AaronB

If different people define ego differently, then using the same word seems confusing. Perhaps by ego some mean a version of the big bad wolf that makes life difficult, others mean something neither good nor bad that allows for the experience of being a person in a world. When I use the word ego, I'm referring to the strong driving force that is highly concerned about how I appear and how I can distinguish myself from others. It is all about becoming something through self differentiation. This is certainly not what everyone means, so I do not mean to address an alternate definition of ego. I have lived much of my life with the motivation of becoming more, of making something impressive of my self and my life. I would see all my accomplishments and feel good about my self, but see my shortcomings and feel ashamed. Because the accomplishments seemed short-lived, I usually lived with a deep sense of unworthiness. My desire for self differentiation is being replaced with a desire for understanding. This desire just showed up when the other direction created too much pain for me to bear. Instead of wanting to be right, I am learning how to explore with others and learn from others. I recognize how limited my perspective is and how much others see that would have been difficult to see on my own. I also recognize that my unique perspective enables me to share with others things they might have a difficult time seeing on their own. We all have a unique vantage point. To me ego is the desire to keep this vantage point separate so that I can get an advantage from it. The alternative is to share what I have hidden and in the process I learn how to communicate more clearly and how to listen more clearly without needing to win at anything.

This is my paraphrase and immediate response to the first question. Do you even realize that in everything you have ever done and every choice you have ever made you have been guided every step of the way? What if there is not a single choice you have ever made that was made alone? I realize that the belief that I have done everything by myself may not be not true. In this case guilt would be irrational because it assumes I came up with who I am all by myself as if from scratch. The scratch I made myself up from seems to have gotten itself lost and confused. If who I really am isn't the random soup of qualities that I see, then who I really am must be what has been obscured by the random soup. And I've spent a lifetime trying to justify and defend and improve this random soup that isn't who I really am while believing I can never get it to be what I wish it was. From my perspective this sounds like only good news.

When I feel others are being condescending, it is because I have legitimized someone more than I believe is warranted, then I fight against this legitimization I have given because it seems unbalanced. No one has more power than I give away, and the power I choose to give isn't given arbitrarily, it is because there is something I value that they are demonstrating. Leo has chosen a direction that is extraordinary and his enthusiasm has brought many people together to learn and grow from each others experiences. Every ego looks to give itself an advantage and as new understandings that are helpful to everyone emerge, the ego will want to use this to demonstrate its superiority. This doesn't invalidate the value of what is recognized, but it does reveal the nature of the ego to want to get an award for something, and it is ingenious and clever and fools us all the time because it calls itself me. What I can learn from this thread is how often my own ego takes credit for understandings that were not generated by ego in order to give itself an advantage over others. When I see others in a condescending way, they do sense it and I will experience the interference it generates. I also can recognize how easy it is for my ego to be threatened by anyone it perceives to have attained or achieved something I didn't. This creates interference as well, but as these two forms of interference are recognized for what they are they will dissolve. Only my ego can be offended. In my search for deeper understanding, who got their first is irrelevant.

I was just wondering how to stay in a loving and centered place while encountering hostility and blame. The ego doesn't want to find peace. It looks everywhere it can to create conflict and it can always find something to dislike. This thread is immediately helpful to me and I appreciate it showing up and saying what I can hear at this moment. In choosing to stay in the silent space, I eventually become involved in a story without noticing this happening. I am finding a meditation app that chimes a soft bell every minute helpful. When it chimes I am reminded that I can let go of whatever I am thinking about if something happens to be there.

We are always seeing something. The something I see could be a limited version of me with a limited ability to sense an enormous universe that exists completely independently of my own existence. I could see this as having been so for a duration of time and see this as proof that it has always been this way. I can see that I am completely separate from everything else for a long time and expect it to always be that way. Of all possible things that could be seen, this is one of them. What if I want to see something other than what I have always seen, given that I firmly believe that what I see, aside from crossing a few t's and dotting a few i's, is a close approximation to the truth of how the reality I experience arises? If this question can even be considered seriously, then the firmness of the commonly held view of reality as completely separate from me has already loosened, but it hasn't let go. There is a chink in the old armor and a new direction of exploration is now available. In this reality learning seems to takes place in steps that do not invalidate where we now stand. In this new direction, discovery is usually gradual at first because it is helpful to not completely invalidate our entire understanding of reality all at once because that would be terrifying. The shift from one understanding of reality to another is difficult because we want it all to add up and for a while our mind is holding two understandings of reality, each seeming to compete with the other. I enjoyed Rupert's first video in the post above and he clearly describes how minds tend to notice information similar to whatever they look for the most. A mind that always looks at politics will respond in many ways to information about politics. A mind that always looks at quantum physics will respond in many ways to information about quantum physics. The aspect of mind that is ready to change will respond noticeably when it encounters the information that it can use now. The aspect of mind that is not ready to change may not respond at all even if surrounded by completely accurate information. It feels helpful to me to not search too hard where nothing is moving, and instead find where understanding is ready to move and focus there.