Picture: Being a skillful learner at Deer Park, Sarnath India–Place where Sri Buddha first taught his Four Noble Truths. The grounds are filled with shanti-peace.
In Freud’s psychological model the super-ego is your conscience and the ideals you have imbibed from your parents and the world around you. For many, these ideals can be completely over-the-top, meaning you believe should already know things and be skilled at doing things that you cannot fulfill–acting as a bludgeon that constantly hammers you for not being more perfect. When in balance, these ideals can positively make you aspire for and achieve great things in life. Aspiration is an asset; bludgeoning is bad.
To find the sweet spot in which you are energized for higher achievements but avoid a self-beating, you must pay attention to when you cross that line into self-castigation. This sweet spot can be thought of as being a skillful learner in life. There are many areas in which you become skillful, and due to karma some come easier than others.
In an earlier time of life I was backpacking around Europe. I ended up in the Canary Islands living in a beach community. I was learning how to body surf, using the human body like a surfboard. Finding a likely wave, I used my arms to paddle and gain speed so that I could ride the wave into shore. The air and water were warm, and it was fun to catch a wave and ride it in. I thought I was gaining some skill when a wave taught me otherwise. It was a great wave, I was on top of it and it was really moving along. Suddenly the wave broke underneath me and I shot out past the wave into mid-air. I felt like a cartoon character that finds itself suspended in air, knowing that it is about to take a painful fall. And fall I did, down on the hardpacked sand as the wave crashed down on top of me. My nose and arms were quite scraped by the force of the wave driving me into the sandpaper beach. Clearly, I was in an outdoor classroom learning body surfing skills, and I was being taught a painful lesson by the wave.
Now, the super-ego could have beaten me up over making this mistake, or I could have blamed the wave for behaving as it did, or I could have fearfully never gone out again. The other alternative was to analyze what I did, consult with others, and learn to avoid such painful outcomes. I chose the latter and worked on identifying a wave that was about to break in the way mine had and pull back at the right time—to be a skillful learner.
This last option of being a skillful learner did not come naturally for me. Somehow, I came into this world with the idea that I should already know everything before I had a chance to learn it. It is a strange notion when you think about it, but it was strongly embedded in me. So, I would fake it until I made it, ashamed for anyone to see me taking learning steps. I could pick up many things quickly, which helped me maintain the illusion that I didn’t need learning steps. And, if something did not come easily, then I avoided it. Of course, none of this really served me well, and most of all it did not allow me the joy of beginning something new, making mistakes along the way, learning from the mistakes and gradually becoming more skillful.
It took me a lot of years to learn to be simple, to have child-like innocence when interacting with life. And the spiritual field is fraught with ideals for the super-ego to plaster up on the mind’s walls and hold up standards that do not allow for this process of learning. Again, it is wonderful and needful to have ideals to aspire to in order to grow. But, when those same ideals are used to bludgeon you for not living up to some perfection—they become harmful. To abandon your ideals is to stagnate, and to mentally self-flagellate yourself for not living up to those ideals is not only a waste of time and energy, but is also a destructive force.
The ideal is to be simple, sincere, to be dedicated and strive for your higher ideals; all the time being a learning machine—becoming more skillful in living up to those ideals with determination and a positive focus that allows you to grow in amazing ways.
Learn to identify that sweet spot where you hold up the highest and most transforming ideals, then be skillful in life—be right on the learning edge that yields the greatest benefit to you and those around you. Sure, you must demand more from yourself, strive to be more; this is absolutely necessary to make progress. But keep it positive, close to home, and take joy when you note progress, and when you fall short of your lofty goals take notes to learn from your experience. Learn with love and joy in your heart, and in doing so you will draw invisible forces to aid you in fulfilling the tasks you have assigned for yourself in this life. You cannot make yourself perfect through self-will, but through valiant and persistent spiritual effort you can touch the fabric of God’s Being, and in touching Perfection you are perfected; even as you Father in heaven is perfect (Matt. 5:48).
Note: We are currently guests of Corliss at the campground she manages on the Skykomish River. I would say we are camping, but with marble floors and granite countertops in our coach it may give the wrong impression. The new term is called glamping, glamorous camping. Be assured, it is the coach that is glamorous.