I Think My Ego Is Too Big To Get Enlightened

[Seraph]

I was a listening to an Adyashanti audio book where he asked a question somewhere along the lines of:

If you could have a total perfect enlightenment but you had to spend your life stacking shelves at Walmart, would you do it?
What if that was God's plan for you?

I took these questions to be a litmus test for spiritual ego.
 

If I'm perfectly honest I don't think I could. I want my life to go somewhere. 
Is there a fundamental conflict between enlightenment and personal development?

If not, why not?

This is confusing me.

[Prabhaker]

3 minutes ago, Seraph said:

I Think My Ego Is Too Big To Get Enlightened / Is there a fundamental conflict between enlightenment and personal development?

No, only a ripe fruit falls. 

Ego is part of natural growth. But that doesn't mean that you have to remain with it forever.

It is a natural growth, and then there is a second step when it has to be dropped. That too is natural.

But the second step can be taken only when the first has come to its crescendo, its climax, when the first has reached its peak.

Ego will drop. It can drop of its own accord also. If you simply allow it to grow and help it to grow, there will be NO need to drop it.

This is very deep. If YOU drop it, ego has remained inside. WHO will drop it? If you think YOU will drop it, YOU are the ego - so whatsoever you drop will not be the real thing. The real thing will be preserved and you will have thrown something else.

You cannot make yourself egoless. Who will do it? It happens, it is not a doing. You grow into ego and a point comes when the whole thing becomes so hellish that the dream is broken.

[Shin]

You simply didn't do enough conscious work to understand how powerful and magical your life will be with more presence.

Spending your life stacking shelves wouldn't even matter if you "reach" enlightenment by the way, because that would mean it's either what life wants you to do (and you would be totally ok with that) or that it's just a temporary job (and you would surrender to it).

Thing is, if you ever realize your enlightement (which is extremely rare), life would probably have bigger projects for you, cause awareness wants to spread by every mean possible.

Whatever way you ask this question, it is irrelevant, life doesn't really start untill you find your true self and follow your intuition anyway.
Every projects or wants you have right now are essentially flawed, because it's literally your thoughts that direct your mind right now, and an inconscious mind is fucked up.

[Seraph]

@Prabhaker @Shin Thanks for answering, but both of your answers illustrate my confusion:

 

20 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

You cannot make yourself egoless. Who will do it? It happens, it is not a doing.

To me this means that doing consciousness work is pointless because I can't make myself enlightened.

 

9 minutes ago, Shin said:

You simply didn't do enough conscious work

But this says I must work more on myself.

Which is right?
Or, why are they both right?
 

[Shin]

Growing your consciousness, or to be more exact, realizing more of yourself, doesn't mean your ego will disappear.

Of course you have to work on yourself, do you think enlightened people are lazy bum who just got lucky ?
Even monks who only do spiritual stuff takes years and years (sometimes decades) to realize their enlightenment

Edited April 20, 2017 by Shin

[Prabhaker]

12 minutes ago, Seraph said:

To me this means that doing consciousness work is pointless because I can't make myself enlightened.

Enlightenment happens, you can't make yourself enlightened. Doing consciousness work will not make you enlightened in near future, this journey is very long and vast. Doing consciousness work will prepare ground for enlightenment. Without doing consciousness work your ego dropping can become a breakdown, whenever it happens.

Edited April 20, 2017 by Prabhaker

[Seraph]

5 minutes ago, Shin said:

do you think enlightened people are lazy bum who just got lucky ?

Lazy, no. Lucky, yes. It sounds like enlightenment is just luck.
I think Leo even said that in one of his videos.
So if it's just luck, why work?
And if working just gets in the way (because it is the ego that works, right?), why work?

8 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

Doing consciousness work will prepare ground for enlightenment.

Ok, how does it do that?


 

[Prabhaker]

1 minute ago, Seraph said:

Ok, how does it do that?

Meditation, as such, needs no technique at all. But techniques are needed to remove the obstacles in the way of meditation. So it has to be understood very clearly: meditation itself needs no techniques, it is a simple understanding, an alertness, an awareness. Neither alertness is a technique nor is awareness a technique. But on the way to being alert, there are so many obstacles. Man has been gathering those obstacles — they need to be removed. Meditation itself cannot remove them, certain techniques are needed to remove them.

So the work of the techniques is just to prepare the ground, is just to prepare the way, the passage. The techniques in themselves are not meditation.

It is not a question of technique. You don't have to do anything. Meditation is something natural, something that is already hidden inside you and is trying to find its way to reach to the open sky, to the sun, to the air. But the mind is surrounding it from all sides; all doors are closed, all windows are closed. The techniques are needed to open the windows, to open the doors. And immediately the whole sky is available to you, with all its stars, with all its beauty, with all its sunsets, with all its sunrises. 

[Seraph]

@Prabhaker So true meditation is not work, but techniques are work to get to meditation?

Doesn't this thinking just create unnecessary obstacles by itself?

Once again bringing me back to my question, doesn't work defy the path to enlightenment?

6 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

The techniques are needed to open the windows, to open the doors.

What windows? What Doors?

[Dodo]

3 minutes ago, Seraph said:

@Prabhaker So true meditation is not work, but techniques are work to get to meditation?

Doesn't this thinking just create unnecessary obstacles by itself?

Once again bringing me back to my question, doesn't work defy the path to enlightenment?

What windows? What Doors?

Those questions are all good questions, but this is the problem with the Ego, it will always dig up more questions and claim - I won't be happy until I find out..

The answer to all questions is the dropping of the belief that the one who is asking the questions is in any way who you are.

[Prabhaker]

2 minutes ago, Seraph said:

Once again bringing me back to my question, doesn't work defy the path to enlightenment?

Not that one can reach without seeking. Seeking is needed, but then comes a point when seeking has to be dropped. The boat is needed to cross the river but then comes a moment when you have to get out of the boat and forget all about it and leave it behind. Effort is needed, without effort nothing is possible. And also only with effort, nothing is possible.

3 minutes ago, Seraph said:

What windows? What Doors?

Every experience can't be communicated in language. I used metaphors. 

[Seraph]

Just now, Dodoster said:

The answer to all questions is the dropping of the belief that the one who is asking the questions is in any way who you are.

 

1 hour ago, Prabhaker said:

This is very deep. If YOU drop it, ego has remained inside. WHO will drop it? If you think YOU will drop it, YOU are the ego - so whatsoever you drop will not be the real thing.

So I can't get an answer? (sorry)

[Prabhaker]

Just now, Seraph said:

So I can't get an answer?

Answer you can get by doing consciousness work, it will be existential. It can't be verbal , in language. 

[Dodo]

8 minutes ago, Seraph said:

 

So I can't get an answer? (sorry)

The mind will drop the belief, the I thought that is entangled with all other egoic ones. But only when you are not allowing it to prance around as if it were who you are. The following self observation should help: You know you are not creating your thoughts, you are aware of them "popping up".

Who did them? Was it you? If you say yes, that means that you are claiming you are unconscious, because you were not consciously creating those thoughts, just like I am not creating mine right now. They just happen based on my mind's conditioning.

But in fact, you know that you are always aware, always conscious now, this is who you are. Hold the sense of I amness, of awareness, and try not to attach to any forms that pop up in your awareness. It is a kind of a non-doing - that's why they call it being.

This very detachment is starving the ego! It's brilliant.

Edited April 20, 2017 by Dodoster

[Seraph]

What is consciousness work exactly?

is it just being?

[Dodo]

6 minutes ago, Seraph said:

What is consciousness work exactly?

is it just being?

And brutal honesty with your present moment experience - holding the experiencer, the subject and not attaching to the forms - forms include sensations, thoughts, emotions etc. Anything in the realm of the changeful. As long as your attention is on any object, the false I is there. "Oh I am experiencing bliss, I must be enlightened etc etc" 

The mind will say "just being" as if it's something it can do. No, the truth is you always are that. There can be 10000 waves in your awareness that are always doing doing doing, but you are not any of them.

If you isolate your current sense of subject, of self, it will slowly start to dissolve and open up the space for truth to shine through. 

Edited April 20, 2017 by Dodoster

[Prabhaker]

7 minutes ago, Seraph said:

What is consciousness work exactly?

is it just being?

Meditation starts by being separate from the mind, by being a witness. That is the only way of separating yourself from anything.  

Watching is the key of meditation.

Watch your mind.

Don't do anything - no repetition of mantra, no repetition of the name of god - just watch whatever the mind is doing. Don't disturb it, don't prevent it, don't repress it; don't do anything at all on your part. You just be a watcher, and the miracle of watching is meditation. As you watch, slowly mind becomes empty of thoughts; but you are not falling asleep, you are becoming more alert, more aware.

As the mind becomes completely empty, your whole energy becomes aflame of awakening. This flame is the result of meditation. So you can say meditation is another name of watching, witnessing, observing - without any judgement, without any evaluation. Just by watching, you immediately get out of the mind.

[Prabhaker]

As mind exists, it is not meditative. The total mind must change before meditation can happen. Then what is the mind as it now exists? How does it function?

The mind is always verbalizing. You can know words, you can know language, you can know the conceptual structure of thinking, but that is not thinking. On the contrary, it is an escape from thinking. You see a flower and you verbalize it; you see a man crossing the street and you verbalize it. The mind can transform every existential thing into words. Then the words become a barrier, an imprisonment. This constant transformation of things into words, of existence into words, is the obstacle to a meditative mind.

So the first requirement toward a meditative mind is to be aware of your constant verbalizing and to be able to stop it. Just see things; do not verbalize. Be aware of their presence, but do not change them into words. Let things be, without language; let persons be, without language; let situations be, without language. It is not impossible; it is natural. It is the situation as it now exists that is artificial, but we have become so habituated to it, it has become so mechanical, that we are not even aware that we are constantly transforming experience into words.

The sunrise is there. You are never aware of the gap between seeing it and verbalizing. You see the sun, you feel it, and immediately you verbalize it. The gap between seeing and verbalizing is lost. One must become aware of the fact that the sunrise is not a word. It is a fact, a presence. The mind automatically changes experiences into words. These words then come between you and the experience.

Meditation means living without words, living nonlinguistically. Sometimes it happens spontaneously. When you are in love, presence is felt, not language. Whenever two lovers are intimate with one another they become silent. It is not that there is nothing to express. On the contrary, there is an overwhelming amount to be expressed. But words are never there; they cannot be. They come only when love has gone.

[Seraph]

4 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

The mind can transform every existential thing into words

Aren't words existential things in and of themselves? I mean the sensation of words.
if I deny them then I am denying reality as it is happening for me now. Right?

 

10 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

Meditation starts by being separate from the mind, by being a witness. That is the only way of separating yourself from anything.

But who is becoming separated if I don't exist?
Is this meditation or a technique to meditation you are talking now?

[Galyna]

1 hour ago, Seraph said:

I was a listening to an Adyashanti audio book where he asked a question somewhere along the lines of:

If you could have a total perfect enlightenment but you had to spend your life stacking shelves at Walmart, would you do it?
What if that was God's plan for you?

I took these questions to be a litmus test for spiritual ego.
 

If I'm perfectly honest I don't think I could. I want my life to go somewhere. 
Is there a fundamental conflict between enlightenment and personal development?

If not, why not?

This is confusing me.

The thing is if you get enlightened you would not care about your career that much, and working at Walmart would be top bliss for you