Off The Line

Take your ego off the line. Get it out of the stack of life’s poker chips. Take it off the wall of your office and out of your bank account. Detach it from your street address, your age, your mar­i­tal sta­tus, your looks, your per­son­al­ity, your his­tory and even your gen­der. Your self-esteem, your sense of self, your self worth, and all you are can­not be attached to any­thing you can­not totally con­trol. Since you can­not have total con­trol of any­thing but your view­point, work on that. Do not define your­self by any­thing that can be taken away.

This is one thing that is not eas­ier said than done. Your essen­tial self is more than happy to unplug from all of the expec­ta­tions you have placed on it (or allowed oth­ers to place on it). You are of infi­nite worth just as you are. That worth is robbed by our nar­cis­sism, greed, fear, com­pe­ti­tion, social dis­tinc­tions, and dis­trust of life. There is a core self that has a value beyond the entire uni­verse (accord­ing to Jesus any­way). There is no bar­gain­ing chip as big as your eter­nal self. Do not trade it in for tem­po­rary applause.

Self-worth is some­thing you never have to earn. It is more than your ego. In fact, it can be crushed by your our out-of-control ego demands. When you dis­cover that divine core and truly con­nect with it, you will dis­cover that it is uncon­di­tional love in its purest man­i­fes­ta­tion. It is who you were most as a very small child and what you responded to best before you fell into the world as it is. In all due respect to our insti­tu­tions, the fall from the Gar­den of Eden is very much the first day of school. From that day on, we are pit­ted against our­selves, oth­ers, face­less stan­dards, and a world that for­ever demands more than we can give. Its keynote is per­for­mance not love. In the name of com­pe­tence it set­tles for marks on paper at the cost of con­so­la­tion for the heart. Our careers are but exten­sions of the same tradeoff.

In the cycle of life, if you are for­tu­nate enough to have invested in wis­dom, you return to the real­iza­tion of what you knew and who you were before the world got you. You can fin­ish your years on earth bathed in pure light and more aware of the con­nec­tion with the source of love — who is per­fect love. You can fin­ish tak­ing it all off the line and just be. You can sit and watch the sun­set with bills unpaid and errands not run. For you, the world and all of its cares is pass­ing away. You are com­ing back to your eter­nal center.