Friday, July 30, 2010

Making Friends with Yourself

One "trap" that I find many spiritual seekers fall into at some point or another is one that doesn't get mentioned often, yet is extremely detrimental to the awakening process. People forget to love their ego-based self. Most of the mainstream discourse on awakening places a lot of emphasis on detaching from the ego-based identity (which is a vital idea that has undoubtedly led to an overall raising of consciousness), however this idea has been shoved down many people's throats to the point where the ego becomes viewed as "bad". We fail to realize that this cannot be, as EVERYTHING is part of the One, including the ego! There is just as much God in the thoughts that create the false sense of identity as there is in the heart of an fully awakened being.

I have found the amount of ego that I see in others and in my own actions serves as a good barometer for my own spiritual development. As has been said many times before, "the world is your mirror." This means that the amount of ego you see in others is recognized only by the ego that is currently present within you. In fact, even the judgment of "this comes from ego and this does not" comes from ego - and this is precisely how we remain stuck in the state of separation. These thoughts serve to divide reality into ego/God or enlightened/unenlightened or good/bad, etc. From the awakened perception of reality, ego is not seen in anyone or anything. Instead, things are seen for as they truly are - One.

So I'm supposed to recognize when I'm acting from ego, yet even the judgment of "I'm acting from ego" comes from the very ego I want to awaken from? This doesn't make sense!

So stop trying to make sense of it. This is still just your mind trying to analyze the situation so it can control it for it's own egoic gain.

So now it's seems like everything is ego, not God!

What would happen if you didn't see everything as ego OR God, and you just saw everything as it is?

I'd be enlightened, I suppose. But how do I do that?

By loving! The ego drops naturally when it is loved. Loving yourself - even when this self is a false identity - is necessary for anyone's happiness, regardless of whether or not any spiritual search is involved. If you do not love yourself, there will always be conflict within you. This does not mean that you should feed energy into the ego, however. In truly loving something, you allow it to be as it as, and place no restrictions or limitations on it whatsoever. This means when you see the egoic thoughts arise that you would usually label as "bad", instead just watch the thoughts without engaging in them. Simply being present to them - loving them - will allow them to drop on their own. If you try to get them to drop, chances are they won't go anywhere. What you resist, persists.

When the false self has control over us, it does so because the false self itself believes itself to be the true self. In other words, thoughts (which are inherently untrue) attach to other thoughts, and these thoughts all call themselves true. This is the process of believing - thoughts attaching to thoughts. What happens is that this whole system of thoughts creates the sense of self, so we have an inherently false idea (I am this self) that believes itself to be true - and this is the place from which the majority of the population experiences the world. When we truly and deeply love our ego-mind by practicing non-resistance and allowing it to be what it is, the ego-mind drops because it recognizes itself to be false. This is how the journey to realizing Who You Are is a process of realizing Who You Are Not, because all of these thoughts drop when they are recognized as being false.

We love ourselves when we stop judging ourselves as good and bad...which leads to us not viewing others as good and bad...which leads to us not desiring to do actions which would be judged as bad. Through loving ourselves, we learn to love the world.

Namaste,

Justin

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