ISmile 83- The 5 Stages of Ego Grieving its own death

Eihei Dogen asks us if we can’t “find Truth where we are where do we expect to find it”. Yet this is difficult to practically apply since usually we live our lives from a position of lack. In this talk Michael suggests that it is this perpetual sense of lack that gets in the way of uncovering Truth. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief are experienced by the ego, however, the minute Truth begins to uncover Itself in our experience. We have to face our lives in ways that lead to the what St. John of the Cross calls “the dark night of the soul”. Yet with courage, this dark night gives way to an ever deepening clarity of the radient ever-present love that shows up in the world as the core of all things. Questions deal with a definition of Truth and the constant “flops” and “oopses” of living; how total failure is actually perfection; and the difference between the small will of ego and Big Will of Spirit.