In the
ordinary view of the world the fact of our individual ego is taken as real -
perhaps the most real aspect of our existence. Yet the experience of deep
prayer, or insight into such teachings as impermanence and emptiness lead many
to doubt that the ego is an indisputable reality. Spiritual experience shows
that all that we consider to be the self might also be viewed as fleeting and
insubstantial perceptions like lightning flashes in the sky. We no longer take
the ego as seriously as we did. But phenomena that once seemed straightforward
now baffle us, and we are plagued by questions that never previously concerned
us.
If I do not exist, how can I have memories? How can I know things about the world that aren’t being manifested in the here and now? My friend is before me, and, as he speaks, images from our shared past appear in my mind’s eye of events that I know are as true for him as for me. How can this be if neither of us can be assumed to exist?
After grappling with these questions an alternative understanding of the ego will come to us?
The ego is the first spiritual achievement. The understanding of a self is the first step towards the understanding of the cosmos. When we see our friend and we receive ‘memories’ of his biography these aren’t memories but pure intuitions provided for us by our spiritual wisdom. We are not, and never were ‘friends’. I call him my ‘friend’ because I know all about him, but we were never friends and my understanding of him comes now and now only. What I call my ego is just the sum total of my spiritual understanding of the cosmos - an understanding that might be enlarged infinitely, if I continue to stop believing in my ego.
The warmth and understanding that we feel between friends might be felt for anything in the world if we learn that the experience has nothing to do with Me and Him and the past that we supposedly shared together. All the understanding that is held by the ego is nothing other than spiritual understanding that remains limited by belief - In what? By belief in the ego.
A well-developed ego is a formidable spiritual achievement and can possess many spiritual powers. Success, wealth, popularity and power are spiritual treasures that can be possessed by those with a well-developed ego. The business tycoon and the political leader are saints of a kind, and the people readily recognise their virtue and revere them accordingly. But the downside of the successful and well-developed ego is that it all the manifold activity makes the ego seem so real that it becomes hard to doubt. Inability to doubt the ego is a misfortune that goes hand in hand with all the good fortune that the ego enjoys.
Conversely, there are some who have a native skepticism regarding the ego and the pleasures of the ego. They don’t have the motivation to become a well-developed personage in the world and so remain humble and obscure and fail to accumulate any of the spiritual gifts that those around them accumulate. Just as the egoic person acquires all those spiritual gifts: love, recognition and power, the ego-skeptic may seem spiritually impoverished and be derided as a consequence. However, the skepticism towards the life of the ego might lead the person to be drawn to other ways of living - for example, the unworldly and unegoic ‘spiritual life’. It is through this life that their opportunity arises. For when, through prayer and contemplation, they finally and certainly learn that the ego is an illusion they are free to develop their spiritual powers without restraint. The beliefs that withhold the egoic man - the laws of common sense life in the world - are nothing to him and he can develop his spiritual treasures as he wishes.
So the ego is a true spiritual achievement and one that can confer many gifts, but it is the capacity to doubt the ego that enables wisdom to flourish to its highest. Too often the ego is derided as bad and something inimical to the spiritual life, but the ego IS the spiritual life and must only be understood properly as an aspect of the spiritual life if one is to attain the heights.
If I do not exist, how can I have memories? How can I know things about the world that aren’t being manifested in the here and now? My friend is before me, and, as he speaks, images from our shared past appear in my mind’s eye of events that I know are as true for him as for me. How can this be if neither of us can be assumed to exist?
After grappling with these questions an alternative understanding of the ego will come to us?
The ego is the first spiritual achievement. The understanding of a self is the first step towards the understanding of the cosmos. When we see our friend and we receive ‘memories’ of his biography these aren’t memories but pure intuitions provided for us by our spiritual wisdom. We are not, and never were ‘friends’. I call him my ‘friend’ because I know all about him, but we were never friends and my understanding of him comes now and now only. What I call my ego is just the sum total of my spiritual understanding of the cosmos - an understanding that might be enlarged infinitely, if I continue to stop believing in my ego.
The warmth and understanding that we feel between friends might be felt for anything in the world if we learn that the experience has nothing to do with Me and Him and the past that we supposedly shared together. All the understanding that is held by the ego is nothing other than spiritual understanding that remains limited by belief - In what? By belief in the ego.
A well-developed ego is a formidable spiritual achievement and can possess many spiritual powers. Success, wealth, popularity and power are spiritual treasures that can be possessed by those with a well-developed ego. The business tycoon and the political leader are saints of a kind, and the people readily recognise their virtue and revere them accordingly. But the downside of the successful and well-developed ego is that it all the manifold activity makes the ego seem so real that it becomes hard to doubt. Inability to doubt the ego is a misfortune that goes hand in hand with all the good fortune that the ego enjoys.
Conversely, there are some who have a native skepticism regarding the ego and the pleasures of the ego. They don’t have the motivation to become a well-developed personage in the world and so remain humble and obscure and fail to accumulate any of the spiritual gifts that those around them accumulate. Just as the egoic person acquires all those spiritual gifts: love, recognition and power, the ego-skeptic may seem spiritually impoverished and be derided as a consequence. However, the skepticism towards the life of the ego might lead the person to be drawn to other ways of living - for example, the unworldly and unegoic ‘spiritual life’. It is through this life that their opportunity arises. For when, through prayer and contemplation, they finally and certainly learn that the ego is an illusion they are free to develop their spiritual powers without restraint. The beliefs that withhold the egoic man - the laws of common sense life in the world - are nothing to him and he can develop his spiritual treasures as he wishes.
So the ego is a true spiritual achievement and one that can confer many gifts, but it is the capacity to doubt the ego that enables wisdom to flourish to its highest. Too often the ego is derided as bad and something inimical to the spiritual life, but the ego IS the spiritual life and must only be understood properly as an aspect of the spiritual life if one is to attain the heights.
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