Many people come to therapy looking for something… and they are usually they are looking for relief from their suffering. It could be grief over the loss of a parent, panic attacks arising from a recent or long ago trauma, or feeling stuck in life. About 2500 years ago Buddha listed this as the first of the Four Noble Truths that he came to: life is suffering. He also realized that there is a cause to suffering, which means there is an end to it, and he found that there is a path to this end of suffering. The truth is, people are constantly searching for a path to end their suffering. They might seek it through relationships, a career, traveling, drugs, or some other endeavor seeking pleasure to blot out the pain. Often, their suffering is only slightly bettered, or it may exacerbate even further. They may then decide to join a religion or enter into therapy to gain help. But the suffering itself doesn’t just spark the search to these paths, it also starts a journey on a path of self discovery. Who am I? How did I get here? We might not just declare, “this is not my beautiful house!” and “this is not my beautiful wife!” as the song from the Talking Heads goes, but we might begin to feel deep inquietudes about something we long to know- ourselves.
So, who are we? A personality? All of us have a personality. You can find hundreds of tests online to determine what kind of personality you have. Many psychologists agree that it is formed early in life by our parents, circumstances, culture, etc. Since it is something that is created in this time, we are not essentially born with our personality. But we often identify with it. Some personalities are held in high regard and others despised. But the personality is really just a facade, that hides behind it much more. The word persona means mask, and it is the mask we use to navigate this world. It can help us to organize the impressions that we take in and relate to others. But what about the person with a very agreeable personality who is asked to do something with others she doesn’t want to? If she relies on her personality she will do that thing, whether it brings her to ruin or not. And what about the person with the rebellious personality that is asked to support something in line with his own well-being? If he relies on his personality, he will find cause for conflict and bring about disaster. So our personalities are not who we truly are. So when we say, “me”, who are we referring to?
Sigmund Freud is often known for beginning to use the term “ego” in our Western culture (although it was his English translator that actually used the term). The word “ego” is Greek, and means “I-myself”. The The “I-myself” concept that Freud spoke of, however, is different from that of Buddhism. Freud saw that who we essentially are is our ego, and his goal of psychoanalysis was to bring consciousness into repressed thoughts and feelings in order to build a stronger ego. In Buddhism, the “I-myself”, or the feeling of being a separate self is not seen as who we essentially are, but rather as an illusion. An illusion that gets built by desire. This is the second Noble Truth of Buddhism, that suffering is created by desire. We often see this more clearly in others than in ourselves. Maybe someone we know begins to drink heavily. They find this enjoyable at first, but then they begin to seek the high over and over again… putting everything else aside in their lives to achieve the sensation of the intoxication. All the while, it becomes clear to us that they are suffering more deeply, unhappy with life when they are not intoxicated, and discontinuing to care for themselves and those they are responsible to. They begin to believe that it is by gratification that they can alleviate their suffering, and indeed once they give in to the craving, it seems to them that they feel better. The truth is, that by giving into their craving, they have temporarily ceased to desire… which temporarily ceases their suffering. However, the desire will once again return, because gratification will not erase it. If we could see that by ending our desire we could end our suffering (which is the Third Noble Truth), we could begin to wake up to who we truly are. But this is blinded by the lies of our egos, and I say egos because our desires and our identifications are multiple, not one. Our egos, by their nature continually want more. An ego of anger needs to feel itself “alive” by anger and will seek to find reasons to be angry. An ego of shame will continually judge ourselves as less-than by situations that arise in our lives. The egos that we have, are built by desire, but the only way they can continue is to act out that desire by lying to what we truly are.
Our essential nature, when stripped of ego with its desires and beliefs, is consciousness. Like a spark of the divine, our essence is. It is not our thoughts, it is not our emotions, it is not our body or behaviors, it is. It is what we are able to perceive the world with. When our essence is liberated from the prison of our ego, there are no “I-myself” desires to quench, there is nothing to prove to anyone, there are no “I-myself” fears to avoid. Yet, in order to liberate ourselves, we must first see that we are imprisoned. We must begin to truly get to know the container of illusion that is keeping us in ignorance. In ancient Greece, there was a saying over the entrance to the Oracle of Delphi which read, “Man know thyself and you will know the universe and its gods”. It is important to understand that we cannot come to this understanding by just reading a book or by believing some doctrine. We must actually experience for ourselves who we truly are by catching ourselves in our own self-delusion of who we are not. The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas states, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” What is destroying us now? Fears about our future… compulsions and habits… pain and sadness from our past… Instead of running from these, we must get to know them. It is through this self knowledge, that can march towards a path that truly eliminates suffering.
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