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exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Summerland

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Tolle: anger as “instant ego-repair”

One of Tolle’s great insights into the human condition defines anger as “instant ego-repair.” How spot on. When the Small Ego is threatened by insult or slighting of any kind, it immediately goes into “ego-repair mode.” Resultant anger as defense-mechanism might take the form of counter-attack, shouting, threats, physical violence, and the like - all self-enhancement efforts directed toward rebuilding a loss of prestige.

Father Benson from the afterlife encourages us about our struggles with anger

In our world, to say the least, it is often more than difficult to exhibit the saintly attitude of Mother Teresa. Frequently, we are “jabbed and poked” with the daily unpleasant assaults upon our lives – as Churchill said, “one damn thing after another.” And so we despair of setting any records regarding equanimity of mind.

But Father Benson is very encouraging and says, to those trying their best, not to worry. In the “real world,” where there are no daily jabs and pokes, our truest better natures finally are allowed to blossom and settle into permanent state of mind.

Here are Father Benson’s own words:

The [modern] Earth, too, has advanced in many directions, making life vastly more complicated. Life is more harassing, it proceeds at a much swifter pace, and a great concentration of energy is crammed into a few hours that would scarcely be spread over the same number of days in olden times.

Now all these conditions bring with them a consequent infirmity of temper. Under stress of such a life we do not always appear at our best. We can become irritable, or cynical; we think we are possessed of all truth, and inclined to regard as fools others who do not think as we do. We become thoroughly intolerant. We may sneer just to give vent to our feelings, and those same feelings may have been induced by something which has gone wrong or not pleased us. We may suffer from poor health of the physical body. We may be overworked or under worked. We may have too much pleasure or not enough. And so one could go on multiplying causes for our giving exhibitions of character and temperament which are not really our own, which do not come from our ’better selves’, to use the old term.

That, broadly speaking, is life on Earth as it affects a large number of people. Now let us contemplate the altered state of life upon our coming to the spirit world. As we step into these realms we leave all the worrying cares of the Earth behind us. Gone is the poor health we may have had there. Gone, too, are the rush and bustle of Earthly life in every department of its complex activities. We do not even need to worry about the state of the weather in these perpetually sunny lands, and that alone, almost, is enough to cheer the heart immeasurably!

Here in the spirit world we stand revealed as we truly are. There is no longer any question as to what description of person we are. We can give voice to our thoughts without the fear of being considered foolish, simple, eccentric or childish. We cease to be intolerant here because we find that others are tolerant to us, and there is precious little, indeed, nothing at all, to be intolerant about in these realms. We are a happy community of numberless millions of people, with each one of whom we can be upon the most friendly, genial, and affable of terms, giving and receiving respect to and from everyone of our fellows. No single person has ever to endure that which is distasteful to him because there is no one here to cause that which is distasteful to others. The beauties and charms of these realms act like an intellectual tonic; they bring out only that which is and always was the very best in one.

Whatever was not the very best in one upon Earth will be swamped by the good nature and kindness which the very air here will bring out, like some choice bloom beneath the warm summer sun. There is no room for the unpleasant phases of human character that are so often exhibited upon earth. They cannot enter these realms. And in so far as such elements of character and temperament as we show upon Earth are not the reflection of our real selves, we shall at once cast them aside for ever as we enter the spirit world upon the moment of our transition.

I have previously said that a human being is exactly the same one minute after his dissolution as he was one minute before it. That is borne out by what I have just said. It is the great difference between our real selves and the personality which we present for outward view. We are just the same our true selves, but we may not be recognizably so. It is not so much that we have altered but that we are no longer subject to the stresses that produce the unpleasant qualities that were observable in us when we were on the earth.

Remove the causes of the distempers and the latter will disappear also. Here in spirit lands we have nothing to disturb us. On the contrary, we have everything that will bring us contentment. Our true natures thrive and expand upon such glories and splendours as the spirit world alone has to offer. We work, not for an Earthly subsistence, but for the joy that comes with doing work that is both useful and congenial, and above all things, work that is of service to our fellow beings. The reward which the work brings with it is not a transient reward as is the case with so much mundane labour, but a reward that will bring us eventually to a higher state of living.

To us here in the spirit world, life is pleasure, always pleasure. We work hard, and sometimes long, but that work is pleasure to us. We have not the tiresome wearying toil that you have upon earth. We are not solitary beings fighting for our existence amid a world that can be, and so often is, somewhat indifferent to our struggles. Here in these realms wherein I live, there is not one solitary individual of whatever nationality under the sun who would not come immediately to the assistance of anyone of us upon the merest glimmering of our needing help.

And such help it is! There is no false pride that precludes our accepting help from a fellow creature anxious to give it. Millions of us though there be, yet there is not one sign, not one atom of discord to be seen throughout the immense extent of these realms. Unity and concord are two of the plainest characteristics to be observed and understood and appreciated to the full.

And so you see, my good friend, there are firm grounds for not returning to visit you upon Earth with exactly those characteristics by which we were so well known to you when we lived on Earth. Our tempers were very often sorely tried in those days upon Earth. Those times are gone now, and you know us as we really are. You did not know us for our true selves when we were with you in the flesh. That was no one’s fault but our own. Certainly it was not yours. We are sometimes sorry we were not outwardly of a more genial nature, but we were, and still are but, human after all, and it is upon this factor that we will all base our defence, if defence be needed.

Had conditions been different with us, perhaps we should have been different, too. When we come to the spirit world and look back upon that part of our life that we have spent on Earth, we are oft times rather shocked by the quite ridiculous importance which we placed upon some trivial incident in our daily life, an incident which caused us to appear intolerant, shall we say? or hasty or quick-tempered.

When we return to you, who are still upon Earth, we do our utmost to present ourselves as we now truly are, shorn of those Earthly disfigurations in our characters and temperaments by which we were perhaps too easily recognized. Such apparent change in our personality should not be so mysterious to you now, after this brief exposition. The change may seem amazing upon first acquaintance; it may even lead some of our friends to doubt our identity! It is rather pleasant to be doubted upon such a basis. At least it demonstrates to us that we have cleared ourselves of the trammels of Earthly inhibitions in the full expression of our real natures.

It must not be thought, however, that we lose our individuality in this process. We retain that always. It is something which we have built up during our lives on Earth, something that will characterize us and distinguish us, each from the other. We are not all reduced to an insipid uniformity. We retain our tastes and predilections; but our virtues never become as vices in their outward expression. We are healthy in body and mind, but our outlook has in so many things undergone a fundamental change.

The joy of living is a phrase of which you cannot have even the barest understanding while you are yet upon the Earth-plane. It is not surprising, therefore, that we should exhibit a little of that joy when we visit you on Earth.

Editor’s note: We appreciate the encouraging words of Father Benson. And regarding these “pokes and jobs,” I am reminded, too, of something Victor Frankl observed about himself just after the liberation of the camps in 1945. Having endured one of the greatest times of trial and atrocity in the history of humankind, assessing his own mental state, he noted, with relief, not only a recaptured sense of elation but a feeling, as he put it, that he would soon become a “human being” again.

In light of Father Benson’s comments, we understand Dr. Frankl’s meaning; albeit, in his case, a most extreme example of regaining oneself after an ordeal of ultimate “poking and jabbing.”