Prakrteh kriyamanani gunaih karmani sarvashah
Ahankar-vimurdhatma kartaham iti manyate
Bhagvad Gita 3:27
(Under the influence of false ego one thinks himself to be the doer of activities, while in reality all the activities are carried out by nature as natural process)
so much ego is attached to the immortal soul
If you seek the path to the truth, leave your ego at the start of your journey.
If you want to seek the truth leave your ego at the start of your investigation.
Whoever was responsible for the idea of dividing self into lower and higher parts committed a serious crime against humanity. This division has given rise to the notion that the lower (ego and immature) self must be overcome while the higher (unitive and whole) self must be sought as the goal of human realization. Out of ignorance, I too clung to this notion because I believed it was this higher self that would be united with God for all eternity. It took a long time before my experiences led me to doubt this conviction and, at the same time, let in the possibility that this was not the whole truth and that there was still further to go.
"What are we to learn by contrast? The answer to this is; to learn what to avoid and what to seek. That part of our SELF which is deluded, the separate Self, knows this only too well. So, in line with every other truth, it was turned into a farce. The seeking now becomes not one between dream and reality but one between polarities themselves, whcih are but part of the dream. Thus the choice, the freedom of choice the Ego offers, is the choice between a dream and a dream. A rock and a hard place.
So, now the picture looks like this: we religiously avoid the Bad and seek the Good or avoid what is Good and seek the Bad as we 'avoid' and 'seek'! It does not really matter which way the pendulum swings, as long as it rmains within 'opposing forces', within polarities; this way escape is made impossible, illusion reassured. As long as we are guided by false perception, we see the cintrast as the contrast between polarities themselves and believe we must choose between poalarites.
There really is no such thing as failure. There is only the rearrangement of plans and surrender of ego.
The search ends with the realization that there is no such thing as enlightenment. By searching, you want to be free from the self, but whatever you are doing to free yourself from the self is the self. How can I make you understand this simple thing? There is no 'how'. If I tell you that, it will only add more momentum to that (search), strengthen that momentum. That is the question of all questions: "How, how, how?"
"So you call yourself religious? Please don't do that if you're stuck in only one of the many traditions that manifest divine love. When you've found connection and inspiration from many religions, then you probably know more about divine love, and less about prejudice, ego and fear."
Eventually, as we become more fully aware of our problems, another critical point is reached, when insights really have occurred and we try to act upon them. We then discover to our dismay that our attempts to solve them by an effort of will avails us nothing, that our good intentions, as the saying goes, merely pave the way to hell. Good intentions all too readily can foster the illusion that we have settled an issue, when actually it is far from settled and seems to have not the slightest intention of ever being settled. This leads to a deadlock in which we see we need to change but cannot, try as we may. We know we need to renounce our egoistic controlling attempts but we cannot even make ourselves do that. We are up against the paradox that discipline and conscious effort are indispensable but do not get us far enough in our really critical areas. We reach the point where we are tempted to give up in despair because after all, what's the use? We begin to feel that analysis is like deliberate, organized torture; the most problematic things are rubbed in again and again and no matter how we exert ourselves there is no way to change them.
This state has its meaning too. As Dante puts it, the entrance to purgatory is at the deepest point of hell. A resolution of this seemingly hopeless impasse eventually occurs by virtue of the awareness that the ego's claim of a capacity to control rests on an illusion. Without the actual experience of this sort of impasse the ego cannot renounce its claim to the central position. It is only when we have come to our wits' end, and this in the face of our most sincere and extreme efforts, only when we realize that we are hopelessly incapable of changing ourselves, can we begin to accept our real existential position in the life drama. When we are able to say. "this is I, this is my being, and nothing can save me from or free me from being this sort of person," then we have come to the point of acceptance that initiates a fundamental transformation of which we are the object, not the subject. Transformation of our personality occurs in us, upon us but not by us. The unconscious changes itself and us in response to our awareness and acceptance of our station, of our cross.
Therapy is, in essence, the effort to effect an adequate relationship between the ego and the unconscious needs, to bring into awareness their relative positions in respect to each other and to discover the requirements for a continuing cooperative partnership. Therapeutic progress depends upon awareness; in fact the attempt to become more conscious is the therapy.
Today, perhaps owing to the dissolution of traditional standards, and the consequent weakening of persona support as well as the influx of often inadequately understood Eastern religious and cult influences, we encounter many more instances of inadequate egos being "lost" in the world of archetypes. An adequate personal ego structure has to be built before the transpersonal unconscious can be faced. To this end, introversion alone does not suffice. Working on one's relationships to partners, group and community is an equally important aspect of ego building and individuation.
“Ego” as a concept has negative connotations for many spiritual seekers, for whom it is simply an impediment, an obstacle in need of eradication…Ego could be said to be a cult of one (or a self-enclosed coalition of survival-oriented habits that automatically refers to itself as “I”). This does not mean that this is evil or in need of annihilation, but rather that it's centered and unquestioningly governed by its own ideology…What is needed is not the elimination, but rather the illumination, of ego. DSW, p41
Opening to our fear is an act of intimacy, a courageous welcoming of the disfigured and outcast into the living room of our being. Opening thus is also an act of surrender. As such, it is not a dissolution - or collapsing - or personal boundaries, as in submission, but rather an expanding of them.
In submission, we deaden ourselves, sinking into the shallows; in surrender, we enliven ourselves, dying into a deeper Life. In surrender we may lose face, but we do not lose touch. Submission flattens the ego; surrender transcends it. Submission is passive, but surrender is dynamic. - Robert Augustus Masters, Darkness Shining Wild, p. 30-31
The sense of being somebody special (a legend in our own mind!) helps immunize “I” against the bare facticity of its own mortality, here-and-now instability, and innate insubstantialness.
Even when “I” dreams of transcending itself - as in those programs that have (or advertise) as their central agenda the eradication of ego - it is still an “I” who has now achieved the incomparable goal of self-transcendence! “Look, Ma, no ego!” we announce as we unicycle past our rapt inner audience, too proud to notice our pride, forgetting that self-conceit persists well into advanced transpersonal stages of development.
In our craving to be somebody special - and don't forget that we may find our specialness through being “nobody” - we bypass exploration of that very craving, committing far more of our passion to fulfilling our dreams than to actually awakening from them.
-Robert Augustus Masters, Darkness Shining Wild, p.58
Opening to our fear is an act of intimacy, a courageous welcoming of the disfigured and outcast into the living room of our being. Opening thus is also an act of surrender. As such, it is not a dissolution - or collapsing - or personal boundaries, as in submission, but rather an expanding of them.
In submission, we deaden ourselves, sinking into the shallows; in surrender, we enliven ourselves, dying into a deeper Life. In surrender we may lose face, but we do not lose touch. Submission flattens the ego; surrender transcends it. Submission is passive, but surrender is dynamic. - Robert Augustus Masters, Darkness Shining Wild, p. 30-31
When you close down and protect yourself, you are pulling a shell around the part of you that is weak.
Central to the Buddha's teaching is the doctrine of anatman: "not-self." This does not deny that the notion of an "I" works in the everyday world. In fact, we need a solid, stable ego to function in society. However, "I" is not real in an ultimate sense. It is a "name": a fictional construct that bears no correspondence to what is really the case. Because of this disjunction all kinds of problems ensue. Once our minds have constructed the notion of "I," it becomes our central reference point. We attach to it and identify with it totally. We attempt to advance what appears to be its interests, to defend it against real or apparent threats and menaces. And we look for ego-affirmation at every turn: confirmation that we exist and are valued. The Gordian Knot of preoccupations arising from all this absorbs us exclusively, at times to the point of obsession. This is, however, a narrow and constricted way of being. Though we cannot see it when caught in the convolutions of ego, there is something in us that is larger and deeper: a wholly other way of being.
A primary cause of suffering is delusion: our inability, because of a subtly willful blindness, to see things the way they truly are but instead in a distorted way. The world is in fact a seamless and dynamic unity: a single living organism that is constantly undergoing change. our minds, however, chop it up into separate, static bits and pieces, which we then try mentally and physically to manipulate. One of the mind's most dear creations is the idea of the person and, closest to home, of a very special person which each one of us calls "I": a separate, enduring ego or self. In a moment, then, the seamless universe is cut in two. There is "I" -- and there is all the rest. That means conflict -- and pain, for "I" cannot control that fathomless vastness against which it is set. It will try, of course, as a flea might pit itself against an elephant, but it is a vain enterprise.
Ego is like a room of your own, a room with a view with the temperature and the smells and the music that you like. You want it your own way. You'd just like to have a little peace, you'd like to have a little happiness, you know, just gimme a break. But the more you think that way, the more you try to get life to come out so that it will always suit you, the more your dear of other people and what's outside your room grows. Rather than becoming more relaxed, you start pulling down the shades and locking the door. When you do go out, you find the experience more and more unsettling and disagreeable. You become touchier, more fearful, more irritable than ever. The more you try to get it your way, the less you feel at home.
My Soul’s Marriage
A commitment to your own and
the world’s transformation.
For the Benefit of myself and All Beings.
I, (my ego & personality)
Do solemnly swear
to love, honor and obey my soul,
my path to realization and
relationship with a higher,
deeper creative power,
for better or worse,
for richer or poorer,
in sickness and in health,
from now and forever more.
"Many spiritual seekers get "stuck" in emptiness, in the absolute, in transcendence. They cling to bliss, or peace, or indifference. When the self-centered motivation for living disappears, many seekers become indifferent. They see the perfection of all existence and find no reason for doing anything, including caring for themselves or others. I call this "taking a false refuge." It is a very subtle egoic trap; it's a fixation in the absolute and all unconscious form of attachment that masquerades as liberation. It can be very difficult to wake someone up from this deceptive fixation because they literally have no motivation to let go of it. Stuck in a form of divine indifference, such people believe they have reached the top of the mountain when actually they are hiding out halfway up its slope. Enlightenment does not mean one should disappear into the realm of transcendence. To be fixated in the absolute is simply the polar opposite of being fixated in the relative. With the dawning of true enlightenment, there is a tremendous birthing of impersonal Love and wisdom that never fixates in any realm of experience. To awaken to the absolute view is profound and transformative, but to awaken from all fixed points of view is the birth of true nonduality. If emptiness cannot dance, it is not true Emptiness. If moonlight does not flood the empty night sky and reflect in every drop of water, on every blade of grass, then you are only looking at your own empty dream. I say, Wake up! Then, your heart will be flooded with a Love that you cannot contain."
"What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth... and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife."
"Eradicate self-justification.
Then alone can you annihilate your ego."
We are not responding to this instant, if we are judging any aspect of it.
The ego looks for what to criticize. This always involves comparing with the past.
But love looks upon the world peacefully and accepts.
The ego searches for short comings and weaknesses.
Love watches for any sign of strength. It sees how far each one has come, and not how far he has to go.
How simple it is to love, and exhausting it is always to find fault, for every time we see a fault we think something needs to be done about it.
Love knows that nothing is ever needed but more love.
It is what we all do with our hearts that affects others most deeply.
It is not the movements of our body or the words within our minds that transmit love.
We love from heart to heart.
“Walking the spiritual path properly is a very subtle process; it is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous sidetracks which leades to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques. This fundamental distortion may be referred to as spiritual materialism"
Many people keep saying, ''I want Peace, I want Peace'',
How many words are there in the sentence?
'I want Peace'...3 words, I, Want and Peace.
''I'' is the ego; ''want'' is desire...
If you remove ego & desire~
Then you will be left with Peace.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could spare them from all suffering? No, it wouldn't. They would not evolve as human beings and would remain shallow, identified with the external form of things. Suffering drives you deeper. The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form and erodes identification with form. A lot of it is caused by the ego, although eventually suffering destroys the ego--but not until you suffer consciously.
Humanity is destined to go beyond suffering, but not in the way the ego thinks. One of the ego's many erroneous assumptions, one of its many deluded thoughts is "I should not have to suffer." Sometimes the thought gets transferred to someone close to you: "My child should not have to suffer." That thought itself lies at the root of suffering. Suffeirng has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego. The man on the cross is an archetypal image. He is every man and every woman. As long as you resist suffering, it is a slow process because the resistance creates more ego to burn up. When you accept suffering, however, there is an acceleration of that process which is brought about by the fct that you suffer consciously. You can accept suffering for yourself, or you can accept it for someone else, such as your child or parent. In the midst of conscious suffering there is already the transmutation. The fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness.
The ego isn't wrong; it's just unconscious. When you observe the ego in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it. Don't take the ego too seriously. When you detect egoic behavior in yourself, smile. At times you may even laugh. How could humanity have been taken in by this for so long? Above all, know that the ego isn't personal. It isn't who you are. If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that's just more ego.
Q: What is meant by the term "mystic"?
A: The mystic knows, experiences, and identifies the Self as both context and content, that is, context is the content. The content of the ego is transitory and a product of perception and, like a movie, it has no independent existence. The content of perception is an automatic byproduct of positionality and goes hand in hand with the creation of the illusions of perception. Science is the authority of the linear domain and the Newtonian paradigm; the mystic is the authority of the nonlinear domain.
