The Ego Isn't The Enemy

[electroBeam]

Hi

Being so called 'enlightened' and being egoic are not mutually exclusive. In fact being egoic and being enlightened is perfectly normal. 

Realizing the ego is a fabrication doesn't magically stop egoic processes. You could realize that you don't exist, and still get angry or irritated with someone for saying something silly or stupid. The only difference is that you realize those egoic processes of getting angry aren't coming from you, but out of no where. 

There are people who have visited this forum(most have left, which I understand) who are highly insightful and amazing individuals, yet act like complete assholes, and get mistakenly interpreted by the less experienced on here as 'lower consciousness' or egoic. 

Don't be so robotics in your analysis of seemingly assholes. All of my growth, ALL hasn't come from the nice guys who have high reputation, and similar writing styles to Leo's overly conceptual, abstract, idealistic theme, but to privately messaging those wrongly labelled individuals about myself and my problems, and man I wouldnt be the same without those harsh but required insights.

Imagine if this forum thought more critically about what is said, rather than robotically dismissing anyone who doesn't represent Leo's holy grail of what a 'high consciousness' would look like, whatever the fuck 'high consciousness' means.

This forum is great, but when nearly all of the accounts that have had the most impact of my life have either left, because they have noticed growth on here isn't the main focus of the forum, or have gotten banned, something isn't right, and it has to be brought up.

Edited August 29, 2017 by electroBeam

[PlasmicProjection]

Agreed some of my hardest lessons have been won through tough lessons.

[How to be wise]

16 hours ago, electroBeam said:

Hi

Being so called 'enlightened' and being egoic are not mutually exclusive. In fact being egoic and being enlightened is perfectly normal. 

Realizing the ego is a fabrication doesn't magically stop egoic processes. You could realize that you don't exist, and still get angry or irritated with someone for saying something silly or stupid. The only difference is that you realize those egoic processes of getting angry aren't coming from you, but out of no where. 

There are people who have visited this forum(most have left, which I understand) who are highly insightful and amazing individuals, yet act like complete assholes, and get mistakenly interpreted by the less experienced on here as 'lower consciousness' or egoic. 

Don't be so robotics in your analysis of seemingly assholes. All of my growth, ALL hasn't come from the nice guys who have high reputation, and similar writing styles to Leo's overly conceptual, abstract, idealistic theme, but to privately messaging those wrongly labelled individuals about myself and my problems, and man I wouldnt be the same without those harsh but required insights.

Imagine if this forum thought more critically about what is said, rather than robotically dismissing anyone who doesn't represent Leo's holy grail of what a 'high consciousness' would look like, whatever the fuck 'high consciousness' means.

This forum is great, but when nearly all of the accounts that have had the most impact of my life have either left, because they have noticed growth on here isn't the main focus of the forum, or have gotten banned, something isn't right, and it has to be brought up.

The truth is hard to swallow.

[Dodo]

24 minutes ago, How to be wise said:

The truth is hard to swallow.

Yeah. I want to preach the truth I see about your signature. 

"Until we know that death is equal to life, we live in fear." -- Byron Katie

From my view here, no-one fears death. What we fear the meaning we put on it. What we fear is pain. What we fear is a possibly horrible next life (if one believes in that) or we fear experiencing the so called Nothingness, which is the biggest load of horseshit fear there can be. For there to be nothingness, there cant be an experiencer of it - if there is, Bam, no longer nothing is experienced, because you're experiencing your being lol.

We fear hell. Possibly the most justified fear ever. And I think a wise one.

For me fear is definitely not coming from Death, although it might appear this way to many. Fear stems from life and our distaste with painful occurrences.

These are my thoughts on the matter. All come from nothing, as anything and everything.

 

Edited August 29, 2017 by Dodo

[Joseph Maynor]

I like to look at it like this, even though I don't want to label myself as having an ego, I can look at reality through the concept of ego and apply that lens to reality and to other things in reality.  But the map is not the territory.  I refer to it as cubby-holing through the lens of Yang.  You can rubricize reality in terms of Yin and Yang, but Yin and Yang are just lenses and not actual features of reality.

I think we need to be very cautious about saying we are any property or not any property.  When we arms-length the Mind-Matrix, those issues lie moot to reality.  Reality just is.  The Mind-Matrix is what wants to cubby-hole things as ego and not ego.  When you arms-length paradigm, theory, beliefs, concepts -- Mind-Matrix -- all you're left with is Being, which is property-less.

So, I am no-thing.  Whatever I "am" is what the Mind-Matrix says I am, and that is too limited of a designation no matter what it is.  I am not a property, a quality, a thing, or a thought.

Even the "truths" of enlightenment are Mind-Matrix products.  Except for the few things that can be determined empirically and the experience of Being when the Mind-Matrix is arms-lengthed.  Those don't have much to do with the mind, unless you believe that the mind is projecting all distinctions onto reality and not just adding things in with thoughts.  If you believe that, then you have a more robust view of what the Mind-Matrix is doing to "overlay" and "alter" reality; e.g., you might believe that all distinctions are products of the Mind-Matrix.  And does this extend to individuation of objects too? -- probably, if you ask these theorists.  Without doing more self-inquiry myself, I am cautious about believing too many positive-claims made in enlightenment theory.  I view enlightenment theory as just loosening our existing theory, not as a replacement truth.  I hope this makes sense.  My take is that enlightenment is not about believing different truths, it's about being the true skeptic and arms-lengthing all beliefs.  Arms-lengthing is different from accepting and denying.  Cling-loosely and only when appropriate is my motto.  Don't just change jerseys, take them all off.  You don't want to be an enlightened dogmatist, that would be the wrong answer -- just to frame this dualistically for fun.  

Actually what you want to do is savvily cling and not cling to the different jerseys in the right manner and at the right times pursuant to your aims in particular contexts, but I am getting ahead of myself here.  I'll discuss this idea in my journal.  Like when you drive a car, even though the car is moving smoothly, there is a complex and organic discrete application of (or clinging to) the gas and brake pedals that produce that continuous motion.  And note that this combination of gas and brake must be intuitive if we're dealing with real terrain.  It is too complex to be modeled by any computer or dualistic theory.  Sure you can model one small stretch of natural terrain perhaps, but a human can easily drive any terrain, even unforeseen terrain.  Driving a car is an example of the Breath of God.  We just drive the car without thinking anything, seemingly naturally.  We open-up and simply harmonize with the Tao, with Divine Creativity.  We do the gas and brake pedals, they don't do us.  We forget this a lot often, especially when we are talking about ourselves or about the external-world.  Very often we mistake the map for the territory.  We often reverse cart and horse; and the horse gets aggravated by this and the cart gets damaged as a result.  

When I'm in Being, I could care-less about categorizing or labeling most things.  I just try to harmonize with the Tao, or Divine Creativity.  I'm realizing more and more that the Mind-Matrix was designed to deal with practical matters and is very clunky dealing with philosophical matters, and matters regarding reality itself.  Thinking is inherently dualistic and atomistic in nature -- it is discrete.  Reality is more primary than the cubby-holing qualities of the mind.  I like Leo's idea of building a tube down to the bottom of the ocean and then trying to maintain that indefinitely.  It's a fool's errand.  That contraption that we built is gonna get smashed to pieces like a toy one day when Nature gets bored, looks for something fun to do, and rears-up, making a swift-mockery of our simple-minded intentions.  The Mind-Matrix is like that!  Too simple by half a lot of times.  You can't catch a shadow with a net.  See?  The Mind-Matrix is what allows the metaphorical-speak I am colorfully playing-around with here.  Our funny minds!  It's got a mind of its own haha.  I could tell it that it's wrong, but then I would only be playing right into its own hands.  It's better to just ignore the Monkey-Mind, and then it just slinks-away eventually -- especially if you meditate everyday.  

Video on point to watch:

 

Edited August 30, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[How to be wise]

13 minutes ago, Dodo said:

Yeah. I want to preach the truth I see about your signature. 

"Until we know that death is equal to life, we live in fear." -- Byron Katie

From my view here, no-one fears death. What we fear the meaning we put on it. What we fear is pain. What we fear is a possibly horrible next life (if one believes in that) or we fear experiencing the so called Nothingness, which is the biggest load of horseshit fear there can be. For there to be nothingness, there cant be an experiencer of it - if there is, Bam, no longer nothing is experienced, because you're experiencing your being lol.

We fear hell. Possibly the most justified fear ever. And I think a wise one.

For me fear is definitely not coming from Death, although it might appear this way to many. Fear stems from life and our distaste with painful occurrences.

These are my thoughts on the matter. All come from nothing, as anything and everything.

 

No. We fear the death of our identity. 

[Dodo]

14 minutes ago, How to be wise said:

No. We fear the death of our identity. 

Then, what Byron Katie has said is also not valid. If death is life,  this doesnt mean you wont lose your identity.

The thing is Death is nothing. Any experience I classify as life. Hell is life, heaven is life. Death is no experience. It doesn't exist. There is only life.

We can say that Awareness is Death. The void.

People fear the concept of Death, but they only fear it because they have equated Death (which means no experience) with Life (the negative version) - For example having a life experience of 1000 years staring at a black screen or something like that.

 

[Dodo]

1 hour ago, How to be wise said:

No. We fear the death of our identity. 

Her audience are people with somewhat comfortable lives like ours. 

Imagine suffering your whole life being tortured in a small cell and Byron Katie here come and tell u. Dont worry, there's more of this, you can never die.

You can see how this feature can also be seen as a bug.  It all depends on the experience.  Thats why I say we fear bad experiences (pain in life),  not death. We fear what will happen after. We fear the pain during death. All these things - life.

Ps: What we fear about death as Egos is the things that we will lose. The things we are attached to as individuals. Katie's saying is not helping that issue. Life doesn't imply you wont lose your shit, like everything including body-mind.

Edited August 29, 2017 by Dodo

[Visionary]

18 hours ago, electroBeam said:

Hi

Being so called 'enlightened' and being egoic are not mutually exclusive. In fact being egoic and being enlightened is perfectly normal. 

Realizing the ego is a fabrication doesn't magically stop egoic processes. You could realize that you don't exist, and still get angry or irritated with someone for saying something silly or stupid. The only difference is that you realize those egoic processes of getting angry aren't coming from you, but out of no where. 

There are people who have visited this forum(most have left, which I understand) who are highly insightful and amazing individuals, yet act like complete assholes, and get mistakenly interpreted by the less experienced on here as 'lower consciousness' or egoic. 

Don't be so robotics in your analysis of seemingly assholes. All of my growth, ALL hasn't come from the nice guys who have high reputation, and similar writing styles to Leo's overly conceptual, abstract, idealistic theme, but to privately messaging those wrongly labelled individuals about myself and my problems, and man I wouldnt be the same without those harsh but required insights.

Imagine if this forum thought more critically about what is said, rather than robotically dismissing anyone who doesn't represent Leo's holy grail of what a 'high consciousness' would look like, whatever the fuck 'high consciousness' means.

This forum is great, but when nearly all of the accounts that have had the most impact of my life have either left, because they have noticed growth on here isn't the main focus of the forum, or have gotten banned, something isn't right, and it has to be brought up.

Your right. But don't underestimate the ego's potential to hide its ass. 

[Nahm]

@electroBeam Yo! Great post. You busted my chops wide open and that lead to a whirlwind of inconsistent reality, still expanding. It get's more beautiful everyday! Thanks! Conflation is a real doozy!

[Heart of Space]

This forum has gotten incredibly wacky and more so as it's gone on.  Whether it be ridiculous superfluous beliefs about chakras or negligent over usage of psychedelics and the delusional beliefs acquired from them, people here are way off base.  Many people have trouble understanding the basics behind meditation and spirituality and get caught up in the pretty lights.  Not to mention the disingenuous spiritual attitude and demeanor people have that is a personality they've created by absorbing themselves in this culture.  Being on this forum for too long is negative for your growth as a spiritual human being.  Shame really.

Edited August 30, 2017 by Heart of Space

[Aware]

Fearful Death is the personified form of Awareness for all atheïsts who fail to listen to their heart. Who refuse to see That all comes from the Living ONE we call Awareness That has no cause.

To all who replace the living ONE That is situated in all hearts as ONE for emptiness, nothing or void as the supreme Lord of All, being the greatest and the one being first- will encounter Awareness personified as death.

All atheists believe they came from material substance, chaos or lawlesness. That all is but an accident. While believing this they themselves become corrupt which is proof why they are wrong. 

Thus enevitably because their true cause is Awareness and not void, emptiness, accident or nothing-, such false believes are replied by the living ONE as encountering Him in the personified form we call death.

And will face another enbodiment according to their state of being they are in when the body becomes useless. 

The holy Bible, the bhagavad Gita and Many other scripture are very clear about such subjects.

Ahayah Ashar Ahayah,

chant and be free!

Edited August 31, 2017 by Aware

[John Iverson]

Ego is like the lighting in the sky lighting can shiw up but the lightning can't touch the sky... if you look at the sky there is ego but it cannot touch you it is sinply percieve... it like lightning and clouds a sensations... it is a part of you that you will perceive it, it is not you..  

[Toby]

Might also apply here regarding ego: