There are many lessons we should learn throughout our lives to enhance our life experience. Unfortunately, reading about a life lesson doesn’t not mean that you can understand it. Many events have to happen in the right order to allow us understand the lesson. Let’s take a very simple example to see the events that lead up to an understanding of a lesson. Suppose you are playing tennis and have been struggling to hit your backhand. You have a habit of stabbing at the ball. You don’t understand why you can’t hit a backhand properly. You want to hit the backhand better. So, you look to see what you are doing when you hit your backhand. Your friend hits the ball to your backhand and you continue to stab at the ball. He tells you, “hit the ball don’t stab at it!” You don’t understand what he’s talking about. Then he hits to your forehand and you swing a perfect return. Suddenly, you realize that you are not swinging at the ball when you hit your backhand. The stabbing motion doesn’t give you a consistent hitting motion. So, you try swinging the backhand the same way as your forehand. You hit the ball into the net, over the fence, and off the court, but you notice that it feels good to swing at the ball. Your timing with the swing is off but you feel the power and consistency of swinging it. You continue to swing your backhand and after a few days, you can consistently hit the ball into the court.

Let’s look at the events necessary to learn this backhand lesson:

• you see that your backhand is inconsistent and want to improve
• you watch to see what you are doing with the backhand
• Your forehand hit shows you the proper way to hit the ball
• you realize the problem, that’s the Aha! moment
• you test and try to change the backhand swing
• you persist even though you were hitting the ball all over the place
• you finally achieve it

If certain key events didn’t happen, you most likely wouldn’t have learned the lesson. For example, if you didn’t care or didn’t know that your backhand is inconsistent, if you didn’t realize that you aren’t swinging your backhand, or if you didn’t continue to practice hitting your backhand, there’s a good chance that you may not go through the process needed to learn the lesson.

This is why life lessons can be difficult to grasp or understand. Anything can interrupt a key step in the process. When it gets interrupted, we don’t learn the lesson. We miss the opportunity to realize something new and possibly life changing. Of course, the opportunity could reveal itself many time throughout our lives, but we may unknowingly let it slip by each time. Now that we know there is a process, we can be keep it in mind as we come across any life lesson. Doesn’t it seem troublesome to go through all this trouble just to learn some lesson? We can go through life doing the same routine, but wouldn’t it be much better to have insights that help us understand ourselves and our world better?

What is the ego?

As a man, I expect and I am expected:

• to have a job to provide for my family
• to have authority and influence in work and in personal life
• to be clever and intelligent
• to look and act manly
• to defend my country
• to want to make a difference in the world
• etc.

There is a long list of things that culture and people demand in a man. This list influence our thoughts, behavior, and actions. Together it creates an image of how we will eventually see ourselves. We become this self image. We see the world and act through this self image. This self is our possession or property. We will defend this property against anyone who dares to damage or steal it. Our ego encompasses a large part of who we are, and what we do.

Some things to think about:

• Why is it important to understand the ego?
• In order to see who we are, we must understand this fog of self image that surround us. If we can fan away each part of the list and allow the fog to slowly clear, what do we have left that makes up our self?
• Can our ego exist without this list?
• Should we maintain an ego?
• Have you defended your thoughts or ideas before? Did it cause tension and anger? Why must you defend it? Did you want to be right? When did your ego come in?
• Does the ego separate men and women’s role such as job, house chores, caring for children, and cooking? How does this affect the man and the woman?
• Does this separation apply to skin color, culture, wealth, age, etc.? What does this separation do to humanity? How much killing and destruction has it caused?