So i’ve been re-reading a new earth by Elkhart Tolle and I have also been downloading the podcast from itunes and taking the classes to get a sharper grasp and understanding of this thing we all share, the ego...:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
The first two chapters are very conceptual, especially the 1st one.
I’m going to share w/ everyone the 3rd chapter because it really breaks things down in a practical way and even though I can be ethereal and do grasp on to things that have a more direct approach. i think we all can absorb info like that a little better.
If you have gotten to this and feel a desire to read this it means that you are ready to absorb and digest it as you may.
So here we go......................................
I will break up the chapter in sections throughout the week.
The on-line discussion and class will be next Monday 6pm pacific time.
The class will be on this chapter and the information contained in it.
anything below w/ *( )* is not what is included in the book but points of referring or responding to the ideas.
Enjoy and love this moment.
___The Core of Ego______
Most people are so identified with the voice in the head -the incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it- that we may describe them as being possessed by their mind.
As long as you are completely aware of this, you take the thinker to be who you are. This is the egoic mind. We call it egoic mind. We call it egoic because there is a sense of self, of I (ego ), in every thought- every memory, every interpretation, opinion, viewpoint, reaction, emotion. This is unconsciousness, spiritually speaking. Your thinking, the content of your mind, is of course conditioned by the past: your upbringing, culture, family background, and so on. The central core of all your mind activity consists of certain repetitive and persistent thoughts, emotions, and reactive patterns that you identify with most strongly. This entity is the ego itself.
In most cases, when you say "I ", it is the ego speaking, not you, as we have seen *(referring to the past 2 chapters)*. It consists of thought and emotion, of a bundle of memories you identify with as " me and my story ", habitual roles you play without knowing it, of collective identifications such as nationality, religion, race, social class, or political allegiance. It also contains personal identifications, not only with possessions, but also with opinions, external appearance, long- standing resentments, or concepts of yourself as better than or not as good as others, as a success or failure.
The content of the ego varies from person to person, but in every ego, the same structure operates. In other words: Egos only differ on the surface. Deep down they are all the same. In what way are they the same? They live on identification and separation. When you live through the mind- made self comprised of thought and emotion that is the ego, the basis for your identity is precarious because thought and emotion are by their very nature ephemeral, fleeting. so every ego is continuously struggling for survival, trying to protect and enlarge itself.
To uphold the I- thought, it needs the opposite thought of "the other."
The conceptual " I " cannot survive without the conceptual " other ." The others are most other when I see them as my enemies. at one end of the scale of this unconscious egoic pattern lies the egoic compulsive habit of faultfinding and complaining about others.
Jesus referred to it when he said, "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?" At the other end of the scale, there is physical violence between individuals and warfare between nations. In the bible, Jesus’ question remains unanswered, but the answer is, of course: because when I criticize or condemn another, it makes me feel bigger, superior.
COMPLAINING AND RESENTMENT
Complaining is one of the ego’s favorite strategies for strengthening itself. Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in. Whether you complain aloud or only in thought makes no difference. Some egos that perhaps don’t have much else to identify with easily survive on complaining alone. When you are in the grip of such an ego, complaining, especially about other people, is habitual and, of course, unconscious, which means you don’t know what you are doing.
Applying negative mental labels to people, either to their face or more commonly when you speak about them to others or even just think about them, is often part of this pattern. Name- calling is the crudest form of such labeling and of the ego’s need to be right and triumph over others: "jerk, bastard, bitch" - all definitive pronouncements that you can’t argue with. On the next level down on the scale of unconsciousness, you have shouting and screaming, and not much below that, physical violence.
Resentment is the emotion that goes with the complaining and the mental labeling of people and adds even more energy to ego. Resentment means to feel bitter, indignant, aggrieved, or offended. You resent other people’s greed, their dishonesty, their lack of integrity, what they are doing, what they did in the past, what they said. what they failed to do, what they should or shouldn’t have done. The ego loves it. Instead of overlooking unconsciousness in others, you make it into their identity...................
*( this has been a very eye opening thing for me and something that has been a struggle for the past few weeks, but I’m getting better at recognizing that its the person ego that reacts in this manner, the pattern )*
.................Who is doing that? The unconsciousness in you, the ego. Sometimes the "fault" that you perceive in another isn’t even there. It is total misinterpretation, a projection by a mind conditioned to see enemies and make itself right or superior. At other times, the fault may be there, but by focusing on it, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else you amplify it. And what you react to in another, you strengthen in yourself.
Nonreaction to the ego in others is one of the most effective ways not only of going beyond ego in yourself but of dissolving the collective human ego. But you can only be in a state of nonreaction if you can recognize someone’s behavior as coming from the ego, as being and expression of the collective human dysfunction. When you realize it’s not personal, there is no longer a compulsion to react as it were. By not reacting to the ego, you will often be able to bring out the sanity in others, which is the unconditioned consciousness as opposed to the conditioned. At times you may have to take practical steps to protect yourself from deeply unconscious people. This you can do without making them into enemies. Your greatest protection, however, is being conscious.
Somebody becomes an enemy if you personalize the unconsciousness that is ego. Nonreaction is not weakness but strength. Another word for nonreaction is forgiveness. To forgive is to overlook, or rather to look through. You look through the ego to the sanity that is in every human being as his or her essence.
The ego loves to complain and feel resentful not only about other people but also situations. What you can do to a person, you can also do to a situation: make it into an enemy. The implication is always : This should not be happening ; I don’t want to be here; I don’t want to be doing this ; I’m being treated unfairly. And the ego’s greatest enemy of all is ,of course, life itself.
Complaining is not to be confused with the informing someone of a mistake or deficiency so that it can put right. And to refrain from complaining doesn’t necessarily mean putting up with bad behavior. there is no ego in telling the waiter that your soup is cold and needs to be heated - if you stick to the facts, which are always neutral. " How dare you serve me cold soup......" That’s complaining. There is a " me " here that loves to feel personally offended by the cold soup and is going to make the most of it, a " me" that enjoys making someone wrong. The complaining we are talking about is in service of the ego, not of change. Sometimes it becomes obvious that the ego doesn’t really want change so that it can go on complaining.
See if you can catch, that is to say, notice, the voice in the head, perhaps in the very moment it complains about something. And recognize it for what it is: the voice of the ego, no more than a conditioned mind- pattern, a thought. Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not that voice, but the one who is aware of it. In fact, you are the awareness that is aware of the voice. In the background, there is awareness. In the foreground, there is the voice, the thinker. In this way, you are becoming free of the ego, free of the unobserved mind. The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern.
Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist. The old mind -pattern or mental habit may still survive and reoccur for a while because it has momentum of thousands of years of collective human unconsciousness behind it, but every time it is recognized, it is weakened.
............So there it is for now.
I will post the next bulletin later today or tomorrow.
Its about Reactivity and Grievances.
i apologize for any typos.
hope I’m finding anyone who got this far in a great space of NOW.
Feel free to correspond.
Always love chatting w/ people outside the superficial.
Til next flight
the SilverHawk is outta heeeeere!
Peace Love and Gratitude!!!