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.

Who is Stirring the Mud?

If you truly want to Awaken, as the Buddha and others have over the centuries, then stop quoting the 'patriarchs' and actually work on dissolving the Ego and thereby losing ALL attachments.

This includes losing attachments to 'scriptures' of any kind. All so-called scriptures have been modified , added to and subtracted from by men who could not understand the original message of their founders.

If  you are a Buddhist and sit around arguing over quotes from those long dead, you are wasting your 'precious human life'.

Someone recently suggested that 'Oneness' was not all there was and how would I feel if he dropped a rock on my foot, along with other ridiculous suggestions followed by a Cha'an quotation.

If you dropped a rock on my unit's foot, pain would arise, but it would not be MY pain. Everything is an arising. Thoughts, feelings, sensations of all kinds are simply arisings.

You are NOT an Ego trapped inside a bag of skin.

Stop. Just stop the seemingly incessant 'thoughts'.

Cease to identify with the bag of skin, with the 'mind', with the personality, with pleasure or with pain.

There is no 'do-er'. You are doing nothing.

Essentially, 'you' are a just walking sensory organ.

Once you truly awaken, re-read some of those quotes and you will be able to tell which were written by those who had experienced the IS and those which were not. There really is a lot of crap out there.

Don't quote rubbish you don't even understand - Sit! Find the Silence. Find out WHAT it is that is looking, hearing and sensing...

How Does the Unit's Behaviour Change After Enlightenment?

It is very simple, and more perfect than you can possibly imagine.

I only just realised this afternoon how simple it really is. There is no 'doer'. There is no 'effort'. You do not 'try to change' anything.

Hold an unskilled pattern in the light of Truth and just ask: Is it real? Is it true? To whom is it helpful? or whatever questions you think will reveal the root of this pattern. (I know some people recommend Byron Katie's 'The Work' for a system of doing this, but questions like the above will suffice.)

Let's use an example: 

Suppose that I think the woman next door, who has several children by several fathers; and claims benefits from the State; and smokes and drinks; and lets her kids run round the streets causing trouble, is a bad person.

• Is it real? No. It's an opinion.
• Is it true? No. There is no free will. She is doing exactly what she is supposed to be doing. She has always done exactly what she was supposed to do. She has no choice. She is acting from the highest spiritual understanding which she possesses.
• To whom is it helpful? Well, the ego obviously. The ego loves to compare and label and feel better than other people. It wants to be special.

Since there is no separate self, or ego, then if any action appears 'selfish' it is immediately seen to be false, because we know that separate 'self' does not actually exist. Just this one simple realization starts the Body/Mind Unit on the road to dealing with many unskilful patterns.

Once the pattern is seen for what it is, it naturally dissolves, because the New Data (created by Truth) is presented to the Body/Mind Unit which is incapable of acting against its own beliefs. That's just how it works. 

Think about it: how difficult is it to do something you don't believe in? 

You feel stupid hanging up your stockings by the fireplace in December once you know there's no Santa Claus, don't you? You don't keep looking up the chimney to make sure he's not real, do you?

Just get this: Once the Body/Mind no longer believes the pattern is True, the pattern dissolves.

It really is that simple. There is no doer. There is no effort to change. It just reprograms itself. That's its job.

Clearing, Post Enlightenment,  is just the process of noticing these patterns and shining the bright light of Truth upon them.

It really is that beautifully Simple.