Any time you put an obstacle between yourself and just being you have created a dualistic framework within which you will never be able to sit in the present moment.
The present moment is not a concept. It is not an idea, although the use of language might create that illusion.
You do not need to heal. You do not need to fix, change, tinker with, eliminate, barter, negotiate with or dissolve your ego. Who is the one who wishes to dissolve the ego? Ask this seriously.
The ego wants to dissolve the ego. The ego wants to do everything except be present because presence implies the ego’s end. If you are firmly rooted in ego you think you are the one ‘doing’ things and trapped within this sleight of hand you will go on doing things and thinking that one day when you’ve run out of things to do, then you can finally be ‘present’, no? When you’ve finally healed. When you’ve finally ‘done the work.’
You’re a ping pong ball, the net and both paddles.
You can ‘just be’ right here and right now at any time you so desire. If you have ever been right here and right now at any point in time then it should be quite obvious to you that there are no requirements for you to enter into this state. There is no need to perform any rituals, complete any tasks or undergo any intense psychological evaluation in order to settle into the simple nature of what is.
Your life, messy and complicated as it is, is perfectly normal and healthy and everything is exactly as it should be. How could it happen any differently? What scientific theory or philosophical paradigm could you concoct to try and explain how things could have gone any differently to how they’ve gone thus far?
Look around you at this causal universe. The sun rises, water flows, planets follow divine paths through the cosmos and celestial bodies operate under strict laws that govern even the expansion of the dark void itself. Are you not bound by these same operational frameworks? Is not your body also a consequence of natural, physical laws?
Do you think that because you have the gift of perception, to see the thoughts that flood your mind, to taste and touch and sense and feel and love, that you are somehow unbound by these basic principles and can exist outside of them?
That’s your ego talking again. You are unbound, but not the little you that wants to change, that wants to run from, that wants to fix, that wants to alter, that wants to be far away from pain and buried deep in pleasure. That impulse is nothing more than the scheming of the animal body.
The you that is fundamentally always here, that was never born and will never die, is the one that is free. And this one never had to do any shadow work. This one will never suffer a trauma, nor a blemish, nor a scar. The little you will suffer, pain and danger and the vagaries of time. You’ll watch her image change in the mirror, you’ll see her cry, you’ll watch as she falls in love and out again, as her circumstances change and her relationships splinter and people die and people are born, with no rhyme or reason to it.
But you will be there underneath it all, and there is nothing that you need. There is no calamity that can touch you. No ill that can befall you.
As you settle into this awareness, the work will just start doing itself. Habits that no longer serve you will drop. You might cry. You might shake, you might have a fever, relive memories and traumas. You’ll feel yourself start opening up. You’ll start seeing things anew, for the first time, without the intervention of the little you. And you won’t even have to lift a finger. It will all start happening on its own. Like it always has. Like it always did.