Dissolving The Ego

The ego is built of myths.

Myths about people, oneself, what is right and wrong, what it likes and dislikes.

For the ego to stay in place it has to have all these myths remain as "true". If the myths are threatened it turns to violence, aggression, fear and withdrawal. Fight or flight.

In order to break away from the ego, or as I like to put it, "achieve escape velocity", I must break these myths, I must see the falseness of them, I must disprove them. We become mythbusters.

This doesn't meant dispelling common sense - fear on a physical level is in its right place, respect for danger, adrenaline to get out of a threat - but psychological fear is crippling our capacity to love and be loved, to express ourselves and let go of greed, fear and pain. These are the myths that must be seen as false.

Things that help dispel the myths:

• Acknowledging others - raising other up, helping them be great. The ego wants to be the only 'great one". It want to make all the money, get all the power and all the praise.

• Being aware when fear, anger and hurt arises within my field of awareness. That's step one.

• Not becoming attached to the fear, anger and hurt. Watching it as I would a dangerous animal and allow it to be. That's step two.

• Allowing what is to be as it is without trying to resist it or control it. I call this "surfing the wave of life". It is an exercise in balance, strength, timing and awareness to stay present in the face of life's challenge.

• Apologizing - admission of causing pain or being seen as "bad". Both dissolve the ego's power.

• Listening to people. (This is for an ego that has to be the know-it-all.)

• Speaking up (This is for an ego that has no power and says things like, "no one listens to me")

• Not arguing constantly and letting go of strong opinions, likes and dislikes.

The list is much longer but I have noticed that these applied in my actual life confront my ego and create space around it. It's about not touching it, allowing it to be, seeing it clearly, creating space around it, noticing that it exists within a vast infinite silence - a small bundle of thoughts that has gained amazing self-importance. But for the world to work, the ego needs to be put in its proper place.

Question The Ego

Each day is an opportunity and a challenge.

The question is: Who is showing up for that opportunity or challenge?

If it is an awakened consciousness rooted in the present moment, then anything is possible. One can create anything from that space.

If it is an ego rooted in the past, then it is limited. It has to act from a limited space of being - there are way the ego is and there are ways the ego is not. If we act through the ego we are on a track like a train in that we are bound to it.

Each challenge and opportunity tempts the ego. The ego is running the show by default. The ego is the thing that "makes sense" or "is logical" at first glance. But delve deeper and see that the ego is the root of all suffering, comparison, limitation, lonliness, aggression. The ego makes sense because we have grown up within it. Few have questioned it. "Is this the only way to live?"

There is another way. Prepare for each day by asking the question, "Who is showing up today?"

Distractions

There are many distractions all of them external.

Even thoughts and emotions are external.

"Internal" does not mean "within my skull or my body".

There is a point of awareness that observes all that goes on within the skull and the brain and the body.

That point has no "inside". Everything outside of it is external.

There is no "internal".

What does that mean?

It means that there is no "me". "Me" is only a bundle of external thoughts that I identify with.

It is like a school of fish that takes refuge within a bundle of seaweed that has accumulated in a vast ocean.

"Me" is a gravitational vortex that has accumulated enough nebulous gasses and particles to form a planet. A planet that my awareness has gathered together. A sense of something familiar in a vast, unknowable universe.

When I let go of everything external then awareness is free.

And there is no distraction.

Exposing The Myths

What is the point of being false?

False to another or to oneself?

For most of us, falsehoods are running our lives.

We are conflicted. We say one thing and do something else. We desire certain results and don't do the actions to achieve them. There is a deep, often unconscious conflict within us.

There is a disconnect. Somewhere there is a hidden agenda. 

How do we get back into alignment?

We must start looking so we can see clearly. We must stop being distracted. We must wake up.

If my life is not what I want it to be, it is because there is an internal lie living within me, a hidden falshood that is running like a computer program. I may think I deserve something but deep down I don't. It is something like that, a twist in the message.

It takes effort and intensity of purpose to find these myths but if we are honest with ourselves they bubble up all the time. They are not hard to spot because they are surrounded by resistance and suffering. The challenge is to not be overcome by them, to identify with them, to become them.

We have to expose these myths about ourselves to be free. 

We have to see them for what they are, false, having no value, utterly empty.

Kind of like eating chalk. We know it is a bad idea so we don't do it.

Once we truly "see" these myths - what they do to our lives - we are free of them.

Free Your Mind

I was watching the birds this morning and noticing how intense they are and at the same time how innocent. 

They never do anything half-assed. Every movement is complete with purpose. 

Watching them is kind of like being in a different kind of school. I see how my actions have been incomplete, without awareness and I can see what effect my ego has on all of that.

Ironically, my ego takes power out of my actions - my words and deeds - because the ego is based in the past and, because it is the source of all my suffering, is rooted in fear. 

It is not in the present moment and it is limited by its role - to look good, to never be diminished, to be safe. Seeking pleasure, avoiding pain. Control. 

It is like in the Matrix where Morpheus tells Neo why human beings will always be better than machines because the machines run according to a program from which they cannot deviate.

I think that is why living through the ego is so unfulfilling. It is limited, based in the past, and ultimately not who we are.

It is a mental/emotional prison.

Watch The Ego

A few days ago I watched my ego churn about.

 

It was trying to run old patterns of gripes, complaints, ways of being. 

I was watching it, feeling the disturbance of it rumble through my body. 

There were temptations to buy into it and become upset or get caught in resistance but I knew that it was just an old way of being, a distortion of my perception that was always going to play the same tune. 

Knowing that, I didn't touch it. I just let it be what it was and watched it move past my awareness like a strange creature that was somewhat dangerous.

The result was total freedom from it and a feeling of power and peace. 

In past times I would have bit on the bait and cause damage to myself and others in the form of suffering and drama. By becoming the ego I would be passing on and enhancing a world-wide waveform of complaining, anger, frustration, emotional gravity, etc. 

But when I simply watch the ego bubble up within me and allow it to be without engaging in it, it is like I am transmuting that energy into nothingness - pure potential - to be used with wisdom and conscious intention. 

I feel like it is healing the planet.

Freedom To Be Yourself

Our own particular suffering is the key to our salvation.

Suffering leads to a wound. 

All wounds have their root in a common cause.

Our undifferentiated awareness heals all wounds and ultimately heals the root of all suffering.

Our undifferentiated awareness means an awareness that is not identified with anything - not race, not religion, not gender, not tradition, not culture, not nationality, not judging, criticizing, or analyzing. It is simply the clear lens looking at what is without any meaning attached to it.

It is being able to be in this state of awareness while experiencing the suffering that is the key. It is the awareness that heals.

Our suffering wants to pull us into it, to become it, to act it out. Our suffering has gravity. Our identity has gravity. It wants to pull us down.

Awareness at its essence is totally free, without any constraints. Free to look at what is and from there, create and invent how you want yourself to be.

Seeing The Program

The old programs run within me. I have been watching them this morning.

Some are ancient, handed down from generations past. Some are self-created, recent, only decades old.

The program talks to itself, reinforcing itself, holding itself together.

It creates the "other". Someone out there to be disliked, resisted, attached to, desired.

It creates incompleteness. A sense of always searching, seeking, desiring, hoping. 

To live through the program - that is to be unconscious of it - is to feel this aching sense of inompleteness in everything. Nothing brings fulfillment because the program, the ego, the thought-made sense of self, is thought-created. It is the past trying to exist in the present moment.

Being born from thought means that the ego lives entirely in duality and is caught in the pleasure/pain cycle - seek pleasure, avoid pain.

All the mental/emotional narrative in the head is the ego trying to establish itself as the "I". 

It is only trying to protect us from a psychological sense of threat - that is to say - illusory sense of threat. It only lives in our mind but if not seen for what it is, it will have great impact on the body and the world around us.

Once seen, the program is of no value. In fact it is the greatest obstacle. The ego's proper place is that of a tool not a tyrant.