It's Superego!

In my readings to date, Gangaji’s discussion of the ego in relation to the superego is quite unique, and a great window onto the strategies of the mind to regain control and in turn command the world of spirituality itself.

Your superego is a simulation of authority designed to control your ego. It is based on feedback from others in your life.

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If there is an ambition to be egoless, it is a red flag. What is wrong with the ego? Who has a problem with the ego? Does awareness have a problem with the ego? Only the superego has a problem with the ego, and it is a huge problem. The superego wants to control the ego.

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Another interesting twist in the recognition of the superego is that if the superego is engaged in battle with the ego, it will definitely win. It is designed to win because it has "God" on its side. It is the authority. Whatever measly little arguments the ego can throw up, the superego will win, case closed. The impulse to listen to and be beaten by the superego is huge, but the willingness to stop and see what is under it will reveal the reality of the spaciousness beyond all faces of the superego. Then you will see that the superego is just sound and fury, signifying nothing but conditioned learning.

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In recognizing the tendency of the superego to dominate the ego, without then having to establish a super-superego, you can simply welcome ego with its ambition and needs. In this moment, you can welcome them all--ego, superego, internal and external illusion-into the limitless consciousness that you truly are. Then you can experience yourself as a very limited human being with limited propensities.

~Gangaji from 'The Diamond in your Pocket'

An Unbelievable Blow-Out

The clock is running down, the batteries are dying, the car is running out of gas. I am surrendering to That which is. (No lie, just after writing that sentence, my cell phone sounded its low-battery warning.)

After all, ego is the big lie, and surrender is the only lie detector.

All my life I felt as if there was something better that I should be doing. But despite all my thinking, I couldn’t figure it out. So life happened.

But whenever I began to lose sight of that something better, whenever I was on the verge of going with the status quo, something rebelled within me (and without).

Ultimately, it was OK with delaying something better until the time was right, until certain responsibilities had played themselves through.

The time did come, but something better really didn’t. Instead something completely different did.

Surrender.

It’s unexplainable to those who may not understand, but let me quickly do so anyways. An energetic organization of consciousness; after evolving through processes of sense, memory, and instinct; and thereby becoming sensitive to the various forms and patterns of energy all around it; developed an ability to think; that is create a virtual reality within its mind. And in so doing, it created a separate sense of itself within that virtual reality. And at some point, it began to see that virtual reality as truth (belief), and that virtual self as itself (ego).

In turn, of course, there arose a continuous conflict between the actual reality and the virtual reality, or Consciousness and the Belief/Ego construct. This conflict can be called suffering. Suffering is like friction, in time may wear away the ego, and blow out! This is called an act of grace.

(Or, through the active grace of Self-Inquiry, asking Who Am I?, the same blow-out can occur.)

Then things begin to slow until surrender occurs. Stop.

The virtual reality and all its beliefs, and its sense of self, the ego, are seen through, and disappear. Reality returns. And action happens through intent or influence, desire or synchronicity.

It’s unbelievable.

The Secret of Manifesting Deuces

All this talk about the secret, manifestation, or intuition really requires one thing and one thing only. It’s that same old spiritual thing. And without it, all that talk is meaningless.

It’s like playing poker in a tennis match. It doesn’t really matter what is wild unless you recognize your side of the score has always been love.

In other words, lose the ego. See the dream for what it is. And be nothing. Now.

Otherwise, any intuition or intent will be lost in the noise of thought.

And rather than responding to the pull of the universe in the present, your action will be based on thought, which is really the pull of the universe from the past stored in memory, which means everything you do is based on a reality (or a dream) that doesn’t exist any longer.

So everything in your life is in a time delay, constantly rubbing against the current, the friction being what’s called suffering.

It’s like this. The universe might be telling you turn left, but you’re still reacting to some time in the past when you should have turned right. So this time you go right. Taking that turn one block way too late. When there isn’t even a road there on the right.

The result, of course, isn’t very pretty.

The Crossroads of Uncertainty

There may be a period of insecurity and uncertainty. What should I do?

As the ego is no longer running your life, the psychological need for external security, which is illusory anyway, lessens. You are able to live with uncertainty, even enjoy it.

When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life. It means fear is no longer a dominant factor in what you do and no longer prevents you from taking action to initiate change. The Roman philosopher Tacitus rightly observed that “the desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.”

If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.

~from ‘A New Earth’ by Eckhart Tolle (new para and bold formatting not in original)

Here on Gilligan's Isle

To a New Meta-Paradigm 2

Thought results in a separate virtual reality of knowledge, a world of duality created from the process of thought, and the Human Being's evolution of consciousness is detoured by and into that false reality of knowledge, wrongly believing it to be the true reality.

Because of this detour onto its separate and false way of thought, the Human Being dwells in its world of knowledge, its virtual reality, living in a dream of its own creation.

Therefore the Human Being has developed a false self called the ego (and the super-ego), and because of the essence of that ego's own falsehood and its ultimate void, it is required to acquire its identity in the world of matter, in both external forms and internals forms such as thought and belief.

But acquisition of identity through external and internal form is ultimately futile, becoming an unremitting cycle of wanting, leading to the madness of violence and suffering that is the human being's life on earth.

On Native American Spirit

Vine Deloria, a Standing Rock Sioux, thought that whites in America should investigate the roots of their own spiritual traditions rather than adopt Native American spirituality. I would tend to agree (although I would not limit the quest in a parochial manner).

Not that Native American spirituality cannot provide direction. It’s earth-based rituals, its respect for all life, and its understanding of unity are all beneficial if practiced with an according respect for their origin and cultural possession, especially considering the history of horrendous atrocities made upon the American Indian.

But as practiced by American Indians, and especially by Pre-Contact Native Americans, they come from a pre-existing sense of unity, and a very different relationship with ego. In other words, before the fall.

To we who have fallen, such practices will not help in the rising. They certainly will not help eradicate the ego. In fact, they could become another set of beliefs and identities assisting in a further separation.

For those who are not native to it, Native American spirituality can be a beautiful window into the wondrous world of unity, but it seldom will be the door.

Dreaming On with Soundtrack

Sitting by the river in the late October morning, soaking up the clear New England sun, sipping my Dunkin Donuts coffee, I hear a radio downriver. At first, I feel upset that somebody needs to play their music way too loud, but then I see that irritation as a thought, and understand I'm creating this disturbance in my mind, thought creating thought. To try to ignore it though would be to resist a thought that really doesn’t exist, thereby giving it more power. Instead, I let it be what it is: just a dream.

And begin writing in my journal. I’ve been practicing exactly that this week: being vigilant for any thought with which I had been identifying as me and therefore filtering the dream through it instead of letting the dream just be. And when such a thought is caught, I’ve been divesting it of any belief I may have been giving it. Not fighting it (although I may investigate it for its origin), I see it for the thought it is: illusionary ego stuff. And then I let the dream flow again from the source. Let the self be moved by Self. Like this river flowing from the White Mountains more than one hundred miles north.

Finished making an entry in my journal about this practice, I just sit beneath the sun and soak, feeling the energy of the manifest reflected in its warmth. Soon a song from that radio downriver begins to seep into my consciousness. I recognize the Aerosmith tune, smile at its felicity, feel the rhythm, and listen to the lyrics: “dream on, dream on, dream on, dream until your dreams come true.”

I know that’s not coincidence; this dream is not without design.

The Second Fall in Four Phases

Phase One: Doris Gets Her Oats

To caveat with that old Seinfeld-Advaita cliché, not that there’s any problem with this nor is there anyone to have one but—

There are many roads to the truth. Almost all contain a similar thread like a silver line running down their middle speaking to the illusion of ego with the suffering it engenders, and the underlying unity of the unmanifest universe.

Some call it Sacred Wisdom.


Phase Two: Watch That Second Step

Floyd Henderson in his blog writes, “Few will ever awaken (snip) Because six billion persons... have fixated at the religious (and/or spiritual) step” I’m not sure about the actual number, but I agree with the gist of the statement.

I feel it’s not as linear as Floyd thinks though. The religious effect is not a semi-permanent pause in some upwards momentum towards realization. Rather it is actually more insidious than that.

It is the second fall.


Phase Three: Giving You the Business

If the first fall is the belief in thought, the birth of the ego, and the resultant separation from unity, driving humans from their home in paradise and leaving them in a state of exile, the second fall provides a new home in hell.

The pointers of sacred wisdom have become misunderstood, and worse, transformed into the exact opposite of their intent. They have become hard thoughts, creeds and dogmas, that actually dualize unity and sacralize the ego.

Suffering is thereby a guarantee from their business (and I do not use that word lightly).


Phase Four: A Prayer

Sacred Wisdom addresses the first fall. No teaching really addresses the second. Instead, personal disillusionment is the universal means, and that only leaves the individual nowhere except back in exile. I know; I’ve been there.

I pray for a teaching that will point the way for those blocked in such a manner: a liberation non-theology and anti-proselytism. Because that second fall was a doozy.

Not that there’s any problem with this nor is there anyone to have one.

I Go, You Go, We All Go for Ego

Adyashanti says that spirituality is a surrender game. Certainly eradicating the ego and all its resultant suffering is. There are two chief ways of doing so.

The first involves some worship of a higher power, so that your self is humbled to a greater cause or being. The ego is ultimately sacrificed on that altar.

The second involves an intellectual quest, an investigation really, into the nature of the self. In so doing, the ego is discovered to be an illusion.

In both ways, the ego is surrendered. In the former, it is killed. In the latter, it never existed.

Still, they are radically different in their worldview. In worship, there is a Creation. In self inquiry, there is, at most, a dream. Beyond that, Nothingness.

Call me Ishmael. Call me Quantum Spirit.

Manifest Mutiny

(Having defined the infinite in the past three posts, this follows.)

If the world I sense is actually a mirage, an illusion, then in that way, the world is a manifestation of my mind.

And if I, ego, the self, am a thought, and therefore an illusion too, then I, myself, am a manifestation of my mind as well.

And if my mind is the sum of my thoughts, the grand total of all these illusions, then my mind is a manifestation of itself.

Therefore Everything is a manifestation of my mind, including itself.

And in that way, everything collapses, I let go of my mind, surrender myself, and the Self, unmanifest, is all that remains.

Then the Self, Quantum Spirit, provides all.

Giving the Infinite Definition: Thoughts

Let’s continue with ILLUSION.

My THOUGHTS are also illusions, especially opinions, beliefs, and judgments. They consist of binary evaluations (hence duality), just like that of a computer and lead to something more than just a virtual reality, but a virtual persona. Call this the EGO. It too is just a thought.

Some call this the self, with a small s. This non-capitalization, by the way is a very important distinction. There is another Self, with a capital S. They are definitely not the same. Much confusion can come in this regard. But more on that later.

The ego, the self, is just a thought. It too is an illusion.