What is the ego?

The ego is almost everything we know and consider to be real. It is:

• Me, including everything good and bad about me
• My thoughts, beliefs and mental images
• My personal will, intentions and desires
• My ideas of God, morality, reality and truth
• All emotions
• All perceptions
• The known world and universe of objects
• My relationships with others
• Birth and death and nearly everything in-between

It seems that life without all of this is no life at all. Or at best, it is life in a meaningless void. These words—no life at all, and meaningless void—are a perfect description of the ego’s idea of what exists beyond itself.

It is true that what most humans seek as God, truth, Heaven, Nirvana, etcetera does not exist, but that is because we are currently limited to the ego’s point of view. In order to discover what truth really is, we need to let go of:

• Me, including everything good and bad about me
• My thoughts, beliefs and mental images
• My personal will, intentions and desires
• My ideas of God, morality, reality and truth
• All emotions
• All perceptions
• The known world and universe of objects
• My relationships with others
• Birth and death and everything in-between

Where do we start?

Most of us start with what causes our own suffering. It’s the easiest place to start. When we feel a twinge or stab of pain, we can look at our own ideas in the moment and find a piece of ego waiting to be let go. But eventually we will learn that in order to transcend the self and realize ultimate truth, we must let go of more than our suffering. We need to let go of anything that isn’t true—anything and everything that comes and goes—in order to realize the one eternal reality, which is the only actual truth.

This is well stated in A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 189, paragraph 7:

Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God.

I can be free of suffering today

“Be glad today! Be glad!” Gladness is the best way to walk this path. It is also possible to drag one’s feet and cling to the unreal as if it is a prized possession, but that will not change the fact that you are on the journey to truth now. It will only make the journey longer and harder.

Be glad! Choose the easy path of joyously letting go of anything that you recognize as ego. In the words of Peace Pilgrim, make it a “quick relinquishment.”

The faster you let go of something, the easier awakening is. The longer you hold onto something, the more it hurts. In that way, awakening is like a great big game of Hot Potato.

Interestingly, even though awakening can be fairly easy, most people choose to make it hard. That is simply because of the value we put on that which has no value at all.

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What is the Ego?

Our special theme says:

The Son of God is egoless. What can he know of madness and the death of God … of sorrow and of suffering … of fear and punishment, of sin and guilt, of hatred and attack… the ego and its thoughts, its works, its acts, its laws, and its beliefs, its dreams, its hopes, its plans for its salvation, and the cost belief in it entails… crucifixion of the Son of God is offered daily at its darkened shrine, and blood must flow before the altar where its sickly followers prepare to die.

Yet will one lily of forgiveness change the darkness into light; the altar to illusions to the shrine of Life Itself. And peace will be restored forever…

The path of awakening is a passage through all that is not true in order to arrive at the destination of truth. As Sister Bernadette so eloquently put it:

I had learned long ago that the essence of life’s movement was not contentment or security; rather it was growth, change, and challenge, wherein the external circumstances of life merely reflected the needs of each moment in the thrust of life’s flow. … We never know the time or place where our destiny will catch up with us…”

In other words, we have to face the darkness if we want to reach the light, but we are not in charge of when, where or how our opportunities to face the darkness will come.

A lot of false believing has occurred, and a lot of it is much darker than our imagination would like to believe. We will face harsh hatred that is directed both outward and inward, deep—seemingly bottomless—guilt, stark terror, and even what feels like the edge of insanity. We will face everything imagined so we may see that it was only imagination and never, ever, anything more than that. All of this imagination is part of the ego.

The way to face the darkness when it comes is to keep one eye on unaffected presence. It would be good if one could keep both eyes on that presence, and maybe some have been successful in doing so, but I have always experienced some split in eyesight when going through extreme darkness. Part of me is watching the passing darkness and part of me is aware of the silent, present unaffected Self.

One thing that is interesting about the unaffected Self during great trials of darkness is that it isn’t doing anything. It isn’t like the hero in the movies who dives in at the last moment with a shiny sword to battle the darkness and win the fight. The unaffected Self does nothing. It stays out of the fight. It doesn’t participate. It’s simply present, being itself, as it always is.

This may not seem like much of a hero from the ego’s point of view, but this uninvolved, silent presence that is way in the back of our awareness is our savior, and all we have to do to let it save us is keep one eye, or at least a portion of an eye, on it as the darkness comes and passes through.

We may experience some of our purification in meditation. Maybe if we were like Buddha and we did nothing but meditate, we would experience all of our purification through meditation. However, since most of us are not destined to 12 hours of meditation per day for years on end, some of our darkness will arise in the throes of everyday life, which means we need to learn to keep an eye on the unaffected Self in the midst of moving about in what at times may seem to be a very dark world.

Keeping one eye, or at least a portion of one eye, on the unaffected Self is the “one lily of forgiveness” that changes “the darkness into light; the altar to illusions to the shrine of Life Itself.”

I will receive whatever I request.

We think we want joy, but what we don’t always see is that we want a shortcut to joy, which is false joy. If we don’t walk through the darkness, we don’t get to the light.

This is why we need to investigate deeply to discover what we really want. Do we want true and everlasting joy, and are we willing to walk the journey that one must walk to that final reward, or do we prefer to piddle around in a pale comparison and call it joy, because we are afraid of the journey?

“Everyone will receive what he requests.”

What do I truly want?

Am I ready and trusting?

We are ready to the degree that we trust. If we need more time to build more trust, it will be given naturally. We do not have to hold back in fear. We can move forward with whatever little trust we have. The process knows how to lead us forward; it knows what we need and it will give that.

Here are two quotes to contemplate today:

The purpose of these verses is to again assure you that there is nothing to fear. The four angels who are holding back the winds represent the holding back of the end of perception. The end of perception is held back…it does not come to you to be looked at and let go…until you are ready and call it forth in your mind. ~ NTI Revelation, Chapter 7

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! ~ Jesus at Matthew 7:7-11

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What is the Ego?

Our special theme says, “To know reality is not to see the ego and it thoughts, its works, its acts, its laws and its beliefs, its dreams, its hopes, its plans for its salvation, and the cost belief in them entails.”

Yesterday I wrote, “People often wonder how enlightened masters, who claim to see no world, appear to us as everyday people with everyday lives.” Next, I shared a story about Nisargadatta when a questioner accused him of seeing a world and having a body by saying, “I see you smoking!”

Today, I would like to share a little more about how it’s possible for us to see a master in a body when the master is not aware of having a body.

On this topic, Bernadette Roberts wrote:

…permanent ecstasy appears incompatible with continued earthly existence. … But if the senses could remain perfectly functional or awake during ecstasy, the world of ordinary life could go on as usual, only without self or consciousness. So perfect ecstasy is the ability of the senses to remain awake and perfectly functional in the absence of consciousness. …

Thus one of the imperceptible changes that takes place between the beginning and the end of the unitive state [the real world] is the increasing ability of the senses to stand alone and not be affected by any change in consciousness or any change in the self-experience. … “pure sensory perception” becomes increasingly important and trustworthy; also, ecstasy or the suspension of consciousness becomes increasingly more perfect, more natural and everyday—though not permanent. So the path that lies ahead once we come to the unitive state will ultimately bring about the separation of these two different systems—namely, consciousness and the senses. The purpose of this separation is to enable the senses to remain awake and functional once the system of consciousness has fallen away. …

In other words, part of the transition period that we call the real world is learning to abide in reality without being attached to the body, which enables the body to continue being moved without an ‘I’ to move it!

As Michael Langford explains in his book, Manonasa:

When the illusory body called Nisargadatta Maharaj says, “I am not aware of the body or the world,” he is referring to the Self. … Nisargadatta did not say that the body is not aware of the world. Nisargadatta did not say that the body now talking is not aware of the world. He said, “I am not aware of the body and the world.”

Or as Nisargadatta said:

Do not be misled by my eating and smoking, reading and talking. My mind is not here, my life is not here. Your world, of desires and their fulfilments, of fears and their escapes, is definitely not my world. I do not even perceive it, except through what you tell me about it. It is your private dream world and my only reaction to it is to ask you to stop dreaming.

I am affected only by my thoughts.

The prayer in today’s lesson says:

Your plan is sure, my Father,—only Yours. All other plans will fail. And I will have thoughts that will frighten me, until I learn that You have given me the only Thought that leads me to salvation. Mine alone will fail, and lead me nowhere. But the Thought You gave me promises to lead me home, because it holds Your promise to Your Son.

In the tip for Lesson 327, I wrote:

The God that we call on for guidance is not some distant deity, knowledge or awareness. We are the one that took the outward journey from truth to our present attachment to manifestation, and every step of that journey is recorded in our divine unconscious. Therefore, the reverse of each step is known in our own divine unconscious. Our own unconscious knows the way! The communication that comes from this unconscious knowing is what I call spiritual intuition.

We can see how true this statement is when we look at Bernadette’s explanation about how the senses learn to stay awake without consciousness. Our divine unconsciousness remembers how we detached from ecstasy and the knowledge of our Self in order to attach to a body as what we are. Therefore, it knows we need to reverse that action by learning to abide in ecstasy again. Every step of our way home will be laid out for us. We simply need to trust and take the step that we need to take right now!

Please use today to contemplate how perfectly we are led. Use today as an opportunity to increase trust in guidance that comes from your own spiritual intuition. Realize it will move you to the next step only when you are ready for that next step. In fact, when writing about the stage of learning to detach from the body and abide in ecstasy, Bernadette wrote:

Until preparation is right, ecstasy keeps returning to the self or consciousness. … The gauge is an increasing ability to ‘bear the vision’ as it were, without the senses going down or without everyday life and its normal behavior coming to a standstill.

So God takes its last step to awaken us beyond consciousness when we are ready for that step, after an effective transition period, which the Course calls “the real world.” What a loving process!

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What is the Ego?

Our special theme says, “To know reality is not to see the ego and it thoughts, its works, its acts, its laws and its beliefs, its dreams, its hopes, its plans for its salvation, and the cost belief in them entails.”

In short, to know reality is not to see the ego or its effects. They do not exist in reality.

Here is how Michael Langford describes reality:

Describing the final Reality as Infinite-Eternal-Awareness-Love-Bliss is the closest one can come in words. In the final Reality, which is the only Reality, there are no humans, no animals, no planets, no stars and no earth.

The final reality is infinite-awareness aware only of infinite awareness. In all of eternity the final Reality has never been aware of anything other than infinite-awareness-love-bliss. Awareness-love-bliss is not three, it is one. In all of eternity the final Reality, which is the true Self, has never been aware of a human, or a world or suffering of any kind. Humans, animals, earth, planets stars and other realms, entities, places, time, dimensions, and that which almost every word in the dictionary point towards is part of the ego dream. When the ego comes to its final end, the dream ends and almost everything that the words in the dictionary point towards disappears.

When the ego comes to its final end, what remains is Infinite-Eternal-Awareness-Love-Bliss and nothing ever reappears. The planets, the stars, and almost everything that the words in a dictionary point towards never reappear. They were all part of the dream. Upon awakening, the dream disappears.

That’s what our special theme teaches too.

People often wonder how enlightened masters, who claim to see no world, appear to us as everyday people with everyday lives. This is one of my favorite stories about that question:

Questioner: You said the body defines the outer self. Since you have a body, do you have also an outer self?

Nisargdatta: I would, were I attached to the body and take it to be myself.

Questioner: But you are aware of it and attend to its needs.

Nisargdatta: The contrary is nearer to truth — the body knows me and is aware of my needs. But neither is really so. This body appears in your mind; in my mind nothing is.

Questioner: Do you mean to say you are quite unconscious of having a body?

Nisargdatta: On the contrary, I am conscious of not having a body.

Questioner: I see you smoking!

Nisargdatta: Exactly so. You see me smoking. Find out for yourself how did you come to see me smoking, and you will easily realise that it is your ‘I-am-the-body’ state of mind that is responsible for this ‘I- see-you-smoking’ idea.

Questioner: There is the body and there is myself. I know the body. Apart from it, what am l?

Nisargdatta: There is no ‘I’ apart from the body, nor the world. The three appear and disappear together. At the root is the sense ‘I am’. Go beyond it. The idea: ‘I-am-not-the-body’ is merely an antidote to the idea ‘I-am-the-body,’ which is false. What is that ‘I am’? Unless you know yourself, what else can you know?

Questioner: From what you say I conclude that without the body there can be no liberation. If the idea: ‘I-am-not-the-body’ leads to liberation, the presence of the body is essential.

Nisargdatta: Quite right. Without the body, how can the idea: ‘I-am-not-the-body’ come into being? The idea ‘I-am-free’ is as false as the idea ‘I-am-in-bondage’. Find out the ‘I am’ common to both and go beyond.

Nisargadatta’s instructions are clear. Find the ‘I am’ and go beyond. That is how we come to not “see the ego and it thoughts, its works, its acts,” and etcetera.

My sinlessness protects me from all harm.

In today’s workbook lesson, our “sinlessness” is our true eternal nature. The lesson says, “My sinlessness ensures me perfect peace, eternal safety, everlasting love, freedom forever,… And only happiness can be my state, for only happiness is given me. What must I do to know all this is mine? I must accept the atonement for myself and nothing more.”

Today is a good opportunity to review the tip from Lesson 139, I will accept the atonement for myself. As you review that tip, keep Nisargadatta’s instructions in mind: Find the ‘I am’ and go beyond. Eternal life, which is infinite awareness, is beyond the sense of ‘I am.

Lesson 139

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