Today I want to talk about the ego.
What is it and how it is perpetuated?
The only word of caution that I want to have for all of you is Once you see this,
You can't unsee it.
It will be tempting to notice it in others while this pattern continues within you.
I invite you to explore this in a first person experience only not in the context of someone else.
And today I am speaking to you.
The awareness.
The real I that is you.
I am not referring to any part of you.
I am not referring to any limitation in you.
I am not talking to any belief or personality in you.
I am talking to you.
That which you are.
The beauty of this awareness,
This I is that I can identify with anything I want.
I can go from being shapeless and formless like the water and pretend to be the shape of the cup or a bottle or a test tube.
When the infinite water pretends to be limited conditioned,
Dependent dependent that becomes the ego.
The phrase my ego is a misnomer.
There are no two in you.
There is just you that has identified itself to be something limited.
And I want you to verify it that are there multiple yous inside.
So the ego is not a static piece of the puzzle.
It's not an object like a thought like a cup that you can refer to.
The ego is the activity of becoming limited identifying as a personality as a bundle of experiences that we have had and the collective sum of it.
You know when we look at babies they don't have ego.
I'm sure we can all agree to it because we both understand that ego is something nasty,
Limited.
But that doesn't mean the baby doesn't have a sense of I.
It's not functional in life.
No,
It knows when to ask for food,
When to smile,
When to look deeply into your eyes.
Having a limitation is not necessary.
Anytime you think you are a man,
You are a woman of this ideology,
Of that religion,
Of this political affiliation or you are a mother or a father or you are good,
You are bad,
You are righteous any label,
Any limitation no matter how harmless or socially acceptable it is it's putting you in a box because that's what the mind wants to do to label,
Categorize,
Isolate,
Isolate and separate.
That's the nature,
That's the use of the mind to abstract things out,
To isolate them,
To separate them.
So the ego is not a thing.
It's an activity.
At this point in our lives,
It's an unconscious habit that doesn't even register as a habit,
As an activity to the point where we don't even ask ourselves what is ego?
And even if we look up the definition where is it inside me?
I can find a perception,
I can find a thought,
I can find a feeling.
Where do I find this ego?
These questions are not for the faint-hearted.
For us to really know who we are this discarding of what we are not is supremely essential.
If we were to do time travel and take you when you were a baby and somebody was hurling insults at you somebody was mean to you they were saying bad things to you you would have no clue.
There would be no reason for you to be offended,
To be hurt unless of course somebody actually hurt you.
Physically.
So if you get hurt by someone's words it's time to reflect what is it?
What limitation is it that is creating this turmoil in me rather than combating the person who allegedly hurt you because words are incapable of hurting you.
I have spoken at least a few hundred words till now all of them have dissolved in you without affecting any part of you positively or negatively they have just left no trace.
Same is true with all the other words that fall on your ears except something in you is hurt something in you is shaken up triggered this activity revolves around this I a limited I the pleasure seeking I am better than you I or I am worse than you I I want this I want this she said this to me how dare she I and this psychological activity called the ego needs to be constantly fed otherwise it starts dying down so if you paid attention to your internal monologue the thought based monologue and the feeling based monologue you will find 95% is about I,
Me,
Myself this I this I activity rather needs to feel aggrandized all the time either in respect of our possessions material or information or skills needs to feel unique,
Separate,
Special feeling special feeling unique feeling aggrandized can happen in infinite number of ways for men it could be in terms of possessions in terms of money in terms of how beautiful my wife is how successful my kids are what school you went what school my kids are in how popular I am for women it could be the way you look the way you are dressed and this game is not constant when you know you are falling short in one area you will start feeling better in other areas,
Oh I am smarter than her I have travelled more than her what's the point of all this money she is so unhappy this game is constantly being played in our mind nobody else is playing it we voluntarily are engaging in this game to feed that I activity because there is pleasure in feeling better that's the pleasure that fuels this I activity I have this or I did this the doership is another way of perpetuating this I activity oh I did this I reinvented myself I cured myself I in this giant interconnected universe I am special or another way of perpetuating this I activity is I am a victim special by how bad I am how bad fortune has been with me,
To me how I have been wronged different kind of the same everything designed to feel separate to continue to feel separate all this is happening constantly harmlessly,
Allegedly a giant complex spider's web that is constantly being woven strengthened you are one word,
One sentence away from being from blowing up from being triggered for I am sure you know how it is to walk on eggshells around certain people sometimes this I activity is more predominant in certain areas certain topics of our life maybe work maybe our kids,
Maybe our parents and this entire I activity is created,
Is woven to protect something in us that needs no protection that cannot be hurt that cannot be bent or dented yet there is a fragility that is assumed and protected if somebody says something to you you will either retreat or you will fight back to protect that I activity fragile part of you alleged fragile part of you if you think you are the ego,
You will be the ego if you think you are a limited personality that has been shaped,
That is being shaped by life experiences,
You will be rendered to that limitation but if you discover yourself as awareness that experience that is so familiar and intimate to you ever since you were a baby you will recognize that nothing in me needs to be protected some words some thoughts,
Some feelings are not going to kill me actually they can never touch me but this I activity proliferates undetected clarity is its biggest enemy you are not what has happened to you you have just witnessed this happening all along in the process you have grown in size physically you have accumulated information mentally and your habits have changed of thinking,
Feeling,
Acting and relating with others as a manager of this body and mind you have changed,
You have grown but as awareness you have not that's the awareness you default to when you drift into deep sleep that's the only place you can find rest because this I activity is exhausting it has only left us suffering,
Disconnected lonely our closest,
Most intimate relationships are not immune from this ego butting of the head operating from the ego from this I activity is the animalistic part of us I often cringe at you are just human in the context of mistakes and flaws what makes us human is the divinity in us the human part is the animalistic part the limited part you know there are phrases that are thrown around oh I should get out of my own way we don't pause and ask ourselves what does it even mean experientially are these two I's that are being spoken the same or are they different again this ego doesn't thrive in clarity so what we have done as a society and culture is we have created an entity out of an activity to blame it to demonize it that's how an ego is born and we are absorbed as if that ego has been surgically implanted in us and is an alien that we are helpless in front of but when we see it as an activity that was naively accepted and unknowingly perpetuated and is being still perpetuated if you don't want to be limited you can quit the game feeling separate is not necessary to live this life and just because you feel separate doesn't make it true every part of us is connected to each other nothing can be accomplished by one person by one separation it's only an abstraction of the mind that we have out of our own will and freedom believed in there's no truth to it the restlessness the desperation that we feel is the feeling monologue the separate thinking has been perpetuated,
Has been practiced so many times that it has settled into our body threat existential threat is how it is perpetuated in the body grabbing at things,
At events lack of trust these are the feelings that perpetuate this high activity and the premise is that if we endure these feelings we are going to die that's why a feeling,
A discomfort which is far lower than even a paper cut or a tooth ache is capable of rendering us helpless animalistic we descend from the humanness to animalness if you infused your thinking with clarity and your feelings with openness and endurance these patterns hidden in stealth mode will start dissolving themselves when we start noticing them at first to even embrace the truth of my words and then to courageously and wisely investigate the truth of the thoughts and the harmlessness of the feelings the invincibility the lack of fragility in you will start shining to you a humility will dawn that I am just an ant in an ant colony I am safe I don't need to feel a particular way to be my existence is beyond feelings and thoughts and words and actions I am awareness
