One of the things the ego is chronically engaged in is evaluation.
In golf, it could be, “Am I better than him?” or, “That guy’s a serious threat to me.” In these two instances, on the one hand, we lead a life seeking false superiority, and on the other, we experience fear. So the trick is to find a way to defuse this knee-jerk instinct to evaluate others. To find a way to just “be” with them as you find them.
And the only way that I have found that at least gives you a chance is to constantly be aware of when you are operating from your spiritual essence and when you are operating from ego, the facade we erect in response to life’s events.
It sounds such a simple thing to do, but in the heat of the moment, there is only the bunching tensions that the moment brings. You know that you’re operating from ego if you are experiencing emotions like contempt or jealosy or fear. Because when you are operating in essence, there is only the moment and the fascination with the moment.
Any time you’ve experienced being in the zone, there were no emotions. There was only the sense of a veiled euphoria that you might not even have recognized until you were out of the zone again. There was giddiness over the clarity of the moment, the preciousness. Time seemed to slowly pass by and in some instances where there might have been a time-pressure trigger in the event, it was as if there was no time or pressure at all. There was just the task and your clarity about all its details.
So one of the ways to relax into that state is to be complete in all the relationships with those around you. If you are having an issue with someone even as you are trying to become completely engrossed in a putt, it steals a piece of your concentration. You may think you’ll be able to step over it–and sometimes you can–but for the most part there’s this vague awareness, kind of like eyes in the back of your head, that there is this issue to be dealt with.
The best way to complete those relationships is to be in love with them; to be able to accept them as they are, to be able to love them for their humanity, to realize that your essence is their essence and the gulf is not as large as it might seem.
This, of course, takes practice. The thing I love about the game of golf is the truly amazing, well adjusted people you find on golf courses. But we have all had the experience of playing with people who were a constant grating on the nerves for much of the round. You have to love what you know is underneath all of that. You have to be compassionate for their lack of consciousness. And you have to forgive them and hold out the possibility that they will one day come to. As I said, it takes practice to forgive someone you find absolutely annoying or intimidating.
But once you are able to do that with increasing frequency, you will slowly begin to discover that you are as much the beneficiary of your love and magnanimous way of being as they are. You will experience longer and longer periods of bliss-like clarity to tend to the matter at hand, say, a long tee shot with a water hazard all down the right side or a big, sweeping putt that demands all of your intuition and experience.
Live a life in love is the goal. And like anything else in the domain of mastery, it can be a long road. But since it merely involves you flipping a switch, well, there you are.