What is it about those voices in our heads?
You know the ones I’m talking about – it’s the Committee of Eggspurts that rents space up there, constantly giving us a negative running commentary about everything we see, feel, and experience. For most of us, our Committee is a combination of arrogance and insecurity, and we bounce back and forth, back and forth, between those two ends of that particular dichotomy.
Is there anyone alive who is immune to those voices? Hmmm, I wonder. Perhaps the Dalai Lama is immune – and yet, because he too is human, I imagine he occasionally falls prey to his Committee as well. Somehow, that possibility gives me comfort.
I believe those voices are discovered and crazy-glued in childhood, when we realize that we are not in control of very much in our lives. Because of the somewhat twisted society (not to mention families of origin) we grow up in, we mistakenly believe we should – a word I don’t like very much – be able to be control much more than we actually can. We think we should be able to control other people, which of course we can’t, try as we might. We think we shouldn’t be afraid, or angry, or sad, or maybe even too happy. “You don’t really feel that way!” we are told by the very people we trust to tell us the truth. But since we really DO feel whatever it is we feel, our Committee very willingly kicks in to tell us how wrong we must be.
How confusing ~ no wonder we learn, at a very early age, to not trust our own reality!
And even though everyone’s Committee of Eggspurts is a little different – since we are each, after all, a little different from the next person – the majority of our voices seem to negate us by being about something fearful. One person’s “I am not loveable” is another person’s “I can never do anything right.” The next person’s “I shouldn’t be too happy because I don’t deserve anything good in my life” is another’s “If people really get to know me, they won’t like me.”
Are we having fun yet?
I have my own Committee of Eggspurts that gives me all kinds of fearful opinions about myself. Among other things, my Committee tells me that I am not very smart or creative or talented, and that no one is really interested in anything I have to say. Even though I am completely aware that this legacy was given to me as a child, from pretty dysfunctional parents and grandparents (and a few nasty teachers thrown in for good measure), I still for some strange reason choose to hold on to it.
Could it be true, as Marianne Williamson and Nelson Mandela explain, that “it is our light and not our darkness that most frightens us”? Could I be afraid that I might become amazingly strong and empowered if I chose to evict my Committee of Eggspurts and instead decided to believe in myself? What if I accepted myself as an awesome, talented, loveable, worthy, and humanly imperfect human being? How would my life be different if I didn’t have to live in fear of my own Self, not feeling like I had to prove over and over again that I am OK just as I am? My mind boggles at this notion!
For me, this type of self-acceptance is an ongoing spiritual endeavor. For some people, spiritual equates with religious, but for me it simply means that there is a part of me that is perfect and blissful and at home wherever I am, regardless of whatever tribulations I might be going through and despite any human failings I may have. The voices I’d rather have in my head would remind me of that on a daily basis. I would call them my Committee of Experts, because they would be telling me the real truth. The good news is that every once in a while, those sweet voices do tell me that, and I cherish the peaceful bliss they bring me when I choose to listen to them.
So I think I’m going to continue to do everything I can ~ in my humanly imperfect way ~ to not just rent space in my head to those wonderful, positive, spiritual voices, but to build them a big, beautiful condo up there to luxuriate in!
Anybody want to join me?