Bliss and Ego

Friday morning, part of the weekend in the state of Kelantan, where I live.
I am on call today and this morning I drove to the hospital.
I was in a quiet mood and asked our God for bliss and peace of mind.
I tried to open up my heart for the quietness around me and drove slowly.
The traffic light in front of me turned red.
I realized that bliss was more something we open up to,
than something we get from far away.

My car was the only car standing in front of the red traffic light,
when a few moments later car came from behind at high speed.
The car drove next to mine and stopped a few meters in front of me.
He was almost standing on the crossroad.
When it turned green, I thought I have to be in front of him.
My engine was a bit bigger then his and sure enough i managed to
speed off in front of him.
I was going faster than usual in this monsoon season.
When I suddenly hit a puddle of water my car moved sideways a few cm.
Luckily I managed to keep the car on the road.
I suddenly was aware that my big ego had taken over.
A small challenge, and bliss had become secondary to my ego.
I had chosen to drive dangerously, just to show off to another guy.

At the very next junction the car behind me chose another road
and I came back to my senses.
The rest of the ride to work, I managed to remain focused on bliss
and peace of mind and let people who were apparently in a hurry go first.

I just want to share the above real story, to illustrate how easily
we tend to give way to our ego to disturb our peace of mind and
make us do dangerous things, we would not normally do.

We are humans. We have an ego, sometimes a big ego
We do also have a soul. Let us try to practice to listen more to our soul
and a bit less to our ego. Our ego will prop up now and then.
But with some exercise we may become better at controlling it.