Egoic and edgy

As we head down the home stretch into Easter I'm becoming increasingly conscious of my own restlessness, my jumpiness; this edgy part of me that is watchful and skittish. It's as if I am the Easter Bunny: conscious that something big is coming, that I need to prepare, but unable to trust that when the time comes I'll be ready. Instead of being in the moment, one with my surroundings, attuned, I am scattered and anxious and feeling more Other than One.

This became really glaringly apparent to me last night: I had signed up for an Improv class, thinking that it might be a good way to keep my brain active and in tune. And this morning, as I lay in bed remembering the various exercises we walked through, it was clear that, for all my talk of being attuned and in the moment, I was not truly present in the classroom, not wholly engaged with the other students.

It's partly the anxiety levels associated with doing something new -- and exacerbated, of course, by being in a roomful of strangers. But there's also that desperate drive to succeed, to not make a fool of yourself, that is completely at odds with the task of improv -- which is at heart a willingness to fail in public. It was not unlike the time I tried to learn to ski, and all of my energy was concentrated on not falling down. The end result in both these cases was rather appallingly awkward and stiff -- because in both cases the real task is to become one with the environment around you.

I remember learning --many years ago -- that sin is separation from God. I was reminded of that this morning while reading Laurence Freeman's chapter on Spirit in Jesus the Teacher Within, and was very struck by this passage:

In the Spirit people could dare to feel a love that recognised no boundaries... in which ancient distinctions of caste and class, even of gender, race and religion, lost their old sectarian meanings and their power to divide. Faith prepared the ground for this new unity. Faith -- which is openness to the nondual...is proven by the way people live with others in equality, compassion and tolerance. The dualistic, divisive ego, of course, ever lies in wait, sometimes dormant, always easily aroused and reinstated.

Clearly it is the ego that keeps me separate from the earth and snow when I ski so poorly; clearly it is the ego that keeps me from falling in smoothly with my fellow improvisors; that keeps me from seeing the parts of the kitchen they define with their miming of coffee making and pancake cooking; that keeps me from trusting the moment. It is as if all of the ways I keep myself separate have suddenly become glaringly, painfully apparent, and I am exposed as the selfish, self-absorbed, wholly other and egoic creature I really am.

Ouch!

Perhaps that is the appeal of Good Friday -- it gives us yet another chance to put an end to that otherness that is so dominant within us, a way to clear the decks so the Spirit can rise to the surface again.

I am so ready.