Teaching # 27: The Ego’s Fear of Humiliation
When you collapse into suffering, it is because your ego sees suffering as a personal failure and feels humiliated. Your ego may well be under the delusion that the opposite of suffering is happiness. When your ego believes this, then every moment of suffering is felt as a personal defeat, insult, indignity or proof of your inadequacy or of life being unfair. This is subjective suffering, self-centered and neurotic.
Chapter 7, Pg 70
For your reflection: This week, when you’re in an unpleasant situation and things are not going as you would like, say to yourself, “My life is like this at this moment, and I will stay with it with as much wisdom and loving-kindness as I can.” When you do this, observe the changes that occur in your mind. Is some of your mental reactivity replaced with a sense of well being? This feeling of a relaxed mind that is fully present is the opposite of suffering.