Avoiding Pitfalls

When the ego hi-jacks our practice it takes all the fun out of the experience.  Our focus shifts from intense, pleasurable engagement with our own experiment, to trying to please some idea our ego has about what we should be doing. 

Recognizing & responding to ego hijacking

Many things can trigger the ego and it is helpful to get to know which kind of things are likely to trigger it, but I think it is even more important to recognize it when it happens and know what to do about it.

When we first start deep practice things will often go very well and we enjoy ourselves and our skill improves.  At a certain point we really start to sound the way we want to sound.  This can be a dangerous time, especially if we are finally seeing progress in something we’ve been desiring for a long time.

Now, the situation is ripe for the ego to charge in with its guns loaded and take over the situation.  It takes over by telling you that now that you are getting the results you want, you need to focus on that and try to keep getting that result so you won’t lose it.  This is what Alexander called “endgaining” and it is an incredibly powerful weapon of the ego.  

A hi-jacking antidote

One powerful antidote to this hi-jacking is to recognize that the sound you are making has changed from being a result of your process, and an important part of your feedback, to a goal, or end in itself.  When you see that this has happened to you, you can simply take back your experience by shifting the sound back to its proper position as feedback. 

Your goal is to make the sound and listen, see and feel what happens, not to make excellent sound.  The sound is the feedback, not the goal.

Next we’ll talk about other reasons practice might not go well and what to do about it.