An Examined Life

     “The material universe as we know it offers countless possibilities for extraordinary adventures…Only in the physical form and on the material plane can we fall in love, enjoy the ecstasy of sex, have children, listen to Beethoven’s music, or admire Rembrandt’s paintings. Only on Earth can we listen to the song of a nightingale or taste bouillabaisse and baked alaska. However, when our identification with the body-ego is absolute and our belief in the material world the only reality, it is impossible to fully enjoy our participation in creation. We are haunted by the awareness of our personal insignificance, the impermanence of everything, and the inevitable nature of death.”

     As I read the words quoted above, I think how easily we can get attached to what psychologist Stanislav Grof calls the body-ego, the physical, mental, emotional being that is our “self,” the person who is capable of having the “extraordinary adventures” he writes about. What a blessing it is to be a body-ego, and to enjoy the many things that it enables us to experience.

     But Grof is oh so right in stating that when our identification with body-ego is absolute and our belief in the material world is that it alone is real, our ability to fully enjoy life is limited. The awareness of life’s brevity and our smallness intrudes like an unwelcome visitor, like rain on a parade, like a thief in the night. It’s tempting to live in denial of life’s less than idyllic nature, for after all ignorance is bliss – until it isn’t; and when it isn’t, when life lets us down, the house of cards we may have managed to construct and to call our life, can  come crashing down.

     It is important to acknowledge our own and life’s impermanence, but it is imperative that we experience goodness, see beauty, and feel joy. This is the challenge of living an examined life, one that affirms that materiality is not the only reality, that we are more than our body-ego, and that while open to the ‘visitor,’ the ‘rain,’ and the ‘thief,’ is able to yield to the truth that life is worth living.