Your Ego and You

I like the distinction he made in excitement vs. happiness. I agree that excitement and stimulation are needed in life, but if those things are how a person defines happiness, things can get pretty rocky. I noticed with my relationships that I used to think in terms of excitement - "I'll be happy when I get to a certain level with this person," and I wasn't paying as much attention to the journey of getting there or enjoying simply getting to know the person. I was so fixated on the results, and that's why I wasn't getting any. People can sense that. Now I can completely agree with happiness being a sense of peace and contentment. Thanks for introducing this teacher. I'll check out some of his other videos.

@blitheSun94

In my personal explorations of spirituality I equate the Ego with Satan, a force necessary to be able to understand the purpose of ones own divine nature.

Many would look to destroy the Ego and be done with it - however is as necessary as the dark is to the light, a force of greater understanding.

Thanks for starting this dialogue.

-mani

"I believe that we all descend from creator/source to Earth at birth as all Soul, pure Love & Light energy and it is this world which brings out the Ego (i.e. our environment, the media, society, etc.). The Ego is self-centered based and is of dark energy which keeps us stuck living in a mental illusion of true reality and is therefore, a false sense of self. It keeps us living below the veil of consciousness and serves no benefit in fulfilling our Soul's true purpose. I believe that our Ego must die in this lifetime in order to ascend to a higher dimension after our Souls leave our bodies. I believe that in the way our Ego dies is through facing, working through, and making peace with our Karmic Debt through deep introspection and self examination and awareness in order to awaken the spirit so that we can begin living above the veil of consciousness and begin living a Soul-Centered life. I believe that once we begin living a Soul-Centered life, we learn to love and nurture self so that we may then love and nurture others. I believe that our Soul's purpose is to be of service to others in our Soul's own unique way as we are all Spiritual Beings having a Physical Experience and that being that our true self is of Spirit, then we are all a part of the creator of this universe, which means we are all connected, all the same, all energy and are all ONE. I believe that once we discover that we are a part of the Divine we begin to have compassion, unconditional love, and empathy for the planet as a whole, we begin living from our hearts and souls in all its authenticity and truth, which is all love and light energy and once we begin living from our love and light energy, we project that out into the world and encourage others to shine their own love and light energy, which in turn, begins to raise the frequency and vibration of our Universe." ~ Lightworker1111

Any new thoughts?

Though I am certainly no expert on this topic, I'd casually say that all of our states of mind are transformations of one state of mind. One state of mind, then, remains perpetually constant in our experience of life, whereas all the other states of mind, which are contained within and rooted from this primary state of mind, are constantly transforming – pain, pleasure, novelty and sensations of all forms possible – innumerable concoctions of emotion and experience determined and blended by specific congregations of information. These sets of information are extremely detailed and complex, and are derived mainly from our imaginative and ratiocinative capacities which continually intellectualize our experiences and contextually and sensually interpret all of our experiences in light of our bank of memories and former intellectualizations. In essence then, each person is an extremely complex mental program, this program which continually runs and adapts itself and changes itself and allows for the differentiation of emotional states of being.

What then, runs this program? What is it that causes us to continually think, imagine and sense – to keep ourselves in perpetual movement and thus causing us to continually exist in a state of changing – changing thoughts and changing emotions? Movement is the opposite of rest – to rest the mind and to quiet the thoughts is to stop movement – to stop the wheel of sensation and imagination.

Once again, this is not something I fully understand, and is only something I continue to learn and grasp as a student of happiness myself, but I'd say that it is rage that causes us to live lives of movement and motion. I don't mean simply anger – I fundamentally mean desire. A desire-rage, a sort of subtle violence which craves or seeks ahead and which has both the power of creation and destruction in its hands – both love and hate. When we desire something we do not have, or feel we cannot attain, the nature-rage burns black and cruel, yet when we desire something we feel is within our grasp, or that we can attain, then this desire-rage burns bright and joyously. Even our identities, which represent personal collective sets of desires, rest in the hands of this process – when we feel as if our identity is misaligned from reality in some way, and that we cannot attain what we want from it, then the sense of self loses a sense of power, and becomes cold, aching, weak and empty. Yet when the light of hope, of anticipation, shines upon us so that we feel aligned with our goals and feel as if they are within reach, then we can surmount even to the highest heights. Perhaps even to grandeur and delusion. When our desires are dictated by external social validation, then this process can be especially felt when we feel as if we are lacking or succeeding according to the way others perceive us, or how we desire ourselves to be based on how others desire us to be.

If a person truly desired nothing, he would not think of anything nor have any reason to enact motion in his thoughts and senses, and would be a silent and still vegetable – something constant and quiet – which is incidentally what meditation seeks to attain within us. Meditation quiets the rage of the mind so as to return to the primary state of mind which is constant and without motion.

But, were we meant to exist in this way? Doesn't seem to be the case. So, perhaps a man should be master of both worlds, with the ability to see with both eyes of motion and stillness, without being controlled by either – to be a slave to motion is to be a slave to violence, insecurity and grandiosity – a slave to excess thinking and planning and activity, without the clarifying effect of stillness. To be a slave to stillness is to become a passive person who has no desire to engage life, and it looks to be fairly impossible anyway. Killing yourself would probably be the most effective option if you wanted to live without any motion, but it's no guarantee as I can't say I've done it anytime recently.

Just my two cents on the topic. Our minds are more complicated than this, but it's all I can offer for now based on my own limited understanding of it.