An Insight I Just Had A Second Ago

[Emerald]

So, I have memories of ego-transcendence and how much better it felt and how everything radiated unconditional love. So, I know from firsthand experience that love is the substance that everything is created from. So, I've been trying for years to transcend the ego in hopes of alleviating my suffering and feeling good and feeling that connection to divine love so that I can enjoy my life fully without the constant suffering, which is now (through contrast with my past experiences of ego-transcendence) very evident.

So, I was just sitting and listening to Alan Watts and he was talking about how God is acting out every role in existence. So, God is every human convincing itself that it isn't itself in a play where it takes itself in fully. This analogy is not exactly new to me, as I've heard it many different ways before. But Alan Watts said something that just made a huge lightbulb come on. He was saying that God pretends to itself that it isn't God so that it can take in its own performance and become completely absorbed by the performance. And the thing that really got me was that he said that 'God always enjoys the performance, even if the performance seems unenjoyable.' 

So, this has made me realize that I've been holding onto a false semi-unconscious belief. So, I've been thinking deep down, "I must transcend the ego so that I can enjoy my life." And I often recall the suffering that I realized that I was unconsciously experiencing prior experiencing ego-transcendence and how unaware I was. So, I have this feeling like "I need to be enlightened to enjoy my life, otherwise life will be constant suffering at an unconscious level." But Alan Watts made me realize that, at some level that's even deeper than the suffering, I am enjoying my life whether I know it or not. And I'm even enjoying the suffering. So, this belief adds to the illusion that I am a separate self who is unhappy, and covertly perpetuates the ego. 

[Colin]

I was watching this video today and in it Lincoln mentions that God is playing a game of hide and seek with itself. That reminded me of the quote you posted.

Another thing that came to my mind was "The Work"



Also throw in

[Guest Annetta]

@Colin That guy should conciser a career in narrating storybooks for children

[Prabhaker]

1 hour ago, Emerald said:

I am a separate self who is unhappy, and covertly perpetuates the ego.

1 hour ago, Emerald said:

"I need to be enlightened to enjoy my life, otherwise life will be constant suffering at an unconscious level."

You are not ready to accept suffering and pain- it has become a barrier. 

Life exists between this polarity. This tension between pain and pleasure makes you capable of creating great music; music exists only in this tension. Destroy the polarity and you will be dull, you will be stale, you will be dusty — you won’t have any meaning and you will never know what splendor is. You will have missed life. The man who wants to know life and live life has to accept and embrace death. They come together, they are two aspects of a single phenomenon.

That’s why growth is painful. You have to go into all those pains that you have been avoiding. It hurts. You have to go through all those wounds that somehow you have managed not to look at. But the deeper you go into pain, the deeper is your capacity to go into pleasure. If you can go into pain to the uttermost limit, you will be able to touch heaven. To be free of pain the pain has to be accepted, inevitably and naturally.

Growth is facing the reality, encountering the fact, whatsoever it is. 

Growth is painful because you have been avoiding a thousand and one pains in your life. By avoiding you cannot destroy them — they go on accumulating. You go on swallowing your pains; they remain in your system. That’s why growth is painful — when you start growing, when you decide to grow, you have to face all the pains that you have repressed. You cannot just bypass them.

[Loreena]

@Emerald  Wow Emerald this is so beautiful

[electroBeam]

@Emerald if god wanted you to transcend the ego, he would make that a reality. He has the power to. But its not happening in your case. Imagine how limited the universe would be if everyone was happy and enlightened. Is that the true nature of an infinite, eternal god though?