Relativizing the ego. The ego, which includes the id – all thoughts, beliefs, memories, expectations, feelings, emotions, impulses, intuitions, attachments, habits, dogmas, doubts, all manner of repetition, novelty, delight, and disgust. Mammal, reptile, human.
How to relativize the ego? Close observation without pursuit, avoidance, or response. The oscillating fury of the psyche is permitted wholly, yet is rendered inert by that very permission. There is no purchase for it. It is already bought. It is priceless, thus free.
To recognize every story as story. To break the psychic fourth wall. To be actor, director, playwright, audience, and stage. The theater of the mind is restored as a metaphor once we understand it to be first and foremost fractal. It simultaneously contains and is contained. Exceeds and is exceeded. Observes and is observed. Creates and is created. Destroys and is destroyed.
Being. Becoming. Passing away. The reel on which the film is wound; the film to be wound on the reel; their gestalt unity (a double truth: 24 frames per second!). In the flow of projection. A film about itself. A film filming its filming. The serpent seeks its tail.
An absolute ego is enslaved to the game of snakes and ladders. A relative ego belies the game. It looks to the hand that rolls the dice. That comes into being to roll the dice. Permitting the game, it transcends it. Embracing the game, it exceeds it. Detached from victory and defeat, it wins every time, even when it does not.
