An young being

There is none. Ha ha!

@Harsh Bagdia I am also talking about the ego that is of selfishness but also of superiority. Being selfish is what has kept the world running, including all the technological Marvels that has taken place. But, when it comes to your own individual welfare, being selfish is good only when it concerns your survival. Beyond certain point, the individual has to move towards less selfishness, for his own happiness and well being. Also, being selfless doesn't mean you should ignore your well being but to add others well being as your own. It is to move beyond what you call as your body.

True. When you are open minded, you can find some good even during your worst experience and something useful even in the ridiculest of all ideas. We are not talking about the flower here, but the stubborn rock on the top of the barren mountain. It needs a hard pushing to roll down the mountain, to see the fields and the river.

@Larry KaulI agree that beliefs need to be broken to discover in any field, especially spirituality. When it comes to burdens, deflating our ego helps to reduce attachments to our burdens. The only time we can be free of ego completely is during ego dissolution, even then we are just expanding our sense of self to include everything that ego reaches infinity. It didn't disappear but it becomes so big that we are not able to see it. By hurting or reducing ego, I simply mean becoming less selfish and feeling humbler, and not necessarily stopping to take care of your own needs. There are so many definitions of ego that it becomes easy to get confused.

All such cases are possible, but still there are some cases where people are completely broken. They might get back to a better life as time passes but very slowly and it becomes even worse when medical or spiritual help is not available to them. But still, I have never experienced how their mind feels when they are broken, whether they are sad throughout their life and undergo immense suffering. All I can do is guess. The only thing I am sure is what I have experienced, and as for as my experience goes, the mind has the capacity to adjust itself to intense suffering, meaning that it is only intense for a short duration, and after sometime the suffering becomes less intense even though the pain is same. As long as that is valid for everyone, suffering is acceptable.

Ok, I have learnt my lesson here. My post clearly shows how generalising something and being open about it with less words is not good. Let me tell my understanding about the spiritual ego ( I mentioned just ego because I assumed most people here claim being awakened and so mostly spiritual ego will be involved) and how stepping on it will be beneficial, according to me: Spiritual ego: You have discovered something new based on your experience or understanding and you try to establish it as ultimate truth, denying everything else as false. You feel superior as a result of it. So, there are two ways to deal with such ego of others: 1. The flower way: You try to deny them with kind words and try to establish your points step by step, hoping they will understand your points as well. This will work for people with an open mind, but doesn't work for those with a strong ego. 2. The lion way: You strongly oppose their points, by giving them a slap in their face, with the hope that they might realise that their points are not the only right ones. This doesn't mean you should attack them personally or use similar tactics. It simply means to prove their points wrong with strong valid points, but not worrying about whether they will be hurt in the process, hoping that it will be good for them in the long term. I was talking about the second way here.

Noted. Sounds like an interesting idea! Your points make sense and sorry if you were offended. But, if you are interacting with someone who keeps repeating their points of understanding without being open to others ideas, I believe hurting their ego definitely helps.

That's why many Spiritual traditions putforth being a good human as important with skills like compassion, forgiveness, unconditional love before everything else, including enlightenment. In fact, being a good human is essential for Enlightenment. The heart chakra needs to be strong if you wish to be stable after ego death.

See, this is working right now. You are trying to hurt my ego and so I have to rethink what I have said. If you are not aware that you are hurting others' Spiritual ego, your goal here is not to help them but to strengthen your own ego. Doesn't it need some hammering?

This is applicable to people who are suffering and see Spirituality as a way out, and I agree it will hurt them, but I am talking about people who have firm beliefs regarding Spiritual concepts (and I believe that constitutes most of the forum members) and hurting their ego is for their own good. Sorry that I didn't add the word Spiritual before ego. If you are not aware of that, your own ego is in need of a similar hammering. Why not? PS: By ego, I meant Spiritual ego, the ego you get because of your knowledge on Spirituality.

That's why it's important to watch out for our own ego levels when crictizising others. An open mind is a good place to start. True. We are not trying to destroy the ego, but enlarging it as much as possible. Enlarging ego doesn't mean being more egoistic, but to include everyone and everything around you as a part of yourself. When I include your ego as a part of mine, I don't have any hard feelings in crictizising or being crictized, because I am just crictizising myself for fun!

Oops, sorry I didn't read this post and the Last post was meant for everyone, including those not in this forum.

I think that's the way we are assuming everything!

Intense suffering becomes less intense as time passes and heals itself. But consider a situation like this: you dedicated your life for the nation. You are caught in the enemy hands. You are tortured endlessly. You are given food through a tube, so you can't resist eating and die. You have no choice but to suffer endlessly till you are broken. Does God help him here? An open minded question with no point to prove.

Compassion involves the ego more in the sense that it helps to dissolve it.

Everything is selfish as long as your ego exists. But we can always desire to be less selfish.

What about ego centric desires? Desire to kill and rape?

You don't have to resist. It's entirely possible to allow compassion to overcome the feeling of desire.

Actions indeed have consequences. It is entirely possible to meditate only 5 minutes a day or be mindful and still attain enlightenment. But, you have to practice compassion, gratitude, Unconditional love, forgiveness etc. in your daily life. You have to break the barrier of sex, religion, nationality, and all those that divide you and enlarge your circle of inclusion of ego and humanity as much as you can. Once you enlarge your ego to include everyone and everything, the ego bubble will burst and you will become one with the air.

For those who don't understand: Moths - Humans Light - Spiritual knowledge Moon and natural light sources - Mindfulness, compassion, gratitude, basic meditation, step by step spiritual paths - main purpose is to guide our life in the right direction through the desire for enlightenment Artificial light sources - Extreme meditation, psychedelics - promises Enlightenment in a short duration but we keep on dashing into the light to know more and more. Ultraviolet light - Highest form of spiritual knowledge ( Violet colour is the third eye chakra) Predators - People earning money by offering quick and guaranteed enlightenment using artificial lights. Now, watch the video taking these points in into your mind.

What is knowable and known is that there are tonne load of things to experience using our human mind in this life. Everything else doesn't matter to me, the eternal truth, the ultimate consciousness, all these are just things to be treated as an experience, not as something that is our ultimate goal or ultimate knowledge. But to believe that I have unearthed the ultimate level of consciousness is also a good experience. But, at the core, it's just a belief.

How did you manage to see it at first?

The fact that something like quantum entanglement exists simply shows that how complex the rules are in the universe.

You do enjoy playing video games knowing that you are not that character, right? Just because the whole game is made of the same code doesn't mean you are not able to differentiate the individual things, even if you know for the first time that it's all the same code.