Freeing your Soul’s Authenticity from Ego with Lalla’s Poetry - Part 2
Welcome to Part 2 of this three-part series on how an ancient mystic poet helps us remember and recognize our soul’s authenticity. In Part 1, I contrasted the rigid, conditioned ego mind with our fluid, dynamic soul or inner essence. And I shared the mystical simplicity of a Lalla poem to illustrate. In this installment, we’ll explore two short poems by Lalla, beloved Kashmiri poet, on how meditation connects us to our authentic essence.
How meditation nourishes authenticity
Even though Lalla lived 700 years ago, her advice about meditation rings true here and now.
Meditate, and grow humble.
Watch anger and wanting
turn to ashes.
Study the ground, Lalla,
as a sign of attainment. (p. 57)
“Meditate and grow humble,” she tells us. By definition, meditation means focussing on the still space that our egoic minds distract us from.
You might have a negative association with the word humble. Yet here, Lalla invokes a healthy humility that puts us back in touch with our authenticity. Naturally, egos can never be truly humble because egos are designed to recreate themselves, to continue their grooves. Egos seem to vacillate between inflated pride and exaggerated self-doubt.
Happily, the stillness of meditation automatically brings healthy humility as the ego dissolves, even temporarily awakening us. Meditating helps us cultivate the qualities that turn egos to ashes — qualities like presence, stillness, and equanimity.
“Study the ground,” has two meanings. Firstly, the physical ground where we plant our feet can bring us more into the moment. Secondly, the inner ground of being — that sacred space we find in meditation. Both meanings support the attainment — the gift of ego dissolution and increasing in-touchness with our soul’s authenticity. Learn more about breath and meditation.
Amplify your meditation with inquiry
Here’s one more poem about practice:
There are some demons dangerous
to our soul: lust, anger.
But there’s a way to kill them.
Feed them meditation only,
and clear awareness, and you’ll see
the illusion of what they control. (p. 70)
Lalla says, “Feed them meditation only.” But I want to expand on this line because there are many ways to meditate and we usually need more than meditation to “kill” the dangerous demons that haunt us. Kinds of meditation include: sitting and walking meditation, yoga, dance, and sacred chanting. Also, you can add intention and presence or mindfulness to anything you do regularly to make it a meditation. For example, every morning, I do my Pilates home routine as a meditation. With intention, you can make jogging or cutting vegetables a meditation.
Yet ego is sneaky. Unfortunately, by relying only on meditation, ego can hide while you meditate but continue as normal when you go about your day. What more than meditation can we do to recover our authenticity?
A practice I find indispensable that I wrote about here is Diamond Approach® inquiry — a wonderful method of bringing curiosity, empathy, and understanding to our experience as it’s arising.
With inquiry practice, we can embrace and dissolve the dangerous demons and any other aspects of our ego that are blocking our full potential. With inquiry, we can also expand into deeper states of authentic presence, loving-kindness, and all the qualities of true being. And we can do inquiry anytime throughout the day.
Check out Part 3, where Lalla shows us how to stay fresh and how to share our authenticity with the world.
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All poems quoted from Naked Song by Lalla, translations by Coleman Barks.
