Razvan

Is selflessness / ego death / transcendence actually a thing? Something achievable by a human being? Or is our mind just tricking us? I want to start with a random example that came to mind, to make this more palpable. Let's imagine a little conversation Person1 says: "I believe that we should live life more like our ancestors did, I believe that this is how life was meant to be lived." Then Person2 says: "But, we came so far and we evolved so much as a society, we shouldn't limit ourselves to a simple lifestyle, we could do so much more, now that technology advanced to such a high level almost anything is possible!" Then Person3 says: "Well, Person2, You'd definitely like to believe that you're somehow special and [yadda yadda], but in reality that's just your ego being materialistic, in reality you don't even have free will / control over your actions. You should live life as purely and egoless as you can, and always seek consciousness, because transcending ego is the highest most fulfilling thing a human being can do. Only this way can you achieve true liberation, detach from any need and judgement and achieve TRUE " * I believe that Person3 here is what most spiritual teachers preach, as the core idea. Then I say, isn't all this talk about ego just more and more ego pleasing itself? It feel kind of good and "developed" to be thinking about how the ego works, right? But isn't that just more ego, tricking itself into thinking that he somehow surpassed itself? But wait a second, isn't this whole post about how ego tricks itself just more ego, feeling all warm and special because it thinks it actually is something greater? Can true liberation (or however you might want to call it) actually be achieved? If someone says that he or she had an enlightenment experience, tasted The Void, Infinity, is that actually true? In my current perception, liberation and clarity, which are the ultimate purpose of this spiritual work that we're doing here, cannot be experienced by a living human. By clarity I mean disidentification with anything, seeing EVERYTHING for what it is and not in relationship with this person here, not for what it can be for or against us. Therefore, as this human body is the machine that processes what happens in our field of awareness, and as its one and only goal is to keep itself alive and happy, it cannot grasp true clarity. Because clarity would mean ego death. But how can a person live without an ego? He simply wouldn't, he wouldn't do anything because there's no desire for anynthing, there's no good or bad, no motivation, nothing pressing it, nothing attracting it, nothing to make him gravitate towards anything. Also, I feel like choosing things like UNCONDITIONAL LOVE and PEACE (all brought to life from the same idea of egolessness as an achievalbe state for a human being) is highly convenient and preached by most spiritual teachers out there. Because this Nothingness has no reason to be attached to any quality or value, be it "good" or "bad". Because WHY WOULD IT? I'm not trying to say that seeking is pointless and that it won't get you anywhere, I'm only trying to point out something that doesn't feel justified but in spite of that it seems to be mistakenly promoted by the spiritual community. I believe that seeking definitely has its benefits and I'm REALLY grateful for somehow being on this path. I'm not ranting against self-actualization and I'm not saying "Oh, this is just wishful thinking, I have no control over life so I might as well just sit here and do nothing with this life, cuz we're just trapped in this big ego illusion". What I'm stressing here is that I believe we're looking at this journey as if it had a finish line, a certain level of development where one just becomes one with everything and detaches from selfishness and desire. Well, I'm calling bs on that, because I don't think that some construct such as ego, which (as I believe Leo would put it) is a SUBSET, can transcend to become Infinity, The SUPERSET. What I think is the problem with this way of seeing this path is that it WILL, at some point, create unrealistic expectations / a sense of inadequacy and therefore tons of suffering. It will make you judge yourself and other people for not fitting into this set of standards. Don't get me wrong, I believe it is good to keep raising our consciousness, learning and growing and developing and all the juicy stuff (I see the benefits of that), but I think we shouldn't have this image of the selfless all-loving monk that dedicates his entire life to enlightenment experience. Not to say there's something wrong with that, but just realize that if that's not the case for you there's no need to beat yourself up. I'm curious to see what you think about this one.

Seems like there's a lot more direct work to be done. (I mean... I could sit here all day long debating this stuff but that wouldn't really get me anywhere, would it?) Thank you all for your input and for sharing resources, it really helps me checking weather I'm on the right track.

@Phil This is exactly the kind of mind trick that I'm talking about. Don't you see how ego likes to think of itself as being special? "Enriched sensations and emotions?" Sure! Just what the ego wants. "Reconnection to Oneness? Damn! What an awesome and developed ego I am! I transcended all illusion, am I not the most special ego that there is? I'm soooo superior, I tasted TRUE HAPPINESS, TRUE BEING!" Feels good and warm, doesn't it? REAL reconnection to Oneness means dropping EVERYTHING! And what I'm claiming here is that transcendence of ego is not possible for the ego, just like having senses is an impossibility for a chair -- it simply doesn't have the necessary tools to do that, it is just a partition of something WAY bigger. Even in theory, in the exact moment when transcendence would occur the ego would cease to exist, along side with all thoughts and senses and feelings and so forth. You're saying that transcendence would bring along all those incredible enhanced feelings, but that's just not the case -- notice how good it feels to think that that's the case, that's ego right there! just as there's ego in trying to communicate this insight with you. Because oneness is impersonal, selfless, senseless, thoughtless. And as for ego death through stopping thoughts / focus, meditation shows that the stream of thoughts is a never-ending process as long as you're alive and conscious. I know this got pretty ranty, but I feel like that's the best way to communicate this perspective. I'm genuinely interested in discovering the truth (or something as close to truth as possible) about this issue of transcendence and so far this perspective seems the most accurate to me.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to stress here: we should embrace the fact that life as a human being cannot be separated from ego and while learning about it, how it functions, its limitations and what is there beyond it (which is what I believe to be the main focus of spirituality), we have to be really careful to not mistakenly associate that with trying to suppress the ego, which undoubtedly creates suffering. I'm really trying to grasp this one, but I don't know what you're basing this statement on. To me "heart" is the same as intuition, and as much as I would like to believe that intuition is something beyond ego, I didn't manage to experience this yet and I would really appreciate some guidance on this issue of intuition. Thank you for your time.

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts. I wanted to make the distinction between: - The ego realizing that there is something more than itself, a.k.a. God / Infinity -- which I think the concept of ego transcendence actually means; and - The ego tricking itself that it somehow became something more than it is and that it "transcended itself" -- which I often see promoted in the spiritual community and therefore was very confusing to me and seemed misleading, and I thought it might be helpful to emphasize this distinction. This stuff came to mind after some self-inquiry work and after what I thought was an enlightenment experience, which later seemed quite foolish of me because I realized that the ego cannot get enlightened, it can only make up concepts of what enlightenment is. Totally agree, thanks for putting it into words in a more comprehensible manner. The way you say it leaves room for interpreting that there IS something else (which is not "me") to transcend the ego, so please clarify that one. I understand that we fundamentally are God, but can you explain or give me some clues of how a human being can live without ego? But aren't feelings felt through the ego? As I see it, this true self / God has nothing to do with feelings, because feelings emerge as bodily sensations which self-inquiry proves to not be the true self. Please correct me if I'm wrong.