The Enlightened Ego - Solving the Problems of Awakening pt.1

great post i look forward to what you post next

reply to post by HUMBLEONE


Great, good luck on overcoming your depression. It is very difficult, and it takes time, but letting go of the ideas or thoughts that are making you depressed is the best solution. You don't need to run away from these thoughts. Just by recognizing that they are causing your depression you will begin to detach yourself from them, you will begin to see them for what they are, destructive and unhealthy.

As far as trying to hold onto meditational bliss, that is not a good idea nor is it even possible. Things are in constant change, so is your mind. The more you try to hold onto this feeling of bliss the more difficult it will be to find it. I have been there, and still am to some degree, so I can relate. I want nothing more than to continually experience the feeling of a deep meditational bliss that I felt a few weeks ago. But I notice that the more I focus on that desire, the harder it is to find it. I begin judging every moment like, "is this it? where is it? what should I do? what am I doing wrong?" until I grow tired of trying and give up everything and just be. Then it just happens like "BAM! I'm there!" with no clue on how I got 'there'. Try to let go of this desire, of the attachment to this desire, and if you are successful in doing this very difficult of a thing you will be 'there' without needing to do anything. It is already 'here' or 'there' you just need to remove the desires and attachments that are blocking you from seeing it. Good advice for myself as well.

Peace friend.

Originally posted by ancientthunder
reply to post by HUMBLEONE

 

hi my suggestion, is the very wanting to hold it is what will keep that natural state away. Just have faith, in the process that you are rediscovering at the moment. It cant be forced or made, rather it reveals itself to the person who is in the right receptive mode.
justbself

Great way of explaining it in a few amount of words!

That is something I am working on being able to do myself. Let go of the need to try and explain everything in so much detail... Let go.. Let go...

Peace friend.

Don't be so down on the ego... It's part of the whole picture you know.

A car may have a a fine engine, and an excellent driver, but it will go nowhere without a good set of tires!

Ego, quite simply put, is a seperation from the "One"...it has to happen for consciousness as we know it...

"As above so below"

Duality defines the Creation...
A collision of nothing and everything, balanced in this linear and emergent reality...
We ride the polarity waves on the event horizon of this collision...

In order, some love is given to chaos, that we may emerge from the one...a seperate self is born "new"...
This is a truth evident in the permiation of the parent/child pattern throughout reality...
The purpose in this pattern is creational variety...
A tabula rasa with which to generate new things eternally...

Also, from the parent/child pattern we can infer, (intuitivly so), our reason and destiny as creator beings...
as such, we must needs be versed in the dualities and the varying aspects, which include both Love and Hate, Order and Chaos...Unity and Entropy...Obscurity and Importance...

We are taught Balance and moderation for good reasons.
The works of creation are not one sided...
Selflessness (enlightenment) and selfishness (egoism) are but one such balancing act we must strive to perfect, and are indelible to the acts of creating.
For as offspring of a creator being, patterns would suggest that we are destined to create things...

Ego generates desire...
Desire is the definitive catalyst of our self/mind/soul/ego through the Creation...
It is very much in need in the beginning of our incarnations, and is most observable in our siblings of the animal kingdom...
It is the "little dab'l do ya" bit of Chaos, placed within the spinning wheel of unity, to generate variation...

We may find ourselves wanting of this aspect in late incarnations, and so comes the desire to create spiritual offspring, and sacrifice of the ego begins...
The pattern here is of the parent, sacrificing of themselves, that the "new one" may emerge and grow...fruit on the seed...

However, we are all just at the beginings, really...
There is sooo much more to be learned, and lots and lots of time and space within which to do it...

After all, it's not all about the beginning or the end...for me, it's the getting there...

Not sure how relevent my little poem here is, but..enjoy...


"The Ultimate Freedom"


The children of ultimate freedom are filled with the molten froth of calamities spiraling tirade.
Gone are the parental and societal orders, stifling as the night womb from whence they came.
Open is the door into the eternities...
Swiftly crumbling are the ledges of reason in the wombs darkened aerie...

Maturation approaches until its ardor matches the terror of what is unknown.
The child is free to be born anew, or borne down in forever’s bitter sweet embrace.
Reason dances with desire in an ever maddening spin of ordered chaos...
The furor of light and dark reaches a pinnacled instance of paradox..!

Yet, it is the age of light, and the fires of chaos must win; for the birth is the reason; and we are never truly free of the plan.
The seed is germinated or consumed; lost in the endless folds of nothing and everything.
As before, forevers are born anew, growing always outward, toward the ultimate freedom...

You cannot dabble into anything and achieve an understanding. New age literature, pottery, NASCAR, comic book collecting, whatever.

It takes a long time to develop a whole understanding of the concepts that make up New Age, or as I prefer, metaphysics. A lot of metaphysics is philosophy and a lot of that common sense. To dabble into metaphysics you see bits and pieces of things but no connections.

One aspect that is my personal favorite is meditation. You cannot meditate for a weekend and achieve any kind of benefit at all. It takes years of dedication, practice, and study to bear real fruit from your labor. I know this from experience, but the benefits manifest slowly. The changes are part of your daily life before you even notice that the changes have taken place.

Metaphysical literature is meant to change your paradigm to accept the new concepts you will encounter that will challenge your current thought process. The way we are raised to think and act (finite terms, earthly matters of material importance, sex and love, ego, society, money) is not in our spiritual best interest. The concepts of As Above So Below extend from the mundane and physical to the spiritual as do the other spiritual laws. Practice of them does not render immediate results either. It is one thing to know a concept, it is another to understand it on a level so deeply that you can see it all around you and manipulate it.

Click here for more information.

Like a breath of fresh air. Thank you so much.

reply to post by Khurzon


A lot of good info you posted! The next thread I make will go into further detail about the ego, what it is, what it does, the 'goods' and 'bads' of it... I just felt that this OP was more important to start off with for most people. These other things, like explaining the ego, become more subjective and more difficult to relate to for many people, so that is why I didn't go so far into describing the aspects of the mind. But maybe I will do that later to help clarify my own position on it.

Thanks friend.

reply to post by LifeIsEnergy


If you are aware of your ego then you would know that it is eternal, just like everything else, energy does not die it only changes it's from.

One way to deal with your ego is to squash it.

One way to deal with people who's ego is to big for there breaches is to squash there ego, and by extension them. Or vice versa either way works. And also another less energy wasting way is to forget all about it and move on, because after all! most things are not worth fighting over.

The ego is not bad nor is it good, but its job is one-fold to look out for your personal interest as you see it withing your world, the ego is just like everything else an extension of yourself and it will always function as a third unseen arm of your body, or in this case your mind, or to be even more precise how you see yourself and your world and were you fit into that broader picture, that is its job you can say.

But yes it is the cause of our problems and conflicts, because we have to deal with other egos out there in the world and like I said some have egos to big for there breaches and some have totally different viewpoints and lives then us, so by extension they will have totally different egos and when the egos clash then there is conflict and eventually collisions between egos equaling problems as you say.

Depression is rooted into the ego, the ego is rooted into your self. But what is your self rooted into?

Heres another thread that has some more interesting answers from people about the ego, for those interested.Leggo my Ego

Originally posted by ChaosMagician
I am a nice, polite, hardworking 95 pound female who people want things liberally from without threat or fear...and they step all over my path like it's a freaking dance party.

I could have been anybody. I could have been their worst nightmare in the flesh. My mere presences could have demanded respect rather than curiosity and a need to dominate. Those things could be living inside of me.

I know a thing or two about hate. I know I fight with my own hate and win.

I win because I care about principle... and life doesn't make principles of love and compassion easy.
Everything I love just seems to die and still I hold on. I hold on however I can without hurting anyone and I don't do it for approval. I do it because sometimes hope in love is all you have.

edit on 21-5-2011 by ChaosMagician because: (no reason given)

Oh wow, you know though I remember you from some other more ego induced thread were we clashed or whatever, and even though your really moody and a turtle hater. You do put up some of the most interesting comments and inspirational stories that I happen to come across on this site every once in a while.

reply to post by LifeIsEnergy
Another "Closet Genius" and frankly, doesn't warrant much more comment except while you are learning to deal with your ego's enlightened state, just stay the hell out of the passing lane. Good Grief, it is getting pretty muddy around here again.

reply to post by galadofwarthethird


Interesting perspective, and I am sure we agree on many things. But I see our, or at least my, problem with the ego as not a problem of how to deal with other people's egos but a problem of how to deal with my own. I found that when I transcend my ego and let go of its strong grasp on my mind, that other peoples egos don't bother me as much. It almost like part of the egos job is to blind you from its presence, and make you blame everyone else for your problems. Blaming others is a form of Self-betrayal in my opinion, because we know what we need and what we have to do in any giving circumstance but because of our egos fear of death or of persecution we choose not to act on these thoughts. Our ego is too afraid to sacrifice itself to accomplish what needs to be done, and that to me is the problem.

By the way, the ego arises from the self, and the self arises from the Self/God/Universal Consciousness/Energy whatever you'd like to call the unnameable underlying driver that creates and pervades all of life. That is where enlightenment is found, it is here already we just don't see it because the ego is blinding us from its realization.

Peace friend.

Originally posted by LifeIsEnergy
The Enlightened Ego – Solving the Problems of Awakening pt.1

All words and concepts deserve investigation.
Can use research, references, friends, intuition.

The things I was contemplating on, like:
“Who am I?

A point of perception.
soul with body.

Random House Dictionary
I, see ego
ego 2. Philos. a, the enduring and conscious element that knows experience

What is reality?

most dictionaries have circular definitions
for truth, reality, actual, fact, exist, and knowledge.
There is however an observable and definite meaning to each.

these are my definition for them:

true be the present moment now sensation, for every truth there is an experiencer.
false be anything that is not currently being sensed.
exist is anything that can be imagined
knowledge is past experience.
real is someidea agreed upon, the intersection of beliefs that comprise the group.
fact is an element of the real, something that has been agreed.

What is intrinsically right and wrong?

codes of morals or ethics are intrinsically right and wrong.
such codes of right and wrong, can be adopted by single perspectives or groups.

typically they are protocols to insure mutually beneficial interaction.

How did the universe come into being?

before anything there was nothing.

none 0 gave birth to not 1,
long story short, recombination, increasing complexity,
and now we're here.

Where is this all heading?”...

who's head is leading this?
It could be you. what are you planning?

I have plans, and just about everything happens accordingly. :-)

on and on, left me with only more and more questions until I felt completely overwhelmed.

well could have magically granted yourself omniscience perhaps *shrugs*

reply to post by LifeIsEnergy


9Nine is offering a guide to you all. Think about it and if you feel that it has some meaning, you should try to do it.
Learn to suppress and turn off your physical human mind and thoughts and vibrate,manifest and materialise your higher self to surface and assume full control over your complete thoughts in your every action. When you eventually manage your human mind body and thoughts through the full control of your higher self ,you are successful in achieving the state of being what you have become. Success is what you have become and not what you have in terms of material benefits.

reply to post by LifeIsEnergy


I wonder, is the ego and ones self esteem the same thing?Or perhaps "ego" is in of itself a mindless concept that just keeps us running around in circles?. I prefer to look at it as a matter of perspectives to simplify things.

Perspective 0: ones own perspective. The "ghost in the machine".
Perspective 1: ones own physical for, the "machine".
perspective?:2: the environment which exists around perspective 0 and 1.
perspective?3: other perspectives within said environment acting and existing as independent agents of ones own perspective and the environmental perspectives.

A perspective is something that exists in(within?) a space/time reference. I suspect the reason we have trouble understanding the whole "were did we come from..yadda..yadda yadda", is because as space/time perspectives we cannot fathom anything besides a space/time existence(ultra hypothetical). Because our nature is to exist within a space/time existence, so to understand that which is against space/time we have to understand that which is against us(???????).

And the kicker is because we rely on the "machine", perspective 1, our natural senses in order to "sense" the outside world and the fact that our senses are fallible means we can never truly know anything beyond our own perspective(0) with any degree of absolute certainty(hence the saying:"reality is often stranger then fiction").

That said you can use awareness(understanding of) perspective 1 to manipulate yourself. Meditation is a form of perspective manipulation, an indirect form granted, but still an act of manipulation. As your using the will of the "Ghost" to effect the state of being of ones own body(perspective 1). A more direct way would be direct muscle stimulation. Personally I start off by moving muscles around my ear lobes and working inward, but to each their own.


But you are right though, depression and false superiority do seem to be the biggest pitfalls with higher degrees of awareness. Looking forward to more written on this from your perspective on this.

reply to post by LifeIsEnergy

I found that when I transcend my ego and let go of its strong grasp on my mind, that other peoples egos don't bother me as much. It almost like part of the egos job is to blind you from its presence, and make you blame everyone else for your problems.

The ego is part of you it's the one among the sea of the many, it is like a life raft so you wont get swept away. Thats why you see everybody fight and sometimes die to keep there sense of ego the way it is. Because though there are ways to transcend the ego it is not in this reality or wavelength. All we can do is understand it in this reality what this reality is, we can not transcend it but we can overcome it or see beyond it.

What you have done is you have not transcended the ego, but you have seen beyond it and above it to whatever degrees that you witnessed, and seen that really in the scope of things the ego it is not that big of a deal and what it does and it's limitations, and when you see the ego for what it is it gives you a sort of power over it and also over others egos. But ultimately you can not get rid of the ego so easily and probably not at all, but you can change it and broaden its horizons and such, but in the end it is still there and it is what it always has been, and it is always searching.

Blaming others is a form of Self-betrayal in my opinion, because we know what we need and what we have to do in any giving circumstance but because of our egos fear of death or of persecution we choose not to act on these thoughts. Our ego is too afraid to sacrifice itself to accomplish what needs to be done, and that to me is the problem.

In a way your right that blaming others is a form of self betrayal, because the first step in seeing the ego is to see that there are others and there ego's and then there is you and your ego. So really anything that comes to you by the way of ego is brought by your ego, and to blame others is wrong, not because it is wrong in a metaphysical type of thing or way. But because it is incorrect as in not the whole truth and false therefore you are in error ie you are wrong.

And the reason the ego is afraid to sacrifice itself to accomplish what needs to be done is because as you know for many the ego is all they are, and if they sacrifice there ego they sacrifice themselves. But to reach any higher position just like in anything else such as work or school or whatever you have to make a sacrifice of yourself to yourself for higher ideals. But like all ideals be careful what you sacrifice to because most are false or just not worth it.

But like I said if you want to change peoples egos, well if like you say you see there ego for what it is. Well then it shouldn't be that much of a problem to change there ego for them, and even without them knowing it, and since ego and self is linked well you get the picture. But over all you really need do nothing when concerning the ego, but wait and it will change by itself eventually because there is always a greater scope then ones view from the fish bowl.

By the way, the ego arises from the self, and the self arises from the Self/God/Universal Consciousness/Energy whatever you'd like to call the unnameable underlying driver that creates and pervades all of life. That is where enlightenment is found, it is here already we just don't see it because the ego is blinding us from its realization.

Yes but all of that still does not answer what is the self? Other then what we call this reality/body/existence/civilization/whatever we are aware of that we are "self" or "I" every day in this life we are aware of that, but not fully what that is. And hence we search with all our tools both physically/body and ethereal/mind/ego/though for these answers and the ego is both a life raft, a tool, an island, and a searcher and protector of current paradigms that we hold on to and call our reality oh so dearly.

Ever notice how some-peoples ego kicks into full drive when you question and try to break down there reality, or even how some would interject into some topic that has nothing to do with them, when there ego gets a whiff in the winds that it could cause some questions with what they call there safe and cozy way that they see things. What do you think is driving them to that? They must be searching for something. Or to keep something as it is without no surprises and questions to there paradigm. As you can see the ego is more complicated then that its simply the ego.

reply to post by galadofwarthethird


Words are just symbols for a realization or feeling that we are trying to convey to others, they are not the absolute 'object' or meaning we are trying to convey, they are only pointing towards it. So you say we can go beyond, I say we can transcend, it is the same meaning, that we can overcome.

The ego is not there, it is an illusionary construct that arises from the sense of individual self, of 'me', of what is 'mine'. It only seems real because IT is what is claiming that it is real.

To better understand the ego I suggest you search for it within yourself. If you must search for an understanding of it 'out here' then I suggest you listen to what the truly awakened people have said about its reality.

Here is one quote to get you started: "What is the ego? Enquire. The body is insentient and cannot say `I'. The Self is pure consciousness and non-dual. It cannot say `I'. No one says `I' in sleep. What is the ego then? It is something intermediate between the inert body and the Self. It has no locus standi. If sought for it vanishes like a ghost". - Ramana Maharshi

Elaborating on something that is hard to explain is never easy! Having tried to do so myself many times only to fail leaves me with the notion to respond to you by saying absolutely impressive.Myself glady appreciate the honesty you put in your topic and did not try and make it seem like it was trailing into something you were entirely a proffesional or proficient at.

I am overwhelmed.I too have looked in places and started to find even more questions it truly believe that the path to enlightenment is so easy and just in front of us.we will laugh when we find out haw to be.
long life to you my friend and everybody

Originally posted by Itisnowagain
reply to post by LifeIsEnergy

 

The thoughts that appear are auditioning for your attention. The thoughts that appear are no different that all the people and 'things' that appear. Give all things the attention they deserve, pat them on the head and let them pass. You are the 'one' that all 'things' appear to.
The 'one' that the body, mind and world appear to.
This 'one' is the still, silent space that allows and welcomes the 'ten thousand things'.

Namaste.

AWESOME! Thank you for your wisdom!