The Ego Muddies the Waters

"Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'."

Friedrich Nietzsche

I am coming back again to the theme of surrender. To finding the true purpose of one's life by simply living it in full surrender. This may seem an alien concept to many, to most if I am honest, but it is the way that life is actually lived. As long as we pursue the desires of the little me, the ego self, then we are not fulfilling our true potential. Many great men throughout history have realised this, a fairly recent example being Albert Einstein.

So how do we live in full surrender? To paraphrase Wayne Wirs: 'you must become less so that The Source may become more.'

The less there is of you, the more there is of your true purpose.

Wayne always provided evidence for this in what he termed the Siddhis. As far as I know it is a Sanskrit word that does not translate well into English but is usually used to describe the strange effects that occur around those who have passed through the various stages of enlightenment and are living in harmony with The Source.

Things happen. I experience this myself. I tend to call them synchronicities.

Things just fall into line. Life goes more smoothly. It is not always what people would term good and happy, but the concepts of good and happy do not mean anything once you reach this stage. Good and happy are just points on a sliding scale and the whole scale is acceptable because that is how life works.

Contentment best describes the state of the truly enlightened. Everything is okay. The world is pervaded by a sense of okay-ness.

Ideas just pop into your head (feel free to see what Einstein had to say about that). You are pondering something and someone just walks up to you and says something about it that clarifies the situation, without your asking or seeking their input. You are startled by a white crow that flies across the road ahead of you, so you study it for a while. Later the same day the symbol of the white crow pops up again, but this time in a book title or a store sign or a conversation overheard and it proves beneficial to you.

There is no 'woo woo' here. There is nothing flaky about this. It just happens. The universe just lines up to let your life's purpose play itself out. You are not running the show, you never were. You (little ego you) were just getting in the way.

It is hard to explain to someone who believes their sense of free will is actual free will. Again, this is a step that is reached when you are further down the enlightenment trail, for want of a better description. We have a sense of many things, but that is all it is – a sense of. There is no true separation in the world. There are no separate organisms that live and die, there is just one life expressing itself in billions of ways. Human egos like to think otherwise.

Your ego is just an imaginary bunch of patterns that thinks it exists and does its best, out of love for itself, to create the life it thinks it desires. Mainly it just gets in the way. Those desires simply make you unhappy. There is only What Is. There is no such thing as what is not. Most desires are basically an argument with reality, seeking something that does not exist and being sure that it will create happiness as soon it does exist.

Desires are a rejection of reality.

I am sure you can see now why they are a problem, and they all come from that ego that thinks it exists. I'm sure you have read enough books on enlightenment by now and spoken to enough enlightened people to realise that there is no such thing as a single personality in the ego. Carl Jung many years ago identified basic archetypes, each one of which can become the dominant ego at a moments notice when called upon or needed. Every unenlightened human is living with multiple personalities, they just don't realise it.

Language consists of concepts, so I am doing my best to explain this but the reason I usually address myself to people who have passed through some of the process of enlightenment is because it is very difficult for those who have not to know what the hell I am talking about.

(There really is no such thing as enlightenment to those who are living it. When the Zen masters tell us that we are already enlightened, they are speaking the truth, it is just that most people don't know what the hell they are talking about either.)

If you have ever had a time when you were working on something and you lost yourself in that work and found that the work had gone very well; that you could not remember the time when you had been working on it; that you were in the flow - that is the enlightened state.

That is what it feels like when you are not running the show: you – the little ego.

When the little ego gets out of the way the great work happens.

As the Mud Settles - Stay Awake!

But so long as you are separate from things, you need everything. To exist as a separate individual constitutes the entire problem. – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

In the biographies and Writings by the greats of Enlightenment it can seem that they are perfect and live in constant bliss, but in actuality that is not true.

Enlightenment brings contentment. This is not because all of your problems go away. Nothing in your external life changes. Whatever is, remains. The change comes about in your shift of perspective.

Problems simply become situations. – Adyashanti

Even though you are now awake, your ego still exists. An ego is a collection of beliefs, opinions, stories and so forth – all of which are fictitious. As long as the body unit continues to exist, the ego will continue to exist and it will try to drag you back into the dream. That is its function. The ego was created to deal with the dream, by the dream, for the dream.

Watch a newborn infant. They have not yet developed an ego. They have not yet learned about the imaginary separation which they will be taught later. They have no language, they only have Actual Experience. Seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, sensing is their whole world. They are Awakeness.

Later they will learn their name and the names of those around them and those labels will lead them to believe that they are separate from the world, and thus their ego will be born. The ego's job is to ensure that the particular unit in question, the body and personality which it now believes in, get what it thinks they need.

The process of awakening is the process of seeing that the ego is a fictitious character which we believed was us. Once it is seen for a fiction then the separation that it believes in is also seen as a fiction. The power of the ego is broken but in order for that power to stay broken for the rest of the life of that unit, Awakeness must be continually experienced.

Any thought patterns that arise which contain beliefs or opinions or stories are coming from the ego. Particular warning signs to look out for are the existence of words such as "could, would, should". Feelings will arise and some of these will be the result of the ego's machinations.

If Awakeness perceives a raging flood approaching, the unit's defence mechanism will fire up and a quick appraisal will show that the body-mind unit seems to be in physical danger so a physical response is appropriate. The ego will come up with suggestions for the best way to avoid the danger. Safeguarding the body unit makes sense to Awakeness also, so a response will be selected and action will be taken.

If someone in an email is taunting/mocking the unit, the body-mind unit will fire up a defence mechanism and a quick appraisal by Awakeness will show that the body unit is in no physical danger. The ego on the other hand will see this as a threat and will try to amplify the unit's defence mechanism and will begin to plan its response. Thoughts will start to fly. The ego will desire to chew on those thoughts to produce more thoughts and 'bad feelings'.

If you are fooled by the ego, you will drop back into the dream and you will respond as the ego wants to. You will feel the ego's anger that someone would dare to criticise a being as perfect as you obviously are.

Yes, it will even claim your awakeness as a status symbol for itself, even though the ego can never be awake. You know that is ridiculous, but that is how the ego works. It will come out with sentences like: "You can't say that about me. I am an Enlightened Being. You know nothing. I bet you don't even sit and do zazen!" (Laughing again - I've actually had that one appear)

You will create your own suffering.

You learn to recognise the ego's responses and when you detect one, you do not fight it. If you fight the ego you are giving it the recognition it desires – you are treating it as though it exists. All internal language is the ego talking to the ego.

What you then do instead is experience Awakeness once more.

Take a deep breath and look around without labelling, without language, just seeing What Is. Seeing that there is no separation. There is no other. That the illusion of all the other units is just an illusion and that every one of them is perfect just the way it is, and is acting perfectly from the highest spiritual knowledge which it possesses.

When you view the world as Awakeness, the ego naturally fades.

If you find a situation still exists then, as Awakeness, sit.

Examine it. Ask if it is Real. Ask if it is True. Ask WHO is having the issue. It is always the ego/character – not You.

Vigilance, Constant-Awake-Vigilance is the way forward.