Ego? No ego? whaaaaaaaaat?

[Guest guest]

the whole nature of ego and no-ego has been confusing to me. my former

teacher Swami G was all about no ego no ego no ego, you do not exist,

and that confused me. it made no sense to me. Chrism's article

here really helped me to understand

http://www.kundaliniawakeningsystems1.com/kundalini-death-of-ego.html

 

I recently was reading Ken Wilber and found this chapter to be an

awesome and poetic description of what egoloss really means. hope you

guys don't mind the long read its worth it!

 

 

" Precisely because the ego, the soul, and the Self can all be present

simultaneously, we can better understand the real meaning of

" egolessness. " A notion that has caused an inordinate amount of

confusion. But egolessness does not mean the absence of a functional

self (that's a psychotic, not a sage); it means that one is no longer

exclusively identified with that self.

 

One of the many reasons we have trouble with the notion of " egoless "

is that people want their " egoless sages " to fulfill all their

fantasies of " saintly " or " spiritual " , which means dead from the neck

down, without fleshy wants or desires, gently smiling all the time.

All of the things that people typically have trouble with – money,

food, sex relationships, desire – they want their saints to be

without. " Egoless sages " are " above all that " , is what people want.

Talking heads is what they want. Religion, they believe, will simply

get rid of all baser instincts, drive, and relationships, and hence

they look to religion, not for advice on how to live life with

enthusiasm, but on how to avoid it, repress it, deny it, escape it.

 

In other words, the typical person wants the spiritual sage to be

" less than a person " somehow devoid of all the messy, juicy, complex,

pulsating, desiring, urging forces that drive most human beings. We

expect our sages to be an absence of all that drives us! All the

things that frighten us, confuse us, torment us, confound us: we want

our sages to be untouched by them altogether. And that absence, that

vacancy, that " less than personal " is what we often mean by " egoless "

 

But " egoless " does not mean " less than personal " it means " more than

personal " Not personal minus, but personal plus – all the normal

personal qualities, plus some transpersonal ones. Think of the great

yogis, saints, and sages – from Moses to Christ to Padmasambhava. They

were not feeble mannered milquetoasts, but fierce movers and shakes –

from bullwhips in the Temple to subduing entire countries. They

rattled the world on its own terms, not in some pie-in the sky piety.

Many of them instigated massive social revolutions that have continued

for thousands of years. And they did so, not because they avoided the

physical, emotional, and mental dimension of humanness, and the ego

that is their vehicle, but because they engaged them with a drive and

intensity that shook the world to its very foundations. No doubt, they

were also plugged into the soul (deeper psychic) and spirit (formless

Self) – the ultimate source of their power – but they expressed that

power, and gave it concrete results, precisely because they

dramatically engaged the lower dimensions through which that power

could speak in terms that could be heard by all.

 

These great movers and shakes were not small egos; they were, in the

very best ssense of the term, big egos, precisely because the ego (the

functional vehicle of the gross realm) can and does exist alongside

the soul (the vehicle of the subtle) and the Self (the vehicle of the

causal). To the extent these great teachers moved the gross realm,

they did so with their egos, because the ego is the functional vehicle

of that realm. They were not however identified merely with their egos

(that's a narcissist); they simply found their egos plugged into a

radiant Kosmic source. The great yogis, saints, and sages accomplished

so much precisely because they were not timid little toadies but great

big egos, plugged into the dynamic Ground and Goal of the Kosmos

itself, plugged into their own higher Self, alive to the pure Atman

(the pure I-I) that is one with Brahman' they opened their mouths and

the world trembled, fell to its knees, and confronted its radiant God.

Saint Teresa was a great contemplative? Yes and Saint Teresa is the

only woman ever to have reformed an entire Catholic monastic

tradition. Gautama Buddha shook India to its foundations. Rumi,

Plotinus, Bodhidharma, Lady Tsogyal, Lao Tzu, Plato, the Baal Shem Tov

– these men and women started revolutions in the gross realm that

lasted hundreds, sometimes thousands of years, something neither Marx

nor Lenin nor Locke nor Jefferson can yet claim. And they did not do

so because they were dead from the neck down. No, they were

monumentally, gloriously, divinely big egos, plugged into a deeper

psychic, which was plugged straight into God.

 

There is certainly a type of truth to the notion of transcending ego;

it doesn't mean destroy the ego, it means plug it into something

bigger. As Nagarjuna put it, in the relative world, atman is real, in

the absolute, neither atman nor anatman is real. Thus in neither case

is anatta a correct description of reality. The small ego does not

evaporate; it remains as the functional center of activity in the

conventional realm. As I said, to lose that ego is to become a

psychotic, not a sage.

 

Transcending the ego thus actually means to transcend but include the

ego in a deeper and higher embrace, first in the soul or deeper

psychic, then with the Witness or primordial Self, then with each

previous stage taken up, enfolded, included, and embraced in the

radiance of One Taste. And that means we do not " get rid " of the small

ego, but rather we inhabit it fully, live it with verve, use it as the

necessary vehicle through which higher truths are communicated. Soul

and Spirit include body, emotions, and mind' they do not erase them.

Put bluntly, the ego is not an obstruction to Spirit, but a radiant

manifestation fo Spirit. All Forms are not other than Emptiness,

including the form of the ego. It is not necessary to get rid of the

ego, but simply to live with it a certain exuberance. When

identification spills out of the ego and into the Kosmos at large, the

ego discovers that the individual Atman is infact all of a piece with

Brahman. The big Self is indeed no small ego, and thus, to the extent

you are stuck in your small ego, a death and transcendence is

required. Narcissists are simply people whose egos are not yet big

enough to embrace the entire Kosmos, and so they try to be central to

the Kosmos instead.

 

The integral sage, the non dual sage, is here to show us otherwise.

Known generally as " tantric " these sages insist on transcending life

by living it. They insist on finding release by engagement, finding

nirvana in the midst of samsara. Finding total liberation by complete

immersion.

Indeed, the whole point is to be fully at home in the body and its

desires, the mind and its ideas, the spirit and its light. To embrace

them fully, evenly, simultaneously, since all are equally gestures of

the One and Only taste. To inhabit lust and watch it play; to enter

ideas and follow their brilliance; to be swallowed by Spirit and

awaken to a glory that time forgot to name. Body and mind and spirit,

all contained, equally contained, in the ever present awareness that

grounds the entire display.

 

In the stillness of the night, the Goddess whispers. In the brightness

of the day, dear God roars. Life pulses, mind imagines, emotions wave,

thoughts wander. What are all these but the endless movements of One

taste, forever at play with its own gestures, whispering quietly to

all who would listen: is this not you yourself? When the thunder

roars, do you not hear your Self? When the lightning cracks, do you

not see your Self? When clouds float quietly across the sky, is this

not your very own limitless Being, waving back at you? "

 

The Essential Ken Wilber pgs 31-35, original chapter from One Taste

[Guest guest]

At 02:54 PM 8/1/2008, you wrote:

But egolessness does not mean

the absence of a functional

self (that's a psychotic, not a sage); it means that one is no

longer

exclusively identified with that self.

There is not a single living teacher who has completely overcome their

own ego - it is the ones who claim to have done so that I am most

skeptical of.

Brandi

[Guest guest]

According to Vedanta, Ego or Ahamkar is one identifying oneself with the body-mind complex. If one realises on an experiential level, that one is a spiritual being, immortal and eternal, then the Ego disappears forever. --- On Sat, 2/8/08, Brandi Jasmine <jazztalk wrote:Brandi Jasmine <jazztalkRe: Ego? No ego? whaaaaaaaaat? Date: Saturday, 2 August, 2008, 8:56 AM

 

 

At 02:54 PM 8/1/2008, you wrote:

But egolessness does not mean

the absence of a functional

self (that's a psychotic, not a sage); it means that one is no

longer

exclusively identified with that self.

There is not a single living teacher who has completely overcome their

own ego - it is the ones who claim to have done so that I am most

skeptical of.

Brandi

 

 

Unlimited freedom, unlimited storage. Get it now

[Guest guest]

Besides, having an ego makes the cheeseburgers ever so much tastier.

 

Seriously, the ego is there for a reason and cannot be annihilated

without losing connection with reality. Spirituality must be balanced

by ego, or it cannot be shared.

 

Peter

 

 

 

, Brandi Jasmine

<jazztalk wrote:

>

> At 02:54 PM 8/1/2008, you wrote:

> >But egolessness does not mean the absence of a functional

> >self (that's a psychotic, not a sage); it means that one is no longer

> >exclusively identified with that self.

>

> There is not a single living teacher who has completely overcome

their own ego - it is the ones who claim to have done so that I am

most skeptical of.

>

> Brandi

>

[Guest guest]

At 12:59 AM 8/2/2008, you wrote:

According to Vedanta, Ego or

Ahamkar is one identifying oneself with the body-mind complex. If one

realises on an experiential level, that one is a spiritual being,

immortal and eternal, then the Ego disappears forever.

 

As a philosophical exercise limited exclusively to that definition, yes,

I can accept this, up to the " forever " part. In the real world,

I just haven't ever encountered such a being. Everyone I have met

claiming this seems to have been quite egotistical in proclaiming it. I

have had experiences where I realized I am an immortal, spiritual being,

part of the Universal One, and I retain that belief, but my experience of

being free of ego was quite temporary. Had I stayed in that state, I

don't know that I'd be capable of communicating with you now.

In any case, that was not the meaning which was conveyed when the word

" ego " was used here.

" Ego " as defined by Wikipedia (in part) is

" The Ego comprises that organized part of the

personality structure which includes defensive, perceptual,

intellectual-cognitive, and executive functions. " The word

" ego " was used in this thread initially, and it is often used

as an insulting pejorative epithet to indicate a form of narcissism (as

in " egotistical " or " selfish " ). I found this

particular charge rather bizarre, as I find him to be a quite agreeable,

humble guy who has gone out of the way to assert his ordinary human

status.

The way I see it, claiming to be utterly free of ego is an act of ego.

Accusing another of egotism ... is an act of ego. Every time I use the

word " I " in a sentence, my ego is engaged. Every act of

perception is an act of ego. Transcending ego is not the same as

eliminating ego. It's the same process with fear. There are some things

it is wise to fear. Ego is a necessary part of consciousness, we would

not be self-aware without it. What I can do is transcend it. Chose to act

with love despite fear. Chose to act with love despite ego. This for me

is the meaning of transcending ego.

Brandi