Notes and articles tagged with “ego”
Filed under Notes on 23. June 2008 » [5]
It’s ironic that in the effort to seek and maintain your own comfort, you are never able to relax or be truly comfortable. You give up the inner peace that is your natural state in favor of trying to derive that sense of inner peace from some external situation. So instead of resting in the inherent comfort of your own being, you look for a comfortable situation out there.
When you realize this, it seems utterly insane that we keep falling into this trap. That we’re really that lost. But we are. From an early age we are taught to look outside for comfort, and almost everything in our culture encourages it.
At the root of this search for your own comfort is the illusion of self, the ego. It’s a self-serving pattern of thought that makes you look at everything in the world in terms of how it affects you and your state of comfort. And because it’s based in the illusion of self, it is loaded with fear and suffering.
The illusion is that you will become free of the fear and suffering by gaining external comfort, but the truth is that the suffering is inherent in the search itself and has nothing to do with your situation as such. If you are in suffering and then suddenly win lots of money in the lottery and feel better, your comfort is based in the illusion that it is derived from an external situation. And it is only a matter of time before the effects of that illusion start to fade.
In thinking that inner peace and comfort can be derived from an external situation, you’ve separated yourself from that peace. And you then believe yourself to live in a cruel and unfair world where true comfort is only available to a select few who make it; a world that can give you, and therefore deprive you of, inner peace.
The exercise of simply disregarding your own comfort can help you see through the conditioning, because the illusion of ego relies on constant self-interested mental activity to maintain momentum.
It is truly an amazing realization that in order to find true comfort and relaxation, you must give up concern for your own comfort.
Filed under Notes on 19. July 2007 » [7]
There is a Japanese video game I remember from a while back, called We Love Katamari, where the objective is, if I recall correctly, to roll an adhesive ball through a stage attempting to pick up everything that will stick to it. So at the end of a level you will want to have accumulated as many objects as possible onto the ball; basically, the bigger the ball of stuff the better.
Sounds familiar? It should, because this closely resembles the game of life. Not real life, of course, but the illusory game of gain and loss that one plays as the personal self. A game where accumulating more and more forms is the only objective, almost regardless of what those forms actually are. More is better.
The personal self, then, is like a ball of junk. It identifies with form, and the built-in survival mechanism cares about nothing other than accumulating more and more things. If I am the sum of the things in my ball of junk, then maintaining and preferably growing that ball is crucial to my survival. In this game, the ultimate objective is to accumulate enough things onto the ball of junk so that you can finally retire from the game. Arriving or making it in the game is to have gained a ball of junk large and substantial enough to sustain you for the rest of your life.
Now, let’s imagine that the core of this ball is illuminated. The light shining from the core is life, or God, or your true Self, whatever you want to call it. It is the essence of life itself, and it is you. When a human being is born, there is little or no junk stuck to the ball and so the light shines through very easily. Look into the eyes of a 1yr old baby and you see radiant light, but fast forward 40 years when that baby is a fast track corporate executive with a stock portfolio and twelve meetings before noon — the light may be there, but most likely it has dimmed considerably over years and years of covering it up with junk. There may be glimpses here and there, a glint or two during a game of golf or whatever, but not much.
The spiritual path is the shedding of this accumulation of junk. And it’s simple; letting go of things is technically easier than picking them up. But it is as difficult as it is simple, because our conditioning teaches us that gaining is good and losing is bad. And that our survival depends on having a sufficient inventory of objects. If you have an object in your hand, dropping it is technically easier than picking up another one, but the difficulty lies in having been told that “whatever you do, don’t drop that object. If you run out of objects, you die.” And so even if simply letting go of the object is the key to liberation, we decide to hold onto it just in case, and then maybe pick up another one just to be safe.
These objects are not necessarily material objects, like luxury items or property of some kind; ultimately it always comes down to the thought form associated with the material object, and so accumulating junk is not limited to what you see on the surface. Your ball of junk may not have sports cars and jewelry, but instead of those things you may have accumulated thought forms and images of how sophisticated and advanced you are for not having sports cars and jewelry. Instead of identifying with the car, you identify with being someone who has gone beyond needing to identify with cars. Which of course implies that you are a greater person because of it.
Seeing this distinction between a material object and the thought form associated with it is fundamental in learning how to let go of the junk. It is not an exercise in selling all your material belongings and renouncing your name — the surface manifestation is secondary, but the important thing is to let go of attachment and identification with the thought forms.
The ball of junk is not populated with material things, but with thoughts about material things. And so in this shedding of junk, what you are actually letting go of are conditioned thoughts and beliefs.
Letting go of the junk is simple, and the only thing keeping you from it is the conditioned habit of giving more value to the junk than that which it obscures, namely life itself.
Filed under Articles on 19. June 2007 » [7]
Part of life in the world, and especially the western world, is that we have lots of interesting things around us. And part of what makes up one’s personality, the form identity, are particular worldly interests and personal preferences. John is into vintage medical illustrations and Lisa rides motorcycles. That sort of thing.
Now, because they make up such a large part of our form identity, of who we are on the surface and in comparison to others, our worldly interests are part of the ego and as such vulnerable to its foibles. We tend to identify with objects, for example, and so when the objects are linked with something like expertise, community, or a lifestyle, the identification can become very strong.
In seeking mode
There is a good chance you will have experienced how the ego goes hunting for something to identify with, even if you may not have been conscious of it at the time. Usually when there’s a lull of some kind in your external circumstances, when you’ve just recently finished something, lost something, quit something, or when you suddenly find yourself with more free time for some reason, the mind goes into seeking mode for the next thing. The ego has just lost something it had identified with, and so needs to find something new to fill in the gap.
These seeking episodes can be almost too subtle to notice, or all-out desperate attempts at reinventing your identity from scratch. The subtle ones can come in the form of suddenly becoming very interested in a particular television series, for example, where you find yourself identifying strongly with the characters, having daydreams in which you act out roles or somehow project yourself into the show, and even adapt behavioral traits from your favorite characters.
Fantasies where you imagine yourself to have a stronger identity, either through association with some object or person, or through approval and fame — basically where you are “special” in one way or the other — are also an indicator of this seeking pattern.
The lure of “reinventing yourself”
But while identifying with celebrities or fictional television characters is an easy way of finding something to identify with, in times of desperate need the ego will want something more concrete to work with. Personally I have experienced this in the form of becoming absolutely obsessed with different hobbies or specialty interests; mainly communities of enthusiasts that center around some sort of object or industry. It is an urge to become part of a scene, to become that kind of person, all in order to find security in an externally supported identity.
To find one of these “worlds” to enter and become part of is an easy way for the ego to reinvent its identity. Like dressing up in a new costume, it is also a way of finding somewhere to belong; something we do in more subtle ways when choosing how we present ourselves to the world externally through clothing and such. Seeking to become this kind of person or that kind of person, experimenting with different externally derived identities, is of course very noticeable during adolescence, as we know, but the same pattern of seeking goes on long after that.
This idea of reinventing yourself is a favorite one to the ego. Starting the year with a clean slate, turning things around, becoming the person you want to be, etc.; it’s seducing, and entertaining these ideas is almost the equivalent of comfort food for the ego-identified mind.
But even if you become someone else on the surface, take up golfing or buy a Harley, all that’s really changed is the content of your illusory identity. The same clunky old projector playing a new film.
Attachment to being a somebody
However, there is nothing inherently wrong with having preferences or particular worldly interests. You can live in joy and inner peace and still have hobbies and belong to the national association of something or other. Even the game of reinventing yourself on the surface can be fine — as with other aspects of the world of form, the crux of the matter lies in your level of attachment to it.
It is unavoidable that as long as you are in this world, you will have an external identity. Even if it weren’t for social conventions like names, roles and other labels, you would still be in a particular human body. This is not problematic in and of itself, and only becomes a problem when you identify yourself with this external identity. When you say “I am this body” or “I am a basketball player.” In effect, the world of form is not a problem until you become attached to it. Having a Harley Davidson is fine, but basing your entire identity on the concept of being somebody who has a Harley Davidson is problematic.
There is certainly a correlation between strongly emphasized form identities and the level of attachment to them, simply because if you are free of attachment to the world of form you will have little interest in projecting a particular image of yourself, and vice versa. But the outward manifestation of something like a personal preference is still just an effect, a symptom, and not the cause, and so there is no reason to avoid or resent your form identity. In fact, making an effort to deny your form identity is really an indication that you have an attachment to another kind of form identity, perhaps as “the spiritual person who has no worldly interests.”
When it comes to hobbies, preferences, or other things having to do with your form identity, it will only be counterproductive to try and deny or resist them. What you can do however is observe, and allow them to be as they are. Fully embrace whatever the worldly interest is, and investigate in what way you may be deriving an identity from it. If you’re identified with something, there is an attachment to it because the ego needs it for its survival. In mild cases it may be enough to just notice the identification, and then allow it to fade away on its own, but in some cases it may be best to simply drop whatever it is you are attached to, at least temporarily.
There are also some pointers you can experiment with, ways of looking at things that separate the element of identification so that you can see it more clearly. For example, you can approach the thing, whatever it might be, as if you weren’t there, removing yourself from the mental picture. Or, if the interest is heavily based on community, a group of like-minded people that share a particular interest, you can try contemplating questions like “if I were the only one interested in this,” or “if nobody could ever know that I own this/did this/am interested in this, what would change?” If you have expertise in something, ask yourself “what if nobody could ever know that I know this?”
In essence, it is about seeing the things in your form identity that make you feel special, feel like you are a somebody, because these will be your points of attachment. The attachment to being a somebody is probably the main aspect of our identification with form, and observing how this plays into our worldly interests and preferences can be enormously helpful in becoming free of attachment to the world.
Filed under Notes on 22. May 2007 »
I haven’t had much experience with using mantras, but lately I’ve been using a particular pointer I like as a mantra almost inadvertently. Not in the manner of repeating it over and over again to replace mental noise, but it is something I find helpful to repeat frequently over the course of a day, once every 15 minutes or so. It simply says: “I want nothing for myself.”
Contemplating this, the possibility of wanting nothing for myself, is a way of breaking the old conditioned habit of always being in the mode of asking “what’s in it for me?” I suspect that my conditioning is unusually heavy on this particular dysfunction, and so experiencing the shift into wanting to be of service, of wanting to give rather than wanting to take, or have, brings an incredible sense of relief.
The reason why it gives me such relief is that the habitual mode of perceiving, of always having an underlying motivation of wanting something for myself, is a major part of the egoic function. It is the backbone of the survival mechanism, always churning away trying to spot opportunities to extract some kind of gain from the world of form. Wanting something for ‘myself’ implies wanting something for my personal self, which is the ego. And because this way of thinking is based on the assumption that I am a separate entity in a world of competing entities, there is a built-in sense of tension that goes with it.
Now, it is important to know that the pointer, or mantra, is not saying that you should give away all your belongings and never acquire anything ever again. It’s fine to prefer red apples to green ones, or whatever, and it’s also fine to want this sweater or that book, etc. The function of it is to break the habitual pattern of thinking by reducing your self-importance so to speak. If I recall correctly, Jesus is to have said “deny thyself.” And what I take it to mean is basically the same as “want nothing for yourself,” namely to starve the ego of importance, not give it any reality and simply allow it to fade away.
When I contemplate wanting nothing for myself, I start to see the world in a different light. Everything becomes clear, because things and situations are no longer being seen through the layers of egoic bias and distortion, and everything seems to flow more smoothly. All your problems and dilemmas simply dissolve when you’re not thinking about what you want for yourself, and you may even begin to lose interest in personal gain — the pleasure of something is then seen as paling in comparison to the joy of nothing.
Give it a try and, whenever you remember, repeat the mantra “I want nothing for myself.” Contemplate it, meditate on it, allow it to work its way into your daily awareness and see what happens.
Filed under Notes on 8. March 2007 » [2]
Sometimes I read a few pages in A Course in Miracles with my morning coffee, and today I came upon an interesting truth about the nature of future projection. Nothing new, perhaps, but then there is nothing ever really new in this anyway. What it talked about was how our compulsion to try and control everything, especially the future, is really a defense mechanism. And it did seem fairly obvious in hindsight: when we attempt to control the future we are always trying to secure our safety and comfort, or in other words we are trying to figure out ways of defending ourselves against a future threat. Here is what it said:
“Who would defend himself unless he thought he were attacked, that the attack were real, and that his own defense could save himself? And herein lies the folly of defense; it gives illusions full reality, and then attempts to handle them as real. It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult. And it is this you do when you attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as you wish.”
Being afraid of what might happen in the future, and thinking that you need to make plans and figure everything out to ensure your safety, you are acting as if you were being threatened, as if you were under attack. With whatever action you take to defend yourself, you strengthen the illusion that you are being threatened and that there is something to defend. This could be as little as needing to be right in an argument, defending your position — and it also comes in when we attempt to inflate our sense of self in some way. Like trying to look good in the eyes of others, whether by showing off in a nice car or casually dropping names at a dinner party. These attempts at ego inflation are, under the surface, nothing more than desperate acts of defense against an illusory threat.
Of course, the belief that there is something to defend stems first and foremost from identification with form. All forms are inherently subject to impermanence — things change, crumble, disappear, move around — and ultimately all of it is beyond your control. Which is why the illusion that you can control it, and need to for your survival, is so frightening. A human being who is completely identified with form is like someone having a nightmare: resting in the safety of a warm and comfortable bed but shaking with terror, believing that he is in the middle of a battle field, dodging bullets and running for his life.
The reason why we are so desperate to control things is because we think we are in that battle field, and that we need to keep thinking and figuring things out to stay alive. And the threat is part of a story we tell ourselves, a story that has its roots in the illusion that we are something. When we see that we are not something, but rather nothing, in the sense that what we are is not a worldly object or a collection of thought forms, we can see that there is nothing to defend. And in seeing that, we can drop our defenses and relax.
Filed under Articles on 8. February 2007 »
If you were to read a transcript summary of your thinking over the course of a normal day, you might find that a lot of it centers around what you want for yourself; looking at things in terms of what’s in it for you, what you need to do in order to ensure your own comfort, how you can turn situations in your favor etc. And while you may not have many obviously self-serving thoughts, on a deeper level the general theme may still revolve around them to a certain degree
Filed under Articles on 13. January 2007 » [36]
So, you want your life to be stressful? Didn’t think so, but it’s amazing how many people consistently apply habits and actions in their daily lives that guarantee stressful results. They repeat the same things over and over again, expecting different results, which is, if I recall correctly, the textbook definition of insanity. After hitting the same wall every day for 20 years, people think “okay, if I just really hammer it this time then maybe it suddenly won’t be there.”
Filed under Articles on 22. December 2006 » [1]
Do you have a problem? Chances are you have several. The car just started developing a strange noise in the wrong place, you have three different bosses at work and none of them seems to like you very much, the NASDAQ is taking a beating, your back hurts, and so on and so on
Filed under Articles on 13. December 2006 » [2]
I was out walking the other night, Chopin playing in my headphones and a crisp sort of winter stillness in the air. And despite the peaceful ambiance I was experiencing a hangover after a bit of binge-thinking earlier that day. The sort of thought trajectory that starts out when something great happens and opens up a flood of positive thinking; a thought stream that then gathers momentum and ultimately turns negative, as all unattended thought does eventually when left to proliferate
Filed under Articles on 9. December 2006 » [18]
What would your life be like if you did not care what other people thought of you? If you were completely independent of people’s opinions, good or bad, and would go about your day without so much as a single self-conscious decision. It would be wonderful freedom, of course. You would feel free to do what you wanted, and have a clarity of mind that comes with not being constantly preoccupied with thinking about the judgment of those around you
Filed under Articles on 2. December 2006 » [4]
When I read Jonathan Rauch's article Caring for Your Introvert in the Atlantic Monthly a few years back, I had an immediate recognition of what he described, about feeling drained by social interaction and about wanting to be alone whenever possible. I then went on to read books like Party of One by Anneli Rufus, Celebrating Time Alone by Lionel Fisher, and a nice little collection of quotations called The Wonders of Solitude
