.Consciousness is life, and life is Consciousness. The two are inseparable. Today we’re going to cover the source of most of our problems we experience, the Ego.
The Ego is the part of us that is concerned with our physical survival. The Ego is a throwback to the biological drives that allowed life to survive into the modern era. The ego is a necessary part of life, it’s original role in humans and it’s current role in the Animal world is to help determine what is Helpful and what is Harmful to the physical body. Beginning with the simple ameoba tasting other cells to determining if it was safe to eat, or is that cell toxic. The ego also helped determine what were friendly entities, and which ones were unfriendly. The Ego’s primary purpose was to ensure that our bodies lived long enough to breed.
The challenge for us spiritual seekers is that as our capacity to think, reason and thus mentate expanded and it did not replace the mental process of the animal, but was added on to it like bolting a jet on a Yugo. The Ego is interested only in the survival of it’s pack and itself. The Ego does not recognize the need or wants of other life.
The downside of mentalization is that you take the primitive animal mind and give it the tools to create weapons of mass destruction. The Intellect is a recent additional to our toolbox and most of the time it’s used as a more powerful tools for the survival of the intrinsic narcissistic core of the ego. The animal could now use the intellect for predatory purposes and for pursuing narcissistic goals. The self awareness of the human Ego added to our changed the nature of our the animal drives by adding Pride to the primative drives of Desire and Fear.
The goal of most spiritual work is to transcend the limitations of the Ego,thereby removing the source of pain from our lives. With its impatient wants,loud protests, and unrealistic expectations, the Ego is the source of all pain we experience in our life. A person is vulnerable to emotional pain in exact relationship to the degree of self awareness and self acceptance that individual has. When we admit our downside, we eliminate our Achilles’ heel. An extremely valuable insight is the realization that one’s own personal consciousness is the decisive influence that determines all that occurs in one’s life.
Transcending the Ego is a most worthy goal that allows us to see how much we humans have common.The Ego tends to view life and only see the differences, while the Enlightened mind looks at the same life and sees a mostly similarities.
The mind either consciously or unsconsciouslessly tends to manifest what is held in mind. As long as the ego and dominates the mind, the world will be viewed as hostile. This viewpoint is the reason why peace has only been present in 7% of the man’s history. So if we view the world through the filter of the Ego, the world we see is one of differences and conflict.
The key to painless spiritual growth is humility, which amounts to merely dropping pridefulness and accepting failability as a normal human characteristic of ourselves and others.
A common mistake in many spiritual seekers is that once they recognize that the Ego is the source of their problems, the Ego is then demonized.This is subtle trap because the Ego get’s it’s energy from hatred, therefore hating the Ego just gives it more strength. That just gives greater strength the Ego and tends to compartmentalize the mind.
Accept the Ego for what it is, this acceptance will lead to it’s undoing. just because you prefer chocolate and, that does not mean you must hate vanilla.
