Have you ever found that certain words you use to describe yourself, mostly within your own mind, are triggers for your ego? The first word I recognised as doing this and really made effort to remove from my thought patterns was the word "should". I started recognizing the guilt and self degradation that came when this word came into my head. I felt, and still feel, that it implied success and failure, right and wrong. That it's use could only lead to either self righteousness or self degradation. It felt that there was no room for growth with this word constantly going through my thoughts. Only judgement and usually failure.
This morning I started thinking also about the word "why?" I would never before have thought of it as a trigger for my ego. I mean it's a question right? It's a word we use to search for understanding and meaning and growth in the world around us. But somehow I think I may have slowly over the last few years replaced the word "should" with the word "why" in my thoughts.
I've been struggling with myself a lot in the last few months. I think marriage has a way of doing that to you. Every interaction has become a why question, "Why did I say that?" "Why am I hurt by this?", "Why did he do or say that?", "Why does that bug me?", "Why doesn't he get that that upsets me?", "Why did God create me this way?", "Why am I overreacting?", etc. (in an endless stream)
But I think maybe the answers to these questions don't actually matter as much as I think they do, and they aren't really a useful method for growth. I'm starting to realize that instead of assisting me to move on and let things go, this never-ending search for an answer to these questions actually keeps them present in my thoughts. It takes me in a continuous, never-ending loop that usually comes back to a question with an outrageous amount of judgement and blame in it "Why can't I be the person I know I should be?". The "should" and the "why" all in the same question.... Guilting ourselves doesn't seem to be the most effective tool for growth, in fact, as it draws on the ego, it is quite counter productive.
Right now, for Baha'is all around the world, it is time for detachment from earthly attachments. A time when we fast for 19 days. While we do fast from food and drink from sunrise to sundown, we also fast from our material attachments. We search within our hearts to recognize the patterns in our lives which pull us away from God and we pray and ask God to purify us, to illumine our hearts, to assist us to draw nigh unto Him and to detach from all that does not draw us to Him. I guess my prayer for today is that He assist me to remove this word from my thoughts about myself and others. And beyond that, that He assists me to change the way I view the world. To no longer see through the eyes of success and failure, of right and wrong, but instead through the eyes of growth and change and learning and beauty.
"I ask of Thee by Thy Self and by him who hath fasted out of love for Thee and for Thy good-pleasure—and not out of self and desire, nor out of fear of Thy wrath—and by Thy most excellent names and august attributes, to purify Thy servants from the love of aught except Thee and to draw them nigh unto the Dawning-Place of the lights of Thy countenance and the Seat of the throne of Thy oneness. Illumine their hearts, O my God, with the light of Thy knowledge and brighten their faces with the rays of the Daystar that shineth from the horizon of Thy Will." - Bahá’u’lláh
