The Role of Ego.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
After many years of reading and studying yours and others' wisdom, on an amateur level, I still cannot understand the place and the role of the Ego in everyday life. I don't, at all , understand how you don't/shouldn't have expectations in life. If you don't have those, what is your life supposed to FEEL like and BE like. I don't know any other way. Please, help!
Answer:
It’s not that as a normal human being you shouldn’t have your individual likes and dislikes, or hopes and expectations. But as your core self becomes awakened, the ego’s role changes and no longer dominates as your sense of identity or center of reality. That means that you might still have your personality traits, habits and preferences, but you are no longer attached to or emotionally invested to them the way you were before. So if life events turn out differently than you expected, it doesn’t effect you or make you upset. Instead of being disappointed or angry, you are open to seeing if the change is offering a hidden benefit you hadn’t foreseen. This development of consciousness occurs gradually through meditation, it does not arise by trying to feel unattached or living without expectations.
Love,
Deepak
Peter Marchand writes: `Ego is the tool of consciousness that links all events in life together. Ego is the illusion that "I exist as a separate individual being". Ego is the one that assumes responsibility for the body and identifies with it. Ego also identifies with the character or personality created out of past and future actions. Ego also manages relationships with the world outside, through attachment and detachment`. The purest form of ego is `I am`, however this `I am` has a tendency to attract all kind of identifications. Patanjali describes ego as one of the kleshas or afflictions of the mind. When ego starts to think: `I like this` (raga - atachment), `I don`t like this` (dvesa - aversion, hatred), `I don`t want to know` (avidya - misapprehension about reality) and `I don`t know so I better stay back` (abhinivesha - fear, clinging to life) then the mind starts to record these as habitual personality trait tapes. These will be played automatically whenever you have to respond to a situation. So we might respond to a situation with a tape which was recorded in our teens or even childhood. Ego gets stuck in time and the only way to change the tape is our awareness. At each and every moment we have the power to act as we choose to. And if we don`t choose to act in a way we want the ego is going to play the tape for us. Ego is acting from a platform of our lower mind. It protect us from being hurt, but acting with awareness transcends the ego. It is buddhi or a higher consciousness platform.
Ego, in yoga, is called Asmita, and it is one the causes of our suffering. It is our I-am-ness, and it keeps us separate from others, build the protection walls, and shrink our mind. So yes, there is hell, it is our mind when we identify with what we have and the roles we played, and there is heaven, when the mind (seeing instrument) find the unity with seer (Purusha). If you are in the heaven with your actual state of mind, will it be heaven or hell? ;)
Here is another view of the ego: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzC6op6czQs My ego made me make a website, with information, free for all to enjoy, laugh with, but perhaps also learn from: http://www.heartphone.net/?lang=en I have just shared my story....