Ego Dance

The attraction of guilt is that I can assign my volition to what has happened. Guilt means I have chosen to discount a broader meaning and a single cause. The ego side of me would rather be unhappy than give up its illusion that it is the determiner of the course of my life. Through opposition it maintains its sense of being something apart.

The ego is always inventing signs of defeat just so it can tell itself it was in a fight.

There are times when the concept of “trying is lying” is not useful to me. Trying can be an easily understandable way of beginning. “You can but try” means, “Do what you can do” or “Begin where you are,” or simply “Begin.” The thought that all I need to do is begin focuses my mind on this moment, which is the instant that every choice I will ever make will have to take place. Saying to myself, “All I can do is try,” allows me to let go of my anxiety over how much needs to be accomplished. I will accomplish what I will accomplish, and anxiety over quantitative goals is not accomplishment.

— Hugh Prather, There Is a Place Where You are Not Alone, pp. 54-55.


….Adults handle fear, grief, anger and other such feelings in a similar way. It begins with a judgment. A situation is interpreted as fearful and the mind closes tightly on the feeling of fear. Now the person thinks that he is fear. But when it is recognized that the mind has not become fear but only holds it, it is then seen that the mind is free to begin loosening its grip. This can be done by watching the fear calmly and noticing that what is watching is greater and nearer than what is being watched.
— Hugh Prather, in Ibid., p. 59.


Is there anyone who believes he was more realistic when he was younger? Has there ever been a time when I would have traded my present clarity of perception for what it was at an earlier age? Something has been happening in me that is so valuable that I would not want to see reality with the quality of vision I had at any other time in my life, even in return for every seeming advantage that being younger would bring. Since this is true, I must recognize that my self-deception was greater then than now, and that no other lack can exceed a lack of vision, for I would not return to it no matter what increase in coordination, short-term memory, muscle tone, verbal acuity, opportunities in “love” or business, or whatever other superficial gains it would appear to bring. I have been brought to a new place the value of which even I cannot escape recognizing. The remaining question is this: What brought me this far? Certainly I did not know enough to do it by myself. In fact, I would have already destroyed myself in a hundred different ways.
— Hugh Prather, in Ibid, p. 107.