Ego
Easy Way to Catch the Ego
Here is an easy way to catch the ego; to know when the ego is coming up.
Whatever makes you uncomfortable is ego!
Look at your own life.
Whenever you experience pain, anger, jealousy, it is always the result of feeling separate from someone else, of feeling alone, of feeling cheated. In times of misery, you always experience yourself as being all alone. This is the ego at work.
In times of joy, you feel naturally connected with everyone and everything around you. When you are joyful, happy, laughing – these are the times when your ego is at its weakest.
In your present life, you may experience these moments temporarily. But meditation is going to take you to a permanent state of bliss. Meditation is the process of falling in tune with the whole of Existence. In meditation, there is simply no place for separateness, no place for the ego. Once you sense the lasting harmony of everything, once you sense the deep interconnectedness of all of Existence, what will be the need for maintaining the ego? The ego is your armor against the world. The ego is your shield in times of war. If everything is peaceful, if everything is harmonious – then where is the need for armor, a shield? You can just relax, that’s all.
But you are used to struggling for everything!
We have to create a big problem and then fight with it. This is what your ego wants. That’s why you find it so difficult to meditate – because meditation is such a simple thing! It is too simple, actually. All you have to do is sit silently and unclutch from your thoughts as they come up.
Is that so difficult?
Actually there is no need to teach or learn meditation! Meditation should simply happen. Just sit still for a few minutes and watch your mind, it is enough to get a glimpse of reality.
Just for a few seconds, if you can sit silently, watch your racing thoughts, just be – that will be enough to convince you of the truth. And once the truth is known, where is the place for your ego? The ego will have to be dropped. You will drop it naturally. That’s why the ego fights meditation so hard. Meditation is the death of ego!
So the only problem you will face is the strong resistance from your ego. When you are meditating, the ego will raise a thousand questions. Doubt is the most deadly weapon that the ego has! The ego will continuously create doubts and questions in your mind.
In the beginning it will make you worry, Can I really meditate? Can I sit for so many hours with my bad back? Is this path really for me?
What if I get drawn too deeply in? What will happen to my family? Will my friends call me crazy? Am I really crazy?
If you are working with a master, it will raise doubts against the master! Is the master really authentic? Does he know which technique is right for me? What is his purpose in teaching me meditation? Is this some kind of hypnosis? So if you find these kinds of questions arising, don’t bother. Simply drop the questions and continue with the meditation. Don’t feel guilty about having these questions!
These questions arise naturally in everyone’s mind. And don’t try to struggle with these questions. Don’t make the mistake of struggling with the ego!
Ego is just something imaginary; it is nothing but the lack of awareness; it has no positive existence. Just like darkness is a state of no-light, ego is a state of no-awareness. If you are in a dark room, can you fight the darkness and push it out to make the room bright? Does it make sense to struggle against the darkness?
In fact, your solution has nothing to do with the darkness. You have to simply bring in a lamp and the darkness will disappear on its own! In the same way, don’t waste your energy fighting with the ego. Focus on bringing awareness into your meditation. By and by, the questions will drop naturally.
Ego disconnects – Love connects
We are one with the ocean, not individual drops in the ocean. If the cosmos is a grand ocean, we are all part of it. We are one with the ocean, not individual drops in the ocean. When we think of ourselves as individual drops, we feel separate in our boundary and in our feelings. This is what is called ego. We become driven by feelings of ‘I’ and ‘mine’. As long as this separation remains, we never experience the energy of the ocean that is love, we can never experience that causeless and surging love.
Bliss is possible only when our heart says ‘yes’, when the ‘no’ completely disappears from our being.
As long as we remain a drop in the ocean, we say ‘no’ to life. We neither love nor trust. We don’t feel blissful either because bliss is possible only for those who know how to love and trust. It happens only to those who know how to feel part of the ocean. Bliss is possible only when our heart says ‘yes’, when the ‘no’ completely disappears from our being. ‘No’ is darkness, ‘yes’ is light. ‘No’ is ego, ‘yes’ is egolessness.
‘No’ is the way of the unconscious person. ‘Yes’ is the way of the awakened one. All the conflict, all the suffering in our life is because of our saying ‘no’. ‘No’ is a fight, a war with Existence. ‘Yes’ is love, peace with Existence. ‘Yes’ is deep accord with the totality of who we are – the ocean. Bliss is another name for that accord, that harmony.
The way to be in bliss is to dissolve into the ocean, not to be a drop but to merge with the ocean. The way to be in bliss is to dissolve into the ocean, not to be a drop but to merge with the ocean. To be a drop is to be with ego. The ego is the root of all misery. When the ego is absent, bliss reaches us from every nook and corner of the ocean of existence, as if it were just waiting for the ego to disappear.
Ego is a closed state of consciousness. All the windows and doors are closed. Life itself becomes insulated and encapsulated. Our ego surrounds us like a capsule. Our ego is like a sealed capsule; there is not even a small gap to allow anything to enter. It closes itself due to fear and shrinks into itself. That is how we create misery for ourselves. Love is being in the flow with Existence, to be totally with it. Ego is like frozen ice. Love is like liquid water. Only when we are liquid do we become part of the ocean. Then we don’t have any private goal or destination. Each moment is blissful, incredibly ecstatic, just going with the plan of the cosmos.
The mind is part of the ego. It knows how to close, but it does not know how to open. To love means to open up, to surrender. It means opening up to Existence, to the flowers, to the bees and to the stars. How do we open to this beautiful music that fills the whole of Existence? How do we open up to this celebration that goes on and on – flowers dancing in the wind, trees enjoying the wind and the stars, always in a state of bliss? Except for man, everything else seems to be in harmony.
Man falls out of harmony because he has what is called ‘consciousness’ which is not present in other living creatures. ..it is easier to fall into the trap of the ego and not enter into paradise than to enter paradise knowingly.
Consciousness can do two things. It can create ego or it can create egolessness. If it creates ego, we live in hell. If it creates egolessness, we live in paradise. The whole world is in paradise without knowing it. When man enters paradise, he enters knowing it fully. That is the grandeur and beauty of man. That is the danger as well, because it is easier to fall into the trap of the ego and not enter into paradise than to enter paradise knowingly.
The problem is that we have forgotten who we are and for what we were created. We are emperors of love, but we dream that we are beggars. We have the whole kingdom of Existence within our being and yet we continue to beg for mundane things. We keep collecting mundane things not knowing that we have infinite, inexhaustible treasures within our being. We are oceans, yet we are thirsty because we have become disconnected from our own selves. But no matter how disconnected we are, no matter how much we have forgotten and how long we have forgotten, it can be remembered in a single moment and we can become connected immediately.
Love is the connector.
Bliss arises from love. Love is the poetry that connects you back to Existence. Love is the sword that slays the ego and merges you with the ocean. When the heart is full of love, your whole life is transformed from prose to poetry, from noise to music and from discord to harmony.
It is such sheer joy to simply exist. Just ‘to be’ is enough. But we need to be sensitive to feel the joy of being. We need to grow feelers. The feelers are what we call love. Love feels the joy of just being. When you grow the feelers of love, life is no longer made of independent thoughts but becomes a continuous feeling. Then the ego starts to dissolve. Once we have moved from thinking to feeling, there is only one more step and that is from feeling to being. That is very simple.
The first step is difficult, to move from thinking to feeling. The ego has trained the mind to think so much, that’s why. The second step comes almost automatically. There’s nothing we need to do for it to happen. From feeling to being, the distance is nothing at all. It can happen at any moment. The poet can become the mystic at any moment. He is almost there. The real problem is how to get out of our thinking and get more and more into feeling.
Just follow the heart. Just love more, that’s all! Feel more. Enjoy more so that you can feed your heart. Watch the sunrise, sunset, clouds, rainbows, birds, flowers, animals, rocks, and people, and watch them with awareness. Look into their eyes. Existence is so multidimensional. Look into every dimension like a poet. Praise it. Feel it. Be ecstatic! Expand your consciousness and experience every single detail of Existence with love. Slowly, the ego will lose its hold and disappear.
“Ego is separateness while love is a merger. The fear we feel is nothing but the fear of the dissolving ego.”
The only barrier to love is fear. When things start happening, we become fearful because with love we enter into a merger. This threatens the very basis of our ego. Ego is separateness while love is a merger. The fear we feel is nothing but the fear of the dissolving ego. Let the fear be there. It will hang around for a while. If we simply ignore it, the ego will leave us. It is a great day when fear of losing the ego leaves us. From then on growth becomes simple, easy and spontaneous. Then we are not, only love is.
Ego and the connection with nature
This is an incident from the days right after my enlightenment when I was in Tamil Nadu in South India.
Because the eyes were not processing any information, there was no fear inside.. One evening, I was sitting in a very relaxed mood in a forest. My eyes were open, but I was not seeing anything, as there was no information going inside and getting processed. There was a huge snake lying about three feet in front of me. Because the eyes were not processing any information, there was no fear inside. I was sitting and the snake was also so relaxed and comfortable.
Then slowly, my mind came down to the normal plane and I had a thought, ‘Oh, there is a snake.’ Then the next thought came, ‘I should move away.’ The moment the thought ‘snake’ came in my inner space, I saw very clearly that the snake also felt disturbed that there was a man in its presence. ..the moment I had the fear, immediately the snake also felt the same insecurity Until I felt ‘There is a snake,’ the snake never felt that I am a man. Until I felt the fear, the snake never felt threatened by me. Neither did I have fear nor did the snake have fear. But the moment I had fear, the snake also got fear. It was not that the physical distance between us reduced. Just the thought ‘snake’ came in me and I was clearly able to feel there was a disturbance, a restlessness, in the snake’s inner space. The moment I had the thought ‘I should move’, the moment I had the fear, immediately the snake also felt the same insecurity, the same threat. Immediately, the snake started moving, even before I started moving.
When your ego becomes strong, your ability to connect with Nature is disturbed.
More - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6kzkctcfog
Realize the beauty of the purposelessness
According to the Upanishads*, as long as you think that life has a purpose and you run behind that purpose, you are an egoistic person. When you realize the beauty of the purposelessness of life, you have dropped your ego.
A man with ego searches with purpose and misses reality
The master is the one who makes you understand the purposelessness of life. Whatever you think of as being worthy now is not actually the true and worthy thing. A man with ego searches with purpose and misses reality.
Death clearly shows that whatever mind you lived with has no real existence. When you realize the purposelessness of life, a new consciousness starts blossoming in you. The moment you experience that there is nothing to be achieved, that the diamonds you are protecting are not diamonds but stones, and that all your great things in life are mere toys, you will understand the purposelessness of life.
When the ego is dropped, you will understand the Divine purpose of life
The real purpose of life cannot be understood by the ego. When the ego is dropped, you will understand the Divine purpose of life, the leelasor the Divine play, you will enjoy the drama. If you keep thinking that life has a purpose and wait to achieve something, you will miss life itself.
Life itself is the path and the goal. When you have a goal, you will run. Your feet will not touch the ground and you will miss the beauty of Existence or nature. When you drop the goal, the emphasis will be on the path.
When you understand the purposelessness of life, you understand the meaning of living. Until then, you are just a ‘living dead’ person. A person in a coma lying in the hospital bed and a normal person who has not realized the Truth, both live without proper consciousness. The master is the one who makes you realize this truth. The meaning of living is the meaning of life or Existence.
Drop the goal and enjoy life. Meditate on this teaching again and again. The Truth will dawn on you and the nithya ananda* state will flower in you, the state that is the very meaning of life.
Glossary:
- Upanishad – Scriptures that form the essence of the ancient texts of the Vedas. Literally means ‘sitting with the master’. There are eleven main Upanishads that have been commented on by enlightened Master Adi Shankara.
- Nithya ananda – Eternal bliss.
The Ego in Disguise
If you seriously analyze every worry that arises in you, you will see that ninety nine percent of your worries are baseless. But the problem is that the ego is not willing to accept that. The ego has invested too much in worry. Worry can’t be discarded just like that! Just try telling someone that his or her worries are not worth anything. They will get very offended. You would expect that a person would feel happy if you tell him his worries are not true. But it won’t be so! He will feel offended. The ego feels offended whenever its worries are not acknowledged with due respect.
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu* says beautifully, ‘When a living entity forgets the constitutional nature of his relationship with god, he is at once overwhelmed with external energy. This is the cause of his false ego, his identification with his body-mind system!’
Ego comes into play only when you lose your connection with Existence. The ego is what sustains the worry. The worry is created out of ignorance, but sustained by ego. Worry becomes an axis around which the ego revolves. If worry is taken away, the ego suffers. The worry of work and the worry of responsibility are classic examples of this.
Understand that the idea of hard work itself is a myth. Hard work is really just worry plus a little work, that’s all. Real hard work never causes worry. It simply rises and falls like a wave, with great dynamism and intensity. It will never dilute itself with worry.
An eight year old girl was very intelligent and somehow sensed that her mother would like a gift. She decided to buy her mother a birthday gift. The mother was very happy. She thought, ‘At least my daughter appreciates my efforts. No one else does.’
The girl gave her mother the gift and told her, ‘This is for you because you work so hard and no one appreciates it.’ The mother replied, ‘But dear, your father also works hard. Don’t forget that.’ The girl said, ‘Yes, but he doesn’t make a fuss about it.’
The fuss is the worry. If you watch some people, they simply magnify their situation to prove that they have the greatest worries on planet earth! If you try to contradict them, they feel very hurt. Even worrying about what others will say about us is a problem of the ego. The ego is constantly worried that its self-image might be spoiled by someone. It is because of the ego that we feel we want to be somebody special all the time. We spend considerable time just worrying about our self-image. Understand that the greatest blessing is being a nobody and yet being blissful. That is the greatest specialty. It is said that the most extraordinary thing about an enlightened being is that he thinks he is ordinary! So, understand that enlightenment itself is a journey to relax into yourself. You are someone special all the time, only when you drop worry and ego.
- Chaitanya Mahaprabhu – A mystic from Bengal, India steeped in devotion to Krishna. His followers are known as Gaudiya Vaishnavas.
Suffering leads to Ego
Your ego cannot exist without your suffering. Suffering is the root of your ego. This is an important thing you need to understand. We always think that the ego is disturbed by suffering. No! Ego is enriched by suffering.
We always think that the ego is disturbed by suffering. No! Ego is enriched by suffering. One more important thing is that if your suffering is less, your ego is less. You feel you are too small, so you increase your suffering so that you can feel you are somebody.
The less the suffering, the lesser is the ego. The more you suffer, the stronger your ego becomes. So you always exaggerate your suffering. The problem is that after some time you forget that you exaggerated. Then you are also caught in the same net. You might disagree and say, ‘No, you don’t know my life. You don’t know my suffering.’ But be very clear, after some time you are caught in the same net that you yourself created!
You can only enjoy yourself without ego
If you think something is yours, you can’t enjoy
Only when you don’t have ego can you really enjoy yourself. If you have ego, you can’t enjoy. Standing in front of the mirror, you may apply makeup so that others will enjoy you, but you can’t enjoy yourself. Only a person who does not have ego, who does not identify with the body and mind, can enjoy himself. If you think something is yours, you can’t enjoy. For anything that you think of as yours, you have lost the freedom to enjoy that thing or relationship.
Ego vs Master
People ask me, ‘Why do we have to follow masters?’ I tell them, ‘You don’t have to follow masters. But if you don’t follow masters, you will be following your ego, that’s all. There are only two options: either you listen to the master or you listen to the ego.’
If you are a little uncomfortable, if you want to change, then follow the master’s path.
Master is the being who has already achieved eternal bliss, nithya ananda*. If you follow him you will also reach that state. As for your ego, you know what it has achieved so far and what it is heading towards! If you are happy,comfortable, contented and blissful in the path in which your ego is already leading you, then you can follow your ego. Nothing is wrong with that. If you are a little uncomfortable, if you want to change, then follow the master’s path.
There are only two things, master and the mind. If you follow the master, you cannot follow the mind. If you follow the mind, you cannot follow the master.
There is a beautiful word, ‘na maha’. It means, ‘not mine’, ‘I am not’ – I surrender the ‘I’ and ‘mine’ at the feet of the master or god.
Glossary:
- Nithya ananda – Eternal bliss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqRIsZEKX54
Technique to Transcend Ego
Swamiji’s death experience in Varanasi
Death is a mystery, but more importantly, it is a man’s greatest fear. In Vedanta this is one of the most used techniques for enlightenment. In Buddhism, anyone initiated into Sannyas has to spend three months in the cremation grounds and continuously observe bodies being burnt while visualizing him being burnt. Almost all mystical traditions on the planet use this technique to achieve the highest possibility. Logical mind finds it difficult to understand how one simple experience can give such courage.
Swamiji himself had this particular experience in Varanasi. When Swamiji went to Varanasi, Swamiji saw that per day three hundred dead bodies were being cremated in a place called Manikarnika Ghat. Traditionally, it is believed that if somebody leaves the body in that area, or if their body is burnt at Manikarnika Ghat, they will be liberated. Ramakrishna confirms this and says that he saw Mahadeva himself going to every pyre and liberating every soul from their karmas or in-completions. The men working there would carry the bodies to the Ganga River, reaching there by evening. As they walk, they keep chanting ‘Ram Naam Satya Hai’, which means that Lord Rama’s name is the ultimate truth. There is no special ritual involved. Three times the bodies are dipped into the Ganga as they say ‘Raam Naam Satya Hai’.
Swamiji sat there to watch what was going on, and an hour later, death was no more a strange incident that happens once in a blue moon to a distant relative. Bodies of all size, gender, age, color, community and religion were burnt in that hour. When one sees so many bodies, it feels like there is nothing to it. Everyone has to leave their body some day and the breath that goes into them does not come out, that is all.
Knowing that death is inevitable will bring down the respect that one has for the ego. Whatever that one thinks should not leave them is their ego. When one knows for sure that everything is going to leave them, the respect for the ego goes down immensely.
Being a very straightforward person, Swamiji immediately dropped his ego and decided that if he’s going to die after all, he should have a death experience now itself and live without the fear or die and see for himself. He sat down in a small Shiva temple nearby and started watching the dead bodies being burnt. The big ‘click’ that he remembers even to this day happened when an old lady’s body was being burnt and he could see the fat from her stomach melting. This fat made the fire burn brighter and this made him think that the very same thing is going to happen to him.
This opened up a deep, terrible fear of death in him and he faced it consciously.
The fear was spreading all over his body and when it met his awareness, it became a death experience. He saw clearly that his body was dead. For two and a half days, he did not sleep, eat, drink or think. Suddenly the ‘click’ happened that his body is dead but he still exists. This was such an intense ecstasy that the fear of death just left. Slowly he opened his eyes, and the first thing he felt was a deep gratitude. He performed a small pooja for Vishwanatha (name of Lord Shiva in Varanasi temple) and he could see clearly that Vishwanatha was alive. When he died, Vishwanatha became alive to him. Till the previous day, because he was alive, Vishwanatha was a dead stone.
When a fear is suppressed, it stays inside the person. When one does not consciously face the fear, it shakes his whole nervous system. However, when it is faced consciously, it becomes a death experience.
As Mahadeva says in the Shiva Sutras, “Visualize the fire rising out of your body slowly, let your form be burnt, let your body turn to ashes, but not you”.
Visualization Technique to Awaken Third Eye
Try to feel the life in everything that is around you
This technique can be practiced any time. Feel the cosmos as a translucent, ever-living presence. Try to feel the life in everything that is around you. Try to see it. Try to feel it. First, try to feel the life inside your body. Then try to feel the life inside the chair on which you are sitting. See how you are feeling alive inside your skin. In the same way, visualize and feel you are alive inside the chair, inside the cushion. Then visualize you are alive inside the people who are sitting next to you. Let me give you an example. Let’s say that you put a bamboo stick in a river. Now you can see a part of the river on the left of the bamboo and another part to the right of the bamboo. But does it mean the river has now been divided into two parts? No! If the bamboo is taken away, there is no right side or left side anymore. There is no boundary. It is just one river, that’s all. Because of your ego, you say ‘I’ and ‘you’.
Life is just like the river. The bamboo is your ego. Because of your ego, you say ‘I’ and ‘you’. You have two sides – you and the world. You see duality because of that bamboo. If you just take the bamboo of your ego away, there is neither ‘I’ nor ‘you’. It is pure ever-living presence.
References
https://www.nithyananda.org/article/stop-struggling-ego-0#gsc.tab=0 http://articles.nithyananda.org/2012/05/what-is-ego/ http://articles.nithyananda.org/2012/06/ego-disconnects-love-connects/ http://articles.nithyananda.org/2012/06/meditation-technique-to-awaken-the-ajna-chakra-the-third-eye-center/ http://articles.nithyananda.org/2012/11/the-ego-in-disguise/ http://articles.nithyananda.org/2012/05/suffering-leads-to-ego/ http://articles.nithyananda.org/2012/06/ego-vs-master/ http://articles.nithyananda.org/2012/05/ego-and-the-connection-with-nature/ https://innerawakening.org/july2016/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owoyvOqZvpA