The Seer

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Inquirer — “I just started reading one of your books for the first time A New Earth. I am still having a hard time understanding why we have an ego and why it seems to be our enemy. Can you explain it more simply for me so I understand the ego’s purpose?”

Eckhart Tolle — The ego is a stage in the evolution of human consciousness. It is not your enemy. To perceive somebody or something as an enemy is in fact one of the main misperceptions or delusions of the egoic unconsciousness. So, you cannot fight against the ego and win that fight. If you think you have won the fight against the ego, it is the ego in you that thinks so and it has enlarged itself.

So the ego is not an enemy, but a dysfunction. Looked at from one point of view, it is an entity that the mind created. From another perspective, however, it is simply a delusion, resulting in a distorted way of perceiving reality and consequently in dysfunctional behavior. This second perspective is probably a more helpful one.

A delusion dissolves when you recognize it as delusion, and so does the ego. The ego is the by-product, as it were, of the rapid development of our faculty of thought over the past six thousand years. We lost ourselves in thought, that is to say became identified with it to such an extent that we now derive our sense of who we are from thinking. Thought is a particular way for universal intelligence to express itself. It is no more than a tiny aspect of that vast intelligence.

Thought, through naming things, analyzes, dissects, and separates reality into bits and pieces. Thinking can be a helpful practical tool, but when you identify with thinking the delusion of separation arises. Your reality becomes fragmented. You lose your original sense of connectedness with Being (“paradise”). You become unhappy, needy, discontented, full of ever unfulfilled desire, and you are always unconsciously attempting to regain your lost sense of being, of who you are.

Life is one and I am one with all life.

When you know this truth, the ego dissolves. To know means to realize. How, then, do you realize this truth?

At this moment – the only moment there is – there are some thoughts moving across your mind (the words you are reading and whatever your mind is adding to them). However, you can also KNOW that these thoughts are moving across your mind. That knowing is the dimension of awareness. It has nothing to do with thinking. While thinking happens, you can know yourself as the awareness behind the thinking, the alert stillness in the background – ungraspable, indefinable, elusive.

When you disidentify from thinking, you may also discover a growing ability within you to perceive things and people without immediately naming them. In this way, the ego, which is the unconscious habit of identifying with every thought that arises, begins to dissolve.

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This is timeless, deathless, eternal.

This is without equal, this is never-to-be-repeated, this is utterly unique and totally new, in each and every moment, although there are no ‘moments’ at all.

This is empty of all qualities, even the quality of being empty of all qualities. And yet, this is totality full, pregnant with infinite possibility, possibility that overflows again and again into a world.

This is peace, but it is a volcanic peace, a peace which does not deny noise but embraces it fully, a peace which does not rest, an ecstatic peace that throws itself out of itself now, now and now.

This is completely unknowable, and yet it is filled with the knowledge of things, filled with an apparent world ‘out there’, in its infinite guises.

This is something that cannot be spoken of by anyone, and yet words are thrown out, day after day after day.

This is not of this world, and yet it is nothing but this world.

This is completely extraordinary, and yet it is as simple and as obvious as the sound of the rain splish-splashing on your rooftop.

Splish-Splash!

From: Beyond Awakening by Jeff Foster

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It is fashionable in spiritual circles, to believe that to become ‘enlightened’ we must destroy our ‘ego’. The word ego is used by different people to mean different things, which is a source of much confusion.

If the word ego is used to signify the matrix of negative personal habits which keep us unconscious in the life-dream, then the ego is indeed something which stands in the way of our awakening. It is a psychic knot we need to untie.

But often the word ego is used to signify our individuality generally. In this case the ego is not something to destroy, but something to emancipate from its illusionary isolation, so that we experience our individual identity as a part of the greater whole.

Awakening is not eradicating our personality and living a bland, boring existence as some sort of saintly zombie. Awakening is consciously being all that we are and having fun as a person in the life-dream, free from debilitating fear and isolation.

Awakening doesn’t diminish our individuality. It enhances and fulfills it. In this sense, lucid living is the celebration of the ego, not its destruction. But this celebration of our individuality is possible because we have transformed ourselves from an isolated self into an integrated self.

From, The Laughing Jesus by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. To see an in-depth interview with Tim by MarkMolaro Click Here.

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Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make sense any more.

by Jelaluddin Rumi, in Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi p. 36.

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The nice thing about egotists is that they don’t talk about other people.
Lucille S Harper

He is a self-made man and worships his creator.
John Bright

No egotism is so insufferable as that of the religious person with regard to his or her soul.
W Somerset Maugham

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Water symbolizes the Tao in many ways. Here, in the Tao Te Ching Lao Tzu refers to its nourishing qualities. As we know only too well in Australia, all life depends on water. It has supreme power over all living things, yet it makes no claim

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There is a very famous poem written by the third patriarch of Zen, Seng-ts’an, called the Hsin-Hsin Ming, which translates as Verses in Faith Mind. In this poem Seng-ts’an writes these lines: “Do not seek the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.” This is a reversal of the way most people go about trying to realize absolute truth.

Most people seek truth, but Seng-ts’an is saying not to seek truth. This sounds very strange indeed. How will you find truth if you don’t seek it? How will you find happiness if you do not seek it? How will you find God if you do not seek God? Everyone seems to be seeking something. In spirituality seeking is highly honored and respected, and here comes Seng-ts’an saying not to seek.

The reason Seng-ts’an is saying not to seek is because truth, or reality, is not something objective. Truth is not something “out there.” It is not something you will find as an object of perception or as a temporal experience. Reality is neither inside of you nor outside of you….

This article by Adyashanti is continued on his Web page.

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If you can love your enemies, although you don’t like them, you may even be able to love those aspects of yourself you don’t like. For many of us this is the most difficult challenge. We are so self-critical we cripple ourselves with self-loathing, which actually makes it harder to change.

Try a different approach. Be patient and tolerant with yourself. Accept that you are sometimes lost in separateness. We’re all waking up, which means we’re all asleep to different degrees. It’s not easy being a person. Cut yourself some slack! Love yourself anyway.

Genuine self-love is possible only through self-knowledge. If you become conscious of your essential nature you will be able to unconditionally love your apparent nature, with all its faults and foibles. Try it out. Transcend your personal nature altogether and hold both the good and the bad aspects of yourself within awareness.

Your personal self is like an immature child. Sometimes selfish and prone to tantrums, wanting what it can’t have and what isn’t good for it anyway, easily lost and quick to complain. And yet, exquisitely beautiful, nevertheless.

Lovingly parent yourself. Bad parents constantly criticise and love conditionally. Good parents criticize when necessary, but always love unconditionally whatever the child may say or do. Love yourself unconditionally. This is not an indulgence. It is the ground from which you can compassionately criticize those parts of yourself that need to change.

From: The Laughing Jesus by Timothy Freke. You’ll find an in-depth interview with Tim and MarkMolaro on YouTube >Here

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BOAT, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July–

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear–

Long has paled that sunny sky;
Echoes fade and memories die;
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die;

Ever drifting down the stream–
Lingering in the golden gleam–
Life, what is it but a dream?

by: Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

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A woman dreamt that as a beautiful young maiden, she was captured by an Arab prince. He took her across the dessert on his horse to a wonderful marble palace in a green oasis. The prince carried her up the wide stairway to a gorgeous bedroom and threw her on the soft white double bed.

“What are you going to do with me?” she cried with apprehension and excitement.

“I don’t know lady.” The prince replied, “It’s your dream!”