eThoughts : Dogs, Egos, Personality, and Salavation

Continuing with the theme of an essential Home and the inherent promise in being alive, I’ve been wondering about dogs again, emotional wounds, and egos. It seems to me there are some good parallels.

As I’ve written before, dogs want to know who is the alpha leader. If they know, they’re good, if they don’t, they’re not. If they don’t know, they have to test the boundaries—dogs have to know their position or they lose their comfort zone and become anxious.

Egos are much the same way—they want to know who is in charge. Any human emotional, cognitive, or spiritual wound, and any successes, prompts the ego to protect its “pack”—the psyche. Of course there is a strong relationship between the psyche and the body, and that relationship emits a spirit—an energy signature. All of that—the psyche/body/spirit—affects the environs, which in turn feedback to the psyche/body/spirit. And so on. So the “pack” is really composed of the psyche/body/spirit and the territory in which those three run.

Protecting the realm is a lot of work. In fact, it seems like protection is mostly the ego’s job. Growth and success comes from protecting the realm. The result is that a lot of energy goes into surrounding and insulating the psyche/body/spirit from assaults. The problem with this orientation is that in truth, the efforts only serve to keep the “pack” out of balance. Therefore, it’s not a long logical leap to suggest that the very thing humans think/feel they need to do to survive is the very thing that is hindering human development.

Actually, this is not a shot at the ego. I’m suggesting that we do not need to rid ourselves of the ego, but to find help for the ego. It seems to me that the ego actually wants the help, it does not want to assume entire responsibility. Weak egos know this, strong egos know this. As I said, it’s tough to be in charge of holding up the world—that’s why Atlas’ back is bent.

All right, where’s the help?

As Cesar Millan, television’s The Dog Whisperer suggests, in the world of canines, it is a quiet, but firm mind that comforts dogs. He also suggests that assertion is not the same as aggression in dog training—and it is consistent assertion that is one of the most useful instruments in the training process (rehabilitation actually—he says he rehabilitates dogs and trains people).

In Choosing Civility (2002, St. Martin’s Press: New York—okay, it’s not a “proper” reference, but I’m being rebellious), P.M. Forni writes about the importance of being assertive—properly handled, it is not about taking, it is about “keeping something that is rightfully ours” (p. 112). Again, it’s not a leap of logic to think that civility is about respecting boundaries—ours and other’s. Being assertive is therefore an act of being civil. And the most convincing kind of assertiveness is being clear and being calm (yeah, sometimes we could just throw a crowbar at ‘em).

When the ego has an additional orientation besides this frantic protection-as-both-defensive-and-success mandate, it will be a little less on edge. That additional orientation, I think, is the quiet mind—a mind that also knows how to be absent from our history of wounds and successes. Often, in the presence of our history, the mind is not free at all, but trapped and defensive. And it seems to me the main human institutions proposing solutions for human pain and promises for human success, like religion, politics, philosophy/psychology, etc., have at their basis, a reminder of our ineptness (original sin, scarcity, inherent limitations, etc.). While watching out and remembering our past is sometimes a necessity, it can be tiring. Being free of our wounds and our successes for a time can be energizing—though it will likely take a lot of getting use to. But, after all, we’re not trying to ignore those wounds or successes, only take some time off from them. Frankly, the way to do that, is to just set them aside. From this quiet, from this peace, is a huge part of our salvation. From this quiet and this peace, we may then clearly observe and feel the promise and the Home of our existence. Otherwise, the noise of our pain and our successes will loom like relentless barking dogs in the night—something we might overlook, but something that is disturbed nonetheless. And disturbance is a tough way to check in with emptiness to see how we’re doing and listen to where and how we might improve.