I hate being overbooked. I’m booked solid until Sunday. It’s Thursday morning, and It doesn’t look like I’ll be able to do anything until Sunday. This is absurd, but all to frequent in my life. Sunday will be a very busy day as a result, as I devote myself to getting the things done that might otherwise have gotten done tonight or tomorrow or Saturday. A big part of this feeling has to do with feeling overwhelmed by all the responsibilities I have on my plate at the moment, but there is also a large part of me that doesn’t like being away from home for such large swaths of time. I’m not one of those people who enjoys only being at home to sleep.

But that’s just me whining about life. This is the way it is, and I’m too devoted to the myriad things that fill my time to try and escape them. I just need to juggle the best I can, and take my rest when I’m able to.

Yesterday HerbisOrbis, Shivian, LizzieCrowe, and I were talking on twitter about the vital choices we make in practicing magic, and how often we get in our own way. This conversation was spurred on by yesterdays post, Prayer is Magic. One of the things that caught my attention was the consistent blame we place on our egos.

It’s clear that ego gets a lot of blame from all directions in our daily life. But whenever I notice something that is universally attacked I begin to feel as though we’re missing something. Perhaps it’s just my need to be contrary, but I begin to suspect that blaming our egos for our failings is just another way of scapegoating the real challenges we face.

As magicians, we often struggle against the ego. To be effective we have to simultaneously support a giant ego, but remain humble before the light of god. This is not an easy balance to reach even for a moment, let alone to sustain. I think HerbisOrbis, Shivian, LizzieCrowe, and I displayed well yesterday the number one tactic we have for keeping our huge egos in line. Self-deprecation. We know that we are egotistical, and that we are aware of our successes. In order to prevent that ego from seeming overlarge or uncontrollable we often make a point of showing off our flaws, often very loudly.

I wonder though, if this is even remotely effective in managing our egos. I dare say it is the simple truth that I take pride in my willingness to recognize and honor my flaws and mistakes. And It’s a fair statement to suspect that this pride bolsters my ego far more than admitting my issues diminishes it.

Even more importantly, while it went unsaid (because we egotists are always trying to be humble) all of us indicated that we work really hard to keep our egos in check, and by extension that we think we do a fair good job of it. I think it’s fair to call bullshit on myself here. I do a shitty job of it. I try really hard, but the truth is, I am very proud of myself and that drives my ego.

I do not keep my ego in check. What keeps my ego in check is reality. Suffering, pain, experience, and failure keep my ego in check. Life will not long abide a great imbalance, and it does a very good job of knocking me down when I’ve propped myself up too high.

We like to associate ego with the word I. I did this, I failed at this. I try to do this. I am humble. So long as we’re using that word, we say, we must be talking from a place of ego. This is true, but I believe by focusing so strongly on our fear of an oversized ego we are distracting ourselves from the real challenges we face.

This is not to say that an inflated ego isn’t a challenge. But trying too hard to keep it from happening, becoming obsessive about it, is probably as detrimental as allowing our ego free reign. There are plenty of other things that deserve our attention.

The one that we most often blame on ego is fear of knowing. It is fear of knowing that drives us to close our eyes to omens and messages from the divine. It is fear of knowing that turns our gaze towards our ego and whispers “It is your pride that keeps you from seeing. Defeat yourself!” Our fear of knowing keeps us fighting ourselves, trying to attain and maintain some impossible balance between humility and ego.

On a related note, humility and ego are not actually incompatible. One can have great ego and great humility simultaneously.

Fear of knowing is fear of connection. It is fear of losing ourselves (which I will grant is related to ego) in the reality that surrounds us. Most importantly, the fear of Knowing, is our fear of the truth that we fight so hard to pretend doesn’t exist. The truth is different for us all, or perhaps the same for us all. But we’re all afraid of it. We’re afraid of seeing how small and how big we really are. We’re afraid of knowing that all our problems are of our own making, that we’re responsible for them, but that we should forgive ourselves and the people in our lives. We’re afraid of knowing that all our control is illusion.

Fear of knowing is perhaps the fundamental challenge of the magician. Perhaps of any spiritual person, or any person. It is at the core of so much of what we do, and we call it by many names. We say it is shadow work, but again we dress that as interface with the ego. The truth is that the Fear of Knowing is greater than we see, and drives our sense and experience and indeed our reality. Everything we experience in life, every sense and belief and emotion, is driven by our desire to understand something that is unknowable, un-understandable. And this drive to understand, is ultimately a result of fear of the knowledge that we don’t understand it.

Perhaps the most powerful moments of my life have been those when I have understood that I don’t understand. I don’t understand people believing my sex is wrong. I don’t understand betrayal, nor hurtful lies. I don’t understand xenophobia, or why we’re so afraid of touching each other. The things that shape my life, that define who I am, my core beliefs, are driven by things that I don’t understand. By realizing that I don’t understand these things I’ve given myself the power to change them, to own my inability and to fight for something that needs no understanding. Because when you get right down to it, truth does not need to be understood. I don’t need to understand love. It is there without attempting to sense it or perceive it. It is undeniable.