Love that William Stafford poem. Thank you for this deep and careful read--so much enlightenment, so lovingly parsed! A very thoughtful way to look at the ego from so many angles and facets.
Hola, Tereza. I am touched that this resonated with you.
And I love that Stafford poem. I literally had a copy of it tacked to my office wall, through all my various offices over 25 years. I may have intuited how prescient this poem is. Amazing.
A Ritual We Read to Each Other I kept pinned on my office walls, through many job changes, for years and years. How to know that it would be so prescient? And I really like that video too. New to me for this essay, amazingly enough.
And now here is another nice cover of a famous song. Art and talent are so powerful, amongst the best medicine:
Much to digest here for one not schooled in the subject.
Near the end you asked (hypothetically), "Show me your ego." I somewhat instinctually asked myself, "Which one?" And then, thinking about it and what you had written following the question, I asked myself, “Is that even a plausible reply? Is there something wrong with me?” I finally concluded that I must suffer from “Walter Mitty Syndrome”.
I was also reminded of my college zoology lab class. Our final test was a practical with specimens laid out on tables for us to examine and identify. Most were dead, dissected and/or preserved specimens. Except one. There was a box of size about 18 inches cube. The top had been folded and taped into a truncated pyramid, leaving a slit of about 1 ½” wide and 12” long. The box was labeled “danger, live specimen, do not handle or disturb the box”; “identify the genus and species”. It was the most curious thing in the room. With the top so constructed one had to bend to see down into the box. Already cautious because of the warning, I slowly eased my face over the slit until I could see into the box. I instinctively jumped back, for there were a pair of eyes looking back! The grad students running the class had placed a mirror in the bottom of the box. The reaction was almost the same, to a student. We can ask, why such a reaction to an unexpected reflection to ourselves; so different than when we purposely go to a mirror to inspect ourselves for whatever reason. I admit that this test was set up to illicit such reactions for everyone’s amusement, but we are startled to some extent at unexpectedly seeing ourselves.
Hello Carl! So great to see your comment here. And yes, these kinds of ideas can create serious indigestion for the unfamiliar. So great to see your courage to read through it and make a great cogent comment.
That really is a great story! I wonder if your teacher was a Buddhist? LoL! So funny and not a surprise it will stick as one of those life long memories. You saw a version (ego?) of yourself that you had expected to be scary? (Funny, I saw a mirror 'joke' today on social media about the scariest animal being what is in the mirror.)
Michael Stone describes in his teaching podcast the following exercise. With your dominant pointing finger, point to various parts of yourself: toe, knee, thigh, shoulder etc. Then point to to part of your face. In around the nose area, for most people, there will be a spot that has the feeling 'You are pointing at *me*'. No other body part has the feeling of 'me'. Just this one spot. Very peculiar.
You wrote:
"Show me your ego." I somewhat instinctually asked myself, "Which one?" And then, thinking about it and what you had written following the question, I asked myself, “Is that even a plausible reply? Is there something wrong with me?” I finally concluded that I must suffer from “Walter Mitty Syndrome”.
OMG, Carl, that is such a great answer! RotFL. (I hope you don't mind.) Are you sure you haven't been around these kind of discourses? Or, even better, Chinese/Japanese Buddhist Koans?
I'm in local Koan meditation group. Wednesday introduced a new one, that was a lovely synchronicity with this post and with one of Stone's podcasts. It goes:
Wuzu said, “It is like a buffalo jumping through a window.
Jun 11, 2023·edited Jun 11, 2023Liked by Guy Duperreault
. . . . Chinese/Japanese Buddhist Koans? I have at least stuck a finger into every pie I have come across, though very few far east pies. Like people who read the National Enquirer, I have an enquirering mind. (One of my sisters just thinks I'm weird. Still love her though, and she is much concerned for me also.)
I will try to remember the mirror exercise. Mirrors are strangely odd, mostly because of our binocular vision; how our eyes are placed and the nature of light paths. My wife has one of those mirrors that Show White's step mother had. ("Mirror, mirror on the wall, sees no fat on me at all.")
I spent many hours dipping into the eastern pies, even after discarding Buddhism. My partner, who was born in Buddhist monastery with a Buddhist abbot for a father, discarded Buddhism and the eastern pies for western ones. She really likes Wittgenstein, for example.
In the last two years we have discovered that Gautama Buddha is NOT Buddhism. He really was a brilliant, maybe the first, true psychologist. So we are looking at his words, not the mostly ossified and encrusted structures trying to hide his words. So interesting.
Yes, mirrors. As part of my self-help protocol many years ago, lots of mirror mirror on the wall exercises of looking for the goodness in my heart. Such a challenge.
Well, if you haven't already guessed it, I'm on the weird spectrum too. And my partner is, by Japanese standards, on the very weird side of things. And yet, the Universe has a big space filled with joy for us weirdos! Amazing stuff.
Love that William Stafford poem. Thank you for this deep and careful read--so much enlightenment, so lovingly parsed! A very thoughtful way to look at the ego from so many angles and facets.
Hola, Tereza. I am touched that this resonated with you.
And I love that Stafford poem. I literally had a copy of it tacked to my office wall, through all my various offices over 25 years. I may have intuited how prescient this poem is. Amazing.
Let me add that I enjoyed the poems and the final video.
Wonderful, Carl. So glad you did.
A Ritual We Read to Each Other I kept pinned on my office walls, through many job changes, for years and years. How to know that it would be so prescient? And I really like that video too. New to me for this essay, amazingly enough.
And now here is another nice cover of a famous song. Art and talent are so powerful, amongst the best medicine:
https://youtu.be/bWVe1GGvs4U
She has a wonderful voice. I really liked the cello. Thanks
Much to digest here for one not schooled in the subject.
Near the end you asked (hypothetically), "Show me your ego." I somewhat instinctually asked myself, "Which one?" And then, thinking about it and what you had written following the question, I asked myself, “Is that even a plausible reply? Is there something wrong with me?” I finally concluded that I must suffer from “Walter Mitty Syndrome”.
I was also reminded of my college zoology lab class. Our final test was a practical with specimens laid out on tables for us to examine and identify. Most were dead, dissected and/or preserved specimens. Except one. There was a box of size about 18 inches cube. The top had been folded and taped into a truncated pyramid, leaving a slit of about 1 ½” wide and 12” long. The box was labeled “danger, live specimen, do not handle or disturb the box”; “identify the genus and species”. It was the most curious thing in the room. With the top so constructed one had to bend to see down into the box. Already cautious because of the warning, I slowly eased my face over the slit until I could see into the box. I instinctively jumped back, for there were a pair of eyes looking back! The grad students running the class had placed a mirror in the bottom of the box. The reaction was almost the same, to a student. We can ask, why such a reaction to an unexpected reflection to ourselves; so different than when we purposely go to a mirror to inspect ourselves for whatever reason. I admit that this test was set up to illicit such reactions for everyone’s amusement, but we are startled to some extent at unexpectedly seeing ourselves.
Oh, I did pass the final exam.
Hello Carl! So great to see your comment here. And yes, these kinds of ideas can create serious indigestion for the unfamiliar. So great to see your courage to read through it and make a great cogent comment.
That really is a great story! I wonder if your teacher was a Buddhist? LoL! So funny and not a surprise it will stick as one of those life long memories. You saw a version (ego?) of yourself that you had expected to be scary? (Funny, I saw a mirror 'joke' today on social media about the scariest animal being what is in the mirror.)
Michael Stone describes in his teaching podcast the following exercise. With your dominant pointing finger, point to various parts of yourself: toe, knee, thigh, shoulder etc. Then point to to part of your face. In around the nose area, for most people, there will be a spot that has the feeling 'You are pointing at *me*'. No other body part has the feeling of 'me'. Just this one spot. Very peculiar.
You wrote:
"Show me your ego." I somewhat instinctually asked myself, "Which one?" And then, thinking about it and what you had written following the question, I asked myself, “Is that even a plausible reply? Is there something wrong with me?” I finally concluded that I must suffer from “Walter Mitty Syndrome”.
OMG, Carl, that is such a great answer! RotFL. (I hope you don't mind.) Are you sure you haven't been around these kind of discourses? Or, even better, Chinese/Japanese Buddhist Koans?
I'm in local Koan meditation group. Wednesday introduced a new one, that was a lovely synchronicity with this post and with one of Stone's podcasts. It goes:
Wuzu said, “It is like a buffalo jumping through a window.
Its head, horns, and four legs all pass through.
Why can’t its tail pass through?”
—Gateless Gate Case 38
. . . . Chinese/Japanese Buddhist Koans? I have at least stuck a finger into every pie I have come across, though very few far east pies. Like people who read the National Enquirer, I have an enquirering mind. (One of my sisters just thinks I'm weird. Still love her though, and she is much concerned for me also.)
I will try to remember the mirror exercise. Mirrors are strangely odd, mostly because of our binocular vision; how our eyes are placed and the nature of light paths. My wife has one of those mirrors that Show White's step mother had. ("Mirror, mirror on the wall, sees no fat on me at all.")
Stay well.
I spent many hours dipping into the eastern pies, even after discarding Buddhism. My partner, who was born in Buddhist monastery with a Buddhist abbot for a father, discarded Buddhism and the eastern pies for western ones. She really likes Wittgenstein, for example.
In the last two years we have discovered that Gautama Buddha is NOT Buddhism. He really was a brilliant, maybe the first, true psychologist. So we are looking at his words, not the mostly ossified and encrusted structures trying to hide his words. So interesting.
Yes, mirrors. As part of my self-help protocol many years ago, lots of mirror mirror on the wall exercises of looking for the goodness in my heart. Such a challenge.
Well, if you haven't already guessed it, I'm on the weird spectrum too. And my partner is, by Japanese standards, on the very weird side of things. And yet, the Universe has a big space filled with joy for us weirdos! Amazing stuff.
Good night!