Ego
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From Eckhart Tolle, Lasting Happiness 2-3 - audio talk
... so there is a need for more, to enhance me, the me that is never complete, the story of me that hasn't quite worked as it was supposed to work... up till now. There are not many humans that feel the story has gone very well indeed... the story of me. And if there are some, all you have to do is wait a little (audience laughs), and then the incompleteness returns - the sense of incompleteness. And people believe this is their personal problem - everybody else seems to be OK, except me. This is built into the very structure of that conceptualised identity. Its need for more, its need for conflict in order to enhance the separate sense of existence - this is the me, and this is the other. Now I need to get a strong sense of me if I can be in conflict with something or someone it enhances my sense of self. Or if I can take something away from another in my delusion I believe that it would also enhance my sense of self. That could be just a thought that I'm trying to take away from somebody by making a remark, that diminishes the sense of self of another person. By saying I question anything that that person identifies with - as not good. "Your car is no good." "This dress, would look good on your sister." (audience laughs) Little remarks like these are consciously designed to diminish another person's sense of self. They don't know what they are doing and they believe if they can diminish someone elseÂ’s sense of self they have enhanced their own sense of self a little bit. All that it means is the illusion of me has grown a little. So what you have enhanced is the illusion, but through the illusion, it feels great for a little while. And so it can be extremely greedy. The need for more is incessant. We see that the same egoic entity becomes collective in a corporation - we have read about these things recently and we are surprised to see how greedy these corporations are. Their whole reason for being seems to be to accumulate more! Perhaps in some cases the people at the top even forgot what they manufacture. (audience laugh) And it didn't matter anymore except we need more! And a greedy entity is simply a magnification of that mind pattern, so let's not fall into trap of saying, all these directors are evil. No. They're just in a position to be more greedy than the others. And so the same mind pattern operates on all levels. He becomes a terrorist.. how can somebody kill hundreds and thousands of people? Even himself or herself! What is going on in here? And people are at a loss at what are they doing. Well, it's very simple. They live in and through a conceptualised entity to a large extent is collective - it is a collective need based on their conditionings, their religions, their upbringings, their belief systems, their story, the collective story of "us". And they don't know it's a story, the way they interprete reality, it is the truth to them. They are completely identified with those thoughts that make up the "self". Complete identification with thinking. Self-identification with thinking. So you have a collective conceptualised entity in "us". And that entity then has its own version of reality - which isn't recognised as a version of reality, it is recognised as reality to them. You've already deaden yourself to the deeper aliveness that is there underneath all those thought movements - underneath all those conceptualised "me" - the deeper consciousness that is not conditioned, the dimension that is in every human being underneath the conceptualised sense of self that is conditioned from thought forms. Underneath it, this is the redemptive factor in human existence. Underneath it, is the dimension of consciousness that can be described as Unconditioned; Vast. But they don't know that. The terrorists certainly doesn't know it and as yet, most humans don't know it but more and more people are waking up to it now. The terrorists are so deeply identified with the extreme manifestations - so deeply identified with the concepts that the entire indentity is derived from the mind movements. He's already dead to the deeper aliveness within him.... -
Originally posted by An Eternal Now:"Besides, we all talk of 'me.' How do you know what is this 'me' that we speak of? You dream you are a bird, and soar to heaven, or dream you are a fish, and dive into the ocean's depths. And you cannot tell whether the man now speaking is awake or in a dream. "A man feels a pleasurable sensation before he smiles, and smiles before he thinks how he ought to smile. Resign yourself to the sequence of things, forgetting the changes of life, and you shall enter into the pure, the divine, the One."
- Chuang Tzu (Lao Tzu's successor) -
From 'A New Earth' by Eckhart Tolle, pg 186 to 189:
WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE
Your sense of who you are determines what you perceive as your needs and what matters to you in life - and whatever matters to you will have the power to upset and disturb you. You can use this as a criterion to find out how deeply you know yourself. What matters to you is not necessarily what you say or believe, but what your action and reactions reveal as important and serious to you. So you may want to ask yourself the question: What are the things that upset and disturb me? If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small. That will be your unconscious belief. What are the small things? Ultimately all things are small because all things are transient.
You might say, "I know I am an immortal spirit," or "I am tired of this mad world, and peace is all I want" - until the phone rings. Bad news: The stock market has collapsed; the deal may fall through; the car has been stolen; your mother-in-law has arrived; (
) the trip is cancelled, the contract has been broken; your partner has left you; they demand more money; they say it's your fault. Suddenly there is a surge of anger, of anxiety. A harshness comes into your voice; "I can't take any more of this." You accuse and blame, attack, defend, or justify yourself, and it's all happening on autopilot. Something is obviously much more important to you now than the inner peace that a moment ago you said was all you wanted, and you're not an immortal spirit anymore either. The deal, the money, the contract, the loss or threat of loss are more important. To whom? To the immortal spirit that you said you are? No, to me. The small me that seeks security or fulfilment in things that are transient or angry because it fails to find it. Well, at least now you know who you really think you are.
If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace. If peace mattered to you more than anything else and if you truly knew yourself to be spirit rather than a little me, you would remain nonreactive and absolutely alert when confronted with challenging people or situations. You would immediately accept the situation and thus become one with it rather than separate yourself form it. Then out of your alertness would come a response. What you are (consciousness), not who you think you are (a small me), would be responding. It would be powerful and effective and would make no person or situation into an enemy.
The world always makes sure that you cannot fool yourself for long about who you really think you are by showing you what truly matters to you. How you react to people and situations, especially when challenges arise, is the best indicator of how deeply you know yourself.
The more limited, the more narrowly egoic the view of yourself, the more you will see, focus on, and react to the egoic limitations, the unconsciousness in others. Their "faults" or what you perceive as their faults become to you their identity. This means you will see only the ego in them and thus strengthen the ego in yourself. Their "faults" or what you perceive as their faults become to you their identity. This means you will only see the ego in them and thus strengthen the ego in yourself. Instead of looking “through” the ego in others, you are looking “at” the ego. Who is looking at the ego? The ego in you.
Very unconscious people experience their own ego through its reflection in others. When you realize that what you react to in others is also in you (and sometimes only in you), you begin to become aware of your own ego. At that stage, you may also realize that you were doing to others what you thought others were doing to you. You cease seeing yourself as a victim.
You are not the ego, so when you become aware of the ego in you, it does not mean you know who you are – it means you know who you are not. But it is through knowing who you are not that the greatest obstacle to truly knowing yourself is removed.
Nobody can tell you who you are. It would just be another concept, so it would not change you. Who you are requires no belief. In fact, every belief is an obstacle. It does not even require your realization, since you are already who you are. But without realization, who you are does not shine forth into this world. It remains in the unmanifested which is, of course, your true home. You are then like an apparently poor person who does not know he has a bank account with $100 million in it and so his wealth remains an unexpressed potential. -
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Cant read due to your sleepiness or..?Originally posted by NotFromVenus:zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Come back here nearly sleep . Cannot read the text above .