Ego (self) can only live in a story.
No story, no self.
Without a story of a “me” there is nothing there to experience a problem:
Nothing that can suffer.
Nothing that needs to survive.
Nothing that can die.
Nothing to protect.
The ego gives birth to itself, and then clings to life, by writing a story of an “I” that “knows” things.
What it “knows” are the details of its own creation. The ego is an expert at proving itself with the writing of ever more detailed story until the story cloaks over everything and the truth becomes hidden in a fantasy so clear, so detailed and so “known” that the story - and even the ego itself - become hidden in all the “knowing.” Like a VR headset that covers over everything so clearly that the virtual is thought to be the truth.
I tell stories, therefore I am.
And what I am is my story.
And it’s a wonderful fiction. Like a good book or movie.
Problems only arise when I think the story is real and it becomes scary, cruel, hopeless, unendurable.
It’s actually not a problem at all - at its root, suffering is the beginning of the way out of “knowing,” because when my story becomes sufficiently scary, cruel, hopeless and unendurable, I start to look for a way out.
Some turn to chemicals. Some turn to distractions. Some turn to numbing. Some lash out. Some isolate or make themselves invisible. All self-loving and self-caring actions taken with the goal of ending suffering and improving life. And all temporary at best (torturing at worst) because they fail to address the actual cause of the suffering, which is the innocent belief in a self-authored story that Just. Isn’t. True.
The way out of the story is to get quiet and lovingly question what “I” can possibly “know” for the love of truth.
When I can sit in honest inquiry, when I can risk “not knowing” and wait to be shown, the story falls away and the truth emerges.
And the truth prior to ego’s story is always peaceful, always kind.
Always.