Tension. Boundless tension. That is the condition of many people in our society. They are like balloons that have been squeezed too tightly, much too tightly, into a box with thousands of other balloons. There is a pressure that squeezes their ego. There is always distress. There is always friction. Everyone automatically – without conscious action – tries to expand and take up as much space as he can. He does this at the price of taking this additional space he has taken away from others, thereby putting them in even greater distress and increasing the overall pressure. There is simply no empty space in this box.
When these people come to us, an effect occurs that always amazes me: After a short time of orientation, they want to take control on the spot in a variety of ways. They start talking. Without point and comma. They talk about themselves in contrast to others. About their opinions. Of their views.
If they are first surprised at how unresistingly they are allowed to expand here, this surprise quickly turns into a hard insistence that stifles everything that even remotely arouses the suspicion of wanting to hinder their expansion. This unique opportunity must be fully seized, defended against all others. The word of the other is cut off as a precaution. It could contain something that could slow down one’s own expansion. A change of subject, for example. Or a correction. Or something the other person would have more to say about than oneself. Some talk about themselves for days without even noticing how we sit there silently for hour after hour with no way to participate. They begin to correct and improve us (if they are men especially me) – to dominate us with their opinions. They begin to define right and wrong. They try to separate me and my wife. To create subtle fronts. Quite unconsciously and automatically. Some bring something to eat and then try to control us about it later. We are made guests in our own home. The guest swings up to become the host. They are reflexively suspicious and watchful of hab. If one comes to word, then this word is examined whether it could not contain an attack or a rebuke. Even the simplest utterance is classified as a possible attack. The drawers of the box world are pulled open and closed. And more and more they become intoxicated with their own words, which are allowed to bubble so unusually freely here. At their learning knowledge. At their eloquence. At their sudden control and the apparent power, which nobody opposes and which they did not expect to have before. They are completely amazed by the possibilities they are given here. And they exploit them without limits. We are made into extras who have the honor of being allowed to follow this spectacle. Their ego leans back in the armchair, enraptured, looking at the ceiling while listening to their own words full of rapture. It basks in itself, because it finally has something with us that it doesn’t have elsewhere: A void in which it can expand. And this expansion then becomes more and more rapid and uninhibited.
We are very exhausted after such visits. We are exhausted by this boundlessness. We offer a lot of silence and emptiness. If my wife is friendly, then this is understood by the self-drunken ego as approval or even still as an incentive to continue. Often I am then unconsciously made out by men as a competitor and attacked more or less subtly. If I make few words – because I could get the word at all only by volume or interruption of the speech flow of the guest -, do not let myself therefore on the confrontation of the egos and give to the guest his space, then this is interpreted likewise as agreement or in this world of the fight everyone against everyone: as weakness.
In my youth, my attitude was different. I know that in the past I would never have let it get to that point in any situation. I would have recognized early on how the rabbit runs. That there was a little ghost who seemed to think he could make a big splash. That someone overestimates himself and that he should also recognize that. I would have identified the weaknesses of the counterpart and with a razor-sharp deadly verbal stab I would have let the air out of his inflated ego as fast as lightning and would have relegated him to his place. I would have shown him what he had better not have done to me. I would have shown him that it was a mistake to try to mess with me as a rank amateur. If he had irritated me very much, I would have destroyed him and sent him home crying. Punished for his arrogance. With one… single… sentence… – But I have realized over the years how empty and destructive it is to act on these mechanisms and resort to them myself. Except for increasing the separation, we achieve nothing with it. Now I don’t get involved in these games anymore – but I also have to deal with the resulting consequences. Because my life is no longer about me as a person, the solutions in such situations must now be found elsewhere. I no longer feel attacked. Only exhausted. I then anxiously ask myself, „Will this ego now expand further and further? Will it become a monster without measure and without limits? Will it finally fill all the infinite space that we offer it here? What will become of this human being? This is not the state he should be in. What can we do if we don’t want to enter the game with old methods of counter-pressure? If we don’t want to lose our inner integrity? This ego grows and grows and soon we are only as big as dust grains for it. What influence can we still have then? “
For a long time I dealt with this problem (it was really a problem for me). At some point I realized: The ego cannot expand infinitely. It will not be able to fill the infinite space, because it is not infinite itself. If we are exhausted in the presence of this expanding ego, then we are still holding on too tightly to our own space. We do not offer the ego all of infinity, but try to hold back some of it ourselves. The crucial factor besides the infinity of space is the eternity of time. If we give the ego all the space it needs to expand and then give the ego the eternity to do so, it will eventually come to a point where it can no longer expand. Man will come to a point of rest. Sooner – or just later… My experience today is: Often we don’t have to wait myriads of years for this to happen. Often a few days are enough until the ego has finished expanding. And then man can rest in the silence of eternity and infinity. If we are able to offer him both.