Welcome to this guided meditation and teaching.
I'm Michael Wormuth.
I invite you now to make yourself comfortable.
We will start with some music to help us turn our focus inward.
Thank you for listening.
When we hear of the ego,
We may be inclined to think that it is some kind of entity,
Some kind of thing that lives within us.
There is no thing called ego.
Ego is a way of thinking,
A choice made,
Decided that we needed to live by control.
The ego is a process of thoughts and beliefs and concepts.
What do we dwell on or dwell in with our conscious awareness are disconnected from the truth.
Ego is a problem solving consciousness.
Because it looks for problems,
Finds them.
It is always looking for what is wrong,
What is not enough,
What is bad,
What is right.
It is measuring and evaluating and analyzing and judging constantly.
The world is perceived as a duality,
That is,
That there is good and bad and right and wrong.
If we are looking for right,
There must be wrong also.
We cannot split the world and have just one side of that split.
We must be clear that when things seem wrong,
We have activated and invested our trust and faith in a process of looking at the world as if it could be split into two,
As if it could be a duality.
And anytime we claim there is something wrong,
That is when we are invested in that process.
It is a choice that we make.
In most of our lives it has been a completely subconscious choice.
But now we are waking up and becoming conscious.
We can begin to see how we are triggered into making that choice.
We cannot find peace or happiness or truth when we are invested in that process.
The truth is we are running away from peace and truth and happiness.
We make that choice.
As we heard,
We have entered into a conflict with peace and truth,
Although we may not be conscious in any way of that.
Indeed,
It is a rare experience to see that conflict with any clarity.
When we are invested in the ego,
We think we are living in reality.
It feels like reality to us.
We would even claim it is reality,
As many people do.
But it has nothing to do with reality.
I wonder why we grow miserable,
Why our health fails,
Why we suffer and struggle.
Because we have been in an endless conflict.
We have been in an endless conflict with our natural selves,
Our authentic selves.
And that is what we must surrender.
We must end that conflict.
Every judgment we hold about ourselves and others is evidence of that conflict.
Everything that we think is wrong or should be different is evidence of that conflict.
We must think of what surrender means.
The end of conflict.
Giving up of being the leader or the winner,
Whatever way we might look at it.
Of being right,
Of being okay,
Of being good enough.
Whatever our battle is about,
It is not serving us.
Because in this moment,
Right now,
The truth,
Which is absolutely,
Universally true right now,
Is that we are whole,
Complete,
And perfect.
We are a creation of an universal,
Infinite,
Creative source.
We exist within that infinite consciousness.
There is nothing to be proven,
Nothing to be earned or deserved.
There is nothing to make up for.
There is nothing to do.
So how do we surrender?
How do we give up?
We are the chooser of what we pay attention to,
Of what we dwell on and enjoy.
We are not victims,
We are not powerless,
We are not forced to do anything with our conscious awareness.
We are free always to choose what we are going to hold is true in this moment.
Once we decide that we want truth to be our priority,
Then we are willing to become present.
When we are dwelling in the ego,
We are not willing to be present.
We are only concerned with the past and the future.
We are afraid.
We are afraid of the truth.
We are afraid of reality.
When we come to meditate,
We say,
I want to surrender.
But there's something wrong.
You cannot surrender.
Because we are believing the reality of the ego.
If we come to meditate and say,
I have come to dwell in the truth,
Which I know is the only reality.
There is no other reality.
Despite all appearance and all that I believe,
There is a perfection and order to this moment.
It is available to me right now.
Whether I experience it fully in this moment or not,
I hold and claim it as the truth.
I make no other claim.
We must change our state to a state of acceptance and allowing,
Gratitude,
Openness,
Compassion,
And understanding.
The judgments and the rules must let go the idea that there could be anything wrong with this moment.
We must claim there is nothing wrong and that that perfection exists right now.
It cannot be denied.
It cannot be anything other than what it is.
We know the ego will not accept this.
It will struggle to claim our attention,
Divert us,
And this is our practice,
Our journey to overcome the temptation of the ego to enter into the world where there is a constant string of offerings that will make us happy.
If only we do this,
If only we buy that,
If only we eat this,
We will find peace,
And yet it never comes.
The profound peace of an infinite,
Loving,
And divine consciousness is within us right now.
It's available to us,
For us.
It is us.
It is who we are.
If we will only release all the other ideas of who we are,
We must let them dissolve in the presence of the moment.
So it is our choice now.
So what will we proclaim?
What will we do with our conscious awareness?
We can direct it to the moment.
The experience of being here right now.
You can say yes to surrender,
Letting go,
Even more.
You can always surrender a bit more.
You can always let go a little more.
And we can cultivate acceptance,
Unconditional acceptance of this moment.
No judgment whatsoever.
Just seeking the full experience of this moment.
Let us end the conflict with the peace and truth of ourselves.
Let us surrender.
The truth is alive within us.
The power and presence of that infinite consciousness is the spirit within us.
Let us give ourselves to it.
Let the ego be dissolved in the light of that spirit until there is only the peace of truth.
