What is the biggest barrier to ridding yourself of the ego's grasp over you

[Razard86]

I recently had a day where I woke up, and just felt...bad...today I feel great but that feeling came out of no where. I recently have come aware of why that is. As long as you believe in the concept of bad, and good....you will feel both good and bad. So one of the first things you need to do if you want to be able to just feel freedom is get rid of those concepts. There is no bad, there is no good, there are no problems. I know this is difficult, I'm telling you to throw away your ability to make sense of things...

But that's just how it is. As long as there is good and bad in your world view...you will always experience both. There is no other way to put it. You want to stop suffering? Then there is no bad, there is no right, there is no wrong. Let all of that go. This will be especially hard for intellectual types to do. You aren't going to be able to do this overnight, but each day try to let go a little bit of your judgment over time. 

Now this doesn't mean you still can't have opinions or perspectives, they just aren't right or wrong, they just are. So the closer you can get to being able to embody this...the less fear, and the less suffering will be in your life. Again..the price is high to escape the cage, but once you do you will realize it was worth it.

[JuliusCaesar]

4 minutes ago, Razard86 said:

As long as there is good and bad in your world view...you will always experience both.

This is true.

 

4 minutes ago, Razard86 said:

This will be especially hard for intellectual types to do.

Naturally, intellectuals are too smart to comprehend the impossible, and therefore they cannot possibly hope to understand the universe as it really is.

 

@Razard86 As to the name of this thread, I feel that it's strange you'd want to rid yourself of ego, as that's essentially your ego saying you don't want any ego.

 

 

[Someone here]

If every day was a sunny day then there wouldn't be anything special about a sunny day. It would feel like any other. If every day was a good day for you, then you wouldn't enjoy it. It would just be a normal day to you. We need contrast in our lives. We need those bad days to truly enjoy the good days. So appreciate them, not for how they make you feel, but for what they allow you to feel.

Because… that’s just life. We have expectations on how we want things to go, and sometimes, and I’d argue most of the time, things just don’t work out the way we want them to. Thus, a bad day is created.

[Godishere]

Kind of off topic, but why does God not reveal itself often? If we go by how many people on earth are "God Realized", why is it so rare? If God is this "perfect, omniscient" being. Why can't you meditate your way into awakening very easily? 

If I am God limiting myself from seeing my infinite self, wouldn't that make me not omniscient if I cannot consciously awaken by determination right now?

Sorry I know this is completely off topic, just wanted to know your thoughts 

[Zigzag Idiot]

 

17 minutes ago, Razard86 said:

You want to stop suffering? Then there is no bad, there is no right, there is no wrong. Let all of that go. This will be especially hard for intellectual types to do. You aren't going to be able to do this overnight, but each day try to let go a little bit of your judgment over time. 

 

I perceive intellectual types as being especially susceptible to a chronic neurosis. Stuck in their head all the time,,,

 A favorite one- liner of mine. - Reaching conclusions can often make one miserable. 

 

I picked out a couple of excerpts from the Ridhwan glossary which I thought was in alignment with your statements.

 

There is No Separate Thing That Is Ego

As the restricted self, what we call the ego, lets go, its very substance unfolds like a flower. The ego doesn't die but transforms. The ego is nothing but the perspective of the surface of the soul, which is the true being. Many spiritual traditions go on about slaying the ego. But you can't kill the ego. There is no separate thing that is ego. The ego is action, simply an activity that fastens your being, your soul, your psyche, and your self in a particular way. The fixation and rigidity of the ego calcifies and forms a dry plaster on your gut that restricts the movement of your soul. As the ego dissolves we experience essence and being more directly. You might be sitting in a cafe when suddenly you experience yourself as an infinite, boundless, emerald green light. You can't help but see the pain and hurt of whoever passes in front of you, and your heart swells with kindness. You want to do whatever you can to alleviate their suffering. That is the emergence of the aspect of compassion.

from- https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/ego-activity

 

Ego Individuality is a Mental Structure, Not a Beingness

Ego boundaries create not only a sense of separateness, but, in a fundamental way, a sense of isolation and lack of contact. ..... This is also a subtle perception, requiring a great deal of disidentification. As we discussed in the section on contact, the individuality of ego feels like a kind of personal contact, but only the Personal Essence can make real, direct contact. Our present discussion of boundaries makes it clear why this is so. It is not only because ego individuality is a mental structure and not a beingness, but also because its very existence is based on its boundaries. These boundaries separate it from the rest of the world much more profoundly than is usually assumed. When one experiences the quality of contact of the Personal Essence, it becomes clear how thoroughly ego is shut off within its boundaries, as if behind walls. It is painfully isolated from true human contact It is common understanding that deep contact requires that one relax, let go of one’s boundaries, and become vulnerable. The essential contact of the Personal Essence is made possible by a complete relaxation of defensive boundaries, a total vulnerability. This immediate, real contact is possible only for a personal presence that does not have the isolating boundaries of ego. This quality of the Personal Essence is mysterious, even miraculous.

Pearl Beyond Price, pg. 398

from- https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/ego-boundaries

 

[Breakingthewall]

We don't want to get rid of your ego. We want your ego to stop generating anxiety. and then leave a little space to go deep, not always superficial. as you say, the ego must stop judging things as inherently good or bad, and simply judge them as desirable or undesirable for the ends it pursues. ends like survival, for example.  

when you stop judging you realize that almost all the suffering was unreal. it was just wounded vanity. suffering is easily bearable. More, you get proud of it. Humiliation, totally unbearable. But there is not humiliation, it's a delirium 

[Razard86]

1 hour ago, JuliusCaesar said:

This is true.

 

Naturally, intellectuals are too smart to comprehend the impossible, and therefore they cannot possibly hope to understand the universe as it really is.

 

@Razard86 As to the name of this thread, I feel that it's strange you'd want to rid yourself of ego, as that's essentially your ego saying you don't want any ego.

 

 

Not rid of the ego but its grasp. I love my ego, reality IS EGO, Infinite EGO.

Edited September 8, 2022 by Razard86

[Matthew85]

Part of the barrier for me is I as God have imagined myself in this very limited state and I don't know how to unimagine it. I guess I wanted to play the game of gradual evolution. I'm not looking for full God more but a permanent more expanded state would be very nice. I haven't discovered a way to achieve this yet. Only temporary shifts in state. 

[Razard86]

5 minutes ago, Matthew85 said:

Part of the barrier for me is I as God have imagined myself in this very limited state and I don't know how to unimagine it. I guess I wanted to play the game of gradual evolution. I'm not looking for full God more but a permanent more expanded state would be very nice. I haven't discovered a way to achieve this yet. Only temporary shifts in state. 

Whatever you focus you become, thats what it means to be God. If you want it, focus on it, be willing to die to self to achieve it and you will make a permanent shift. Life is just an identity/ego game that God plays.

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Razard86 said:

What is the biggest barrier to ridding yourself of the ego's grasp over you

Trying to rid yourself from its grasp.

[Tyler Robinson]

Survival. 

 

[Razard86]

3 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Trying to rid yourself from its grasp.

That's only part of it, the other part is learning to embrace what is. If you just say that...people won't understand. You get released from the grasp from ego by releasing judgment. That is why you love the ego, if you can love your ego, you can love all egos. That is literally the key to alleviating suffering of all types. If you love everything you don't suffer lol.

A lot of yall didn't try to understand...yall just made a lot of assumptions of what I was saying. But ehhh I put it out there whatever yall glean is just another mirror anyway. Everything is a mirror so my reaction to your posts is itself a mirror lol.

[Matthew85]

1 hour ago, Razard86 said:

Whatever you focus you become,

I agree. The challenge for me is there are other aspects of myself that are focused on things I have no conscious awareness of. If it was only the focus of the finite mind that was creating it would be a lot easier. 

Edited September 8, 2022 by Matthew85

[axiom]

The biggest barrier is by far the conceptualisation of appearance as personal awareness.

[Razard86]

2 hours ago, axiom said:

The biggest barrier is by far the conceptualisation of appearance as personal awareness.

awareness is foundational....it is what imagines conceptualization. If there is no awareness....there is no dream. Can't have memory without awareness, can't have happening without awareness. Can't have intelligence without awareness. Don't talk, don't feel, just be, notice...you are aware, and aware that you are aware. That's it.

Your body is aware, if it wasn't it couldn't respond... awareness just is, God can't awaken...if its not aware. Even while sleep God is aware, just at a lower level of awareness. 

Awareness if foundational, yall are confusing self with awareness. You don't need a self to be aware. When you sleep with no dreams....you aren't aware right? But if that was the case...how do you remember...that you weren't aware...because you are always aware...even when you aren't. You are imagining not being aware...but you are still aware. 

[Breakingthewall]

the biggest barrier, the biggest attachment, is vanity. and the solution is humility. every pain is vanity. even the fear of death is vanity. without vanity there is no suffering. humility must be total, then the ego loosens, the future and the past disappear from the equation and only the present remains, clean and perfect, in the absence of the vain tyrant who judges everything as not enough for his majesty. the idiot focuses on the fact that the tablecloth is not silk and therefore does not enjoy the delicacies cooked by an artist. 

You have to make that cocky bastard lower his head and humble himself. so much so that it seems that it does not even exist. Reality is god, and you, shitty ego, are here to serve, not to command

Edited September 8, 2022 by Breakingthewall

[SOUL]

The mechanism that empowers the 'grasp' in our experience of mind is belief, more specifically it is limiting beliefs that serve as a barrier. Even the most awakening insights one might have can turn into a barrier if we allow it to become a limiting belief.

As an example the insight that believing in good and evil manifests in us judging everything with that moral dualism. If we turn around and say we must remove this or it is a barrier to further awakening, freedom or enlightenment it becomes a limiting belief.

We have now put this separation between us and something we imagine we don't have or could be. This is a condition we trust is true limits us by believing we have to do something a certain way to cross that barrier or close the separation.

So while it may benefit someone to free themselves from the judgement of moral dualism it doesn't benefit them to think they are presently insufficient because they may currently still perceive that moral dualism.

This can also be applied to the notion I see so often suggested that belief has to be removed. That is itself a belief and again creates a barrier between as we are presently and what is imagined in the future.

It's a paradox of sorts to be at peace with being as we are and also still seek a more holistic expression of consciousness.

[Matthew85]

18 minutes ago, SOUL said:

The mechanism that empowers the 'grasp' in our experience of mind is belief, more specifically it is limiting beliefs that serve as a barrier. Even the most awakening insights one might have can turn into a barrier if we allow it to become a limiting belief.

@SOUL It seems we have very little control over this. It's like it's happening on autopilot. You read it in trips reports all the time where people reach very expanded states only to have the ego clamp back down automatically as they come back. These belief's seem to have been put in place from a much deeper level of our consciousness that we don't have easy access to. This is one of the reasons permanent change can be challenging for people. 

Edited September 9, 2022 by Matthew85

[SOUL]

@Matthew85 Don't confuse the conceptual framing of the beliefs for the psychological mechanism of belief. Also, in the way that we believe it either opens up potential to us or it limits the possibilities for us.

 

If you think we have no control over it then that is a limiting belief for you, one that you have no control over but it has no influence in anyone else, it's just yours.

[Matthew85]

13 minutes ago, SOUL said:

If you think we have no control over it then that is a limiting belief for you, one that you have no control over but it has no influence in anyone else, it's just yours.

@SOUL I agree. I am just basing it on my experience and the experiences of others. It's not a conscious decision for the ego to reassert itself. It just happens to people without any conscious thought from them. 

Have you succeeded in permanently transcending the limits of your ego?