Housing the ego

Running in nature for me is part meditation, part narration, part divine inspiration, and part adventure. The ratios don’t matter, they’re always in harmony with each other.

I’ve had most of the giant ‘a-ha’ break throughs in constructing my athletic philosophy during trail runs. Never planned, but always impactful.

The first run back from our team 50 miler at elephant mountain was unlike any run I’ve ever had. A stream of consciousness flowed through me that left me speechless.

My Hebrew name is ‘Yarden Baruch’ which means blessed river, and I feel it’s perfect. Knowledge, love, wisdom, and deep understanding flow through me like a blessing. I’m not in charge, I’m a conduit.

Strava stats and and heavenly glow

I’ll share more from this run in other articles but I believe what I’m about to share will be the deepest and most impactful idea I’ll be blessed to share with the world. This is the first articulation, and I’ll deepen it over time but for now let’s just dive right into it.

Are you ready?

“The ego must live in the open heart. It’s the only place it can be embraced in humility and given away with love”

What does that mean?

You hear a lot about the need to ‘dissolve’ the ego in the self development space. Solid idea but I wouldn’t advise you do it. Then you’re not an individual, no longer a subject. You lose drive, ambition, determination, and will power. You give up your unique spiritual gift that you, and only you possesses. You’re a one in a trillion.

But you can’t live by the ego either. You’ll crave status over substance, live with hubris not humility, be arrogant, demanding, selfish for all the wrong reasons.

So what’s a person to do with this thing you need but eventually dominates you?

House it in the open heart.

The open heart embraces struggle to become. It desires excellence through passion. It demands your best effort to realize your potential. But it’s not arrogant, it’s humble. It recognizes luck, grace, and the help of others. It’s aware of the shortcomings even when you ‘hit the mark’. It desires perfection knowing it’s an unreachable standard. It’s being the best of your subjective value to the world.

The open heart is love so it’s not holding onto achievements to stroke the ego. It gives them away to the world willingly. It’s righteous sacrifice towards truth. Its understanding your subjective gift needs to be shared towards objective good, not more personal gain.

To me this is the answer to the distinctions between eastern and western philosophy. How I merge Aristotelian virtues ethics and Old Testament wiseheartedness with Taoist paradoxes of meaning.

And even cooler, we get to live and experience this harmony by playing sports we love with the right intention.

Harness the ego?

Dissolve the ego?

Empower the ego?

Wrong questions.

The right answer is always the open heart

Happy training friends❤️‍🔥