Lemon Meringue "I": Living Outside the Pie

When we start looking into ego-identities, it can be confusing. There’s multiplicity where we expected unity. Different ‘me’s’ arise for different occasions, each posing in turn as ‘the real me’. No wonder we feel conflicted; it’s unnerving to discover that our most central belief – Who I Am – turns out to be a contradictory conundrum.

Lemon meringue pie provides an apt analogy for enlightening the layers of our contradictory identities. To apply the pie analogy, bring to mind a situation or relationship that has had some ups and downs. Start by recalling a time when you were "at your best”, the way you prefer to be seen: pleasing, competent, charming, smart, on top of things. That’s the meringue, the façade, the “I” we want others to buy. We might even buy it ourselves, in our less conscious moments (or decades). You know it’s operating when it seems that ‘everything is riding on’ being seen a particular way.

Now bite down, all the way to the bottom, and what do you find? The soggy crust. It surfaces when we felt rejected or ignored. This is the low point of our game - unworthy, stupid, unlovable, a failure. It’s the negative identity, where our core belief in our fundamental inadequacy resides. When it emerges, we feel unprotected, weak and hopeless. And yet, as awful as it feels, somehow it seems to be the only reality.

But wait; there’s another layer to the I-pie. After we bounce back and forth between the meringue and the soggy crust over time, we realize, to our dismay, that the meringue isn’t going to keep us from falling into the soggy crust. When the magnitude of this sets in, presto! Up comes the sour filling. Its motto: “If life gives you lemons, suck ‘em!” The sour filling can be resentful, pseudo-detached, untrusting, cynical, hardhearted, passive-aggressive, world-weary, or blaming. The goal of the sour filling, as with the meringue, is to bury the hurt and shame of the soggy crust. As people age, the sour filling is likely to become a primary hangout, unless practice intervenes.

People vary in how they deal with lemon meringue I’s. Some struggle to keep the meringue intact - a guaranteed recipe for increasingly stiff artificiality. Others give up on the meringue, and move to a steady diet of sour lemons. And some collapse under the weight of it all, plummeting with anguished despair into the soggy crust.

It’s touching to discover what’s actually happening. If we didn't secretly believe that the soggy crust is The Truth About Me, we wouldn’t be driven to concoct a drippy meringue, or to take ‘refuge’ in the bitterness of the sour filling. Even though we’re no more a pie than an “I”, until applied awareness intervenes, this indigestible mass of layers will alternately pose as the truth of ‘me’.

What helps us see the actual nature of the pie that we’ve taken ourselves to be? Pie-dentities can be encountered the same way we approach a ‘real’ pie: ingest it (through embodied practice), and let the digestive enzyme of awareness do its job. Residing in the physical quivers and tart spots is more palatable when environmental awareness are included. That’s the equivalent of having a plate and fork; things get predictably messy when the pie tries to stand alone.

Seeing how rapidly we alternate between layers helps undercut the illusion of ego-solidity. We don’t need to keep sticking an “I” on these layers, as if we were sewing labels in our clothes to go off to camp. Our mandate as practitioners is to realize that none of these lemon-meringue I’s are the truth of our Being. The purpose of practicing meticulously with ego-identities is to see clearly that they’re inconsistent, incomplete, inaccurate, and impermanent.

The worksheets below provide an opportunity to see how the layers function and shift in different situations.

Note: The inclusive worksheet is followed by versions that have room to fill in just one layer of the pie. Even on the inclusive sheet, it’s not necessary to put something in every single category; obviously, there’s not always an appearance from all layers of the pie in all situations.

From Zenquiry: A Practice Manual by Elizabeth Hamilton

Worksheet:

Lemon Meringue "I"
The 3 Layers of Ego-Identity

In this worksheet, we can try to determine which layer of the lemon meringue I a particular respose represents. This can help sort out the confusion that arises when we start to feel like several people in one situation.

Fill in the blanks as if you were describing someone else, to keep things as objective as possible. By taking the observer stance, it’s easier to avoid reinforcing the notion that this is about me; it’s easier to see that we’re talking about patterns - and conflicting ones at that.

Although awareness of the mental and emotional components is informative, experiential awareness is what turns the tide toward awakening. So, even if the first categories are quite fascinating, the last three items in the columns are crucial: what keeps awareness experiential, how do you remember to practice with the identity and its components, and aspiration: what’s the point of all this?
Remember, even if lemon meringue ‘I’ seems juicy, it’s hardly a taste of the genuine life. Don’t be surprised if your answers will jump from one column to another.

Use additional paper if necessary. It may be helpful to use a separate copy for each situation.

LEMON MERINGUE ‘I’: 3 LAYERS OF EGO – IDENTITY

The Point: To see the conflicting nature of ego -- that it is inconsistent, incomplete, inaccurate, constantly changing--a form of emptiness.

MERINGUE: Acceptable qualities; the persona we’d like to portray to others: positive, upbeat, deep ‘false hope’ – because we think it will make things ‘work’: “I’m smart:”
SOUR FILLING: The ‘sour grapes’ or hard, protective stance we take when the meringue fails (sarcasm, passive-aggression, contemptuousness, detachment, blame); ‘false hopelessness’ (blames others); “they’re stupid”
SOGGY CRUST: The category we fear is the truth: “If others could see the deepest truth about me, they’d see that I’m utterly ___________): weak, unprotected, hidden, ‘bad me’ (false hopelessness; blames self); ‘”I’m stupid”