My Retreat – Poem
In July 2019, I participated in a week-long „The Work Self-Love Retreat“ with The Work Berlin. A cleansing, quite deep confrontation with old, partly conscious and unconscious belief patterns was possible. Here I got to know „The Work“ for the first time. I found the method to be a sharp, direct and effective form of targeted questions, meditative answers to see one’s self-created world more clearly and to change it. Self-observations, what I heard, experienced and thought led to my poem about The Ego at the end of the week.
The ego – described in spiritual literature as the separation from oneself or the wrong image of oneself – following what I have read I describe it as a conditioned and uncontrolled mind that controls our thinking, feeling and acting predominantly unconsciously. With this conditioned mind, we can emotionally cause injury to ourselves and/or others or create suffering that we do not consciously perceive, repress, do not take as seriously, or in the worst case, nurture in order to maintain it permanently. Getting to know and discarding this uncontrolled, conditioned mind means peace with oneself and peace with others. And so it happened that during the retreat I was able to better recognize my own ego and say goodbye to it in parts.
The result is the gift of joy and powerful energy.
Farewell to the ego
You come into this room, the others are already there.
The thoughts begin to circle, the judgments are crystal clear.
What is this going to be? I find him or her peculiar.
You don’t know, the ego already rules: Should you go or stay?
All evaluations point also at yourself, you do not notice it yet.
But they mean exactly you!
You are better, worse, too fat, too thin, much cooler, worthless, unlovable or always in the right.
The ego repeats this record and it sounds real.
You can’t say anything now, that would be embarrassing.
And if you did, the others would surely find it petty.
Your stories are the stories of others, the stories of others are yours.
Crazy! We are not separate, but far more connected than we think.
Doing „The Work“ reflections is exhausting, because the ego is in great danger.
It says, „This is exhausting! Let’s leave this place!
Otherwise my downfall will come true.
In every reflection that touches you, you are so infinitely close to your true Self.
The ego serves the pain. The Self, on the other hand, is soft and clear.
It waits patiently for you, heals the pain and is always there.
Marijana, July 5th, 2019 in Prerow – Ostsee
