter and it is who you are.
The real spiritual practice then is not one of becoming better, but one in which we endeavour to see into our nature and to accept it wholly as it is. The practice is to get honest. We pull away, bit by bit, the shrouds and mists of delusion until we can see ourselves clearly. “This is how it is. This is who I am”. This journey requires us to learn what real unconditional love is; the love that accepts all things, the light and the dark, the right and the wrong, the good and the bad.
Let yourself shine as you are
The ego wants to construct ideas around your essence to shore you up and make you better. It wants to hide what it doesn’t like about you so that you will not feel the pain of guilt, regret or shame. This dual sense of self is an illusion, designed to protect you from all you are afraid of. It’s sweet really, it’s you trying to make yourself stronger, better and safer.
Yet beneath these ideas of who you could be, you already exist; unguarded, unfiltered and pure. Whittle down the walls that hold you captive and keep you afraid. Beyond this prison is the immaculate, illuminescent, divine being that is already you. Let it shine.
Want to come on retreat with us in magical Bali? Learn how to come back to yourself with unconditional love on this 6-night sacred women’s retreat. BREATHE. CONNECT. AWAKEN with CITTA RETREAT this Aug 30-Sep 5.
