Undoing the Ego-The Only Block to Love's Presence
/user-assets/yogamag-1.pdf Undoing the Ego – The Only Block to Love’s Presence
Each one of us wants to experience greater peace, love and abundance, yet we tend to have these experiences only fleetingly at best. We seem to be able to attract temporary periods of each before an external distraction or seemingly random issue robs us of our peace, love or abundance. Why?
The answer lies in recognizing and undoing the one and only problem we have – the ego. The ego is our mistaken identity. It is the “I” we think we are. It’s a mass of uninvestigated beliefs and values that drives our lives. The ego is the operating program we all came into this existence with and unfortunately, it is the default system we all use to navigate this life. The ego believes it is a body and its means of protection is fear and judgment – always projecting a fearsome world that requires us to defend or attack in some form, mistaking this action as self preservation. All the while, confirming to us that this world is a random and fearsome place demanding our intervention.
“Seek and do not find” is the unspoken mantra of the ego and can be evidenced throughout our daily lives. We may crave a certain relationship or more money, and yet, as soon as we have it, we begin to worry about losing it! “How do I protect this?” we begin thinking. Jealousy, insecurity and fear become our thoughts, quickly replacing the joy that we anticipated experiencing. We develop all sorts of manipulative strategies to hold onto our new found gain.
“Give to get” is another operating mantra of the ego. This is something we learnt from early childhood. If I behave in a certain way, I may get affection. If I give this person something, I may have a better chance of getting something back. How many of our relationships are conditional? How many have the illusion of happiness based on establishing unspoken no-go areas?
Even the area of self esteem can be used by the ego. Does our true Self need additional esteem? Which self are we trying to build upon? Which self thinks it is inadequate and requires development and confirmation? The ego of course.
Being good is also a ploy of the ego. It mistakenly believes by being good and performing good deeds that somehow it can bargain it’s way to Eternity without having to examine and forgive it’s selfish and destructive actions and judgments.
Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is the ego’s way of keeping us from the present. It spends every waking moment manipulating events to try a secure greater pleasure or avoid pain. The result is that we are never truly in the present. We are never here and now, able to look on each moment with new eyes. The ego is always projecting a past hurt and telling us how to avoid being hurt again or seeking how to ‘give to get’ what it thinks it wants.
We live in the realm of duality – good against bad, pro against anti, for and against, each entirely inconsistent. What is good today was bad yesterday. A good judgment made today is a bad judgment tomorrow. We can see clearly the malfunctioning of the ego system at work. Its objective is to keep us confused and separated. Truth is non-dualistic. There is only one of us. We are one, there is no opposite except for the ego’s choice to perceive opposites and therefore entrench our separation and isolation. What we give we receive so when we extend love and forgiveness we are giving to ourselves!
Ultimately, the ego is like a malfunctioning program, unable to make sense of anything yet commanding us with a set of random, hypocritical and incorrect instructions. It keeps us focused on the external as the cause of our lives…when in truth our mind is the cause and all that happens externally and the world is its effect. The ego’s main game is to keep us from self-examination as it would expose the ego as the perpetrator of all our suffering.
Our goal then becomes to re-gain control of our mind - To realize that a malfunctioning system is currently in place and to reinstall our right mind as the only guiding system.
Our right mind is that part of us that is eternal. We are an extension of God, made perfect yet forgotten. It is experienced as the gentle Voice within, intuition and inspiration. It is the voice of Truth as yet unknown by many of us.
We believe this world to be real. Birth, death, conflict, pain and suffering seek to confirm this reality. We believe we have free will and choice yet we limit our choices to ones made by the ego which only seeks to imprison us further. We have never stopped to make the only choice we need to make – Do we choose to operate from the Voice of love or the ego’s voice of fear?
We are Love; we are a part of the Sacred and as such, have no unmet needs. We’ve heard this often enough but we don’t know it in our hearts because we have never let go fully and developed enough trust to discover who we truly are. We don’t realize our magnificence and beauty. And we don’t really believe that we are totally looked after. We lack the faith that, ‘Love wants for us what we yearn for in the deepest part of our being.’
Awakening to who we are is not an intellectual pursuit. While it can be helpful to have some foundation, in the end, awakening has to be experienced, not intellectualized. All the dogma in the world will only make you a scholar if you are not actually engaged in developing trust and undoing the ego. Love is not something we can learn intellectually, it must be experienced. It has to be contrasted against the ego’s ways for us to develop a true perception.
Until we realize that we cannot consign the search for Truth to the ego, we will continue to experience disappointment and disillusionment. In fact for many of us, it won’t be until we experience great disillusionment that we are prepared to look for another way.
Why wait till then, when we can start now? There’s only one reason for time and that is for our awakening. Yes, we will all eventually awaken but why wait? We have already spent many thousands of years in pain and suffering. Isn’t that enough?
We can take full responsibility for our lives now. There is no other moment. Whilst the ego would like to fool us into believing there is so much to do. In truth, there is only one choice to make – to undo the ego and allow Love’s presence to show us who we are beneath the illusory ego.
All that seems to happen to us, is a mere reflection of the conflicted mind within. The world is mirroring back to us our un-owned traits and our unconscious judgments. As we change our mind, as we forgive everyone and everything, as we withdraw our projections of an unsafe world, our true vision will be restored.
Does this mean we will live in a blissful world? No, but it does mean that we will not experience suffering. Suffering is but a belief, an idea we hold dear. If we hold no attachments to outcomes, to what is, if we know that all change is beneficial, if we withdraw the need to attack or defend, we will experience peace regardless of what goes on around us. This is what Jesus taught about ‘being in the world but not of it’. We no longer hold attachments because we realize that we are not the body and that the world and all it presents is but a tool for our forgiveness.
The journey to Truth does require our conscious participation because the ego is the default system of belief made stronger by the seeming reality we ‘see’. We must be prepared to allow the Universal Inspiration to show us the fallacy of our beliefs. The choice is simple – Love or fear.
The outcome of undoing the ego is a deep sense of peace, a consistent peace that cannot be shattered by the world’s illusory events. We remember that we are not of this world and that nothing and no one can take anything from us.
Footnote: Nouk Sanchez and Tomas Vieira are the authors of best seller “Take Me to Truth; Undoing the Ego”. Published by O- Books UK. ISBN 1 84694 050 7 They will be conducting workshops in the UK this coming summer (2008). For more details go to www.takemetotruth.com
Each one of us wants to experience greater peace, love and abundance, yet we tend to have these experiences only fleetingly at best. We seem to be able to attract temporary periods of each before an external distraction or seemingly random issue robs us of our peace, love or abundance. Why?
The answer lies in recognizing and undoing the one and only problem we have – the ego. The ego is our mistaken identity. It is the “I” we think we are. It’s a mass of uninvestigated beliefs and values that drives our lives. The ego is the operating program we all came into this existence with and unfortunately, it is the default system we all use to navigate this life. The ego believes it is a body and its means of protection is fear and judgment – always projecting a fearsome world that requires us to defend or attack in some form, mistaking this action as self preservation. All the while, confirming to us that this world is a random and fearsome place demanding our intervention.
“Seek and do not find” is the unspoken mantra of the ego and can be evidenced throughout our daily lives. We may crave a certain relationship or more money, and yet, as soon as we have it, we begin to worry about losing it! “How do I protect this?” we begin thinking. Jealousy, insecurity and fear become our thoughts, quickly replacing the joy that we anticipated experiencing. We develop all sorts of manipulative strategies to hold onto our new found gain.
“Give to get” is another operating mantra of the ego. This is something we learnt from early childhood. If I behave in a certain way, I may get affection. If I give this person something, I may have a better chance of getting something back. How many of our relationships are conditional? How many have the illusion of happiness based on establishing unspoken no-go areas?
Even the area of self esteem can be used by the ego. Does our true Self need additional esteem? Which self are we trying to build upon? Which self thinks it is inadequate and requires development and confirmation? The ego of course.
Being good is also a ploy of the ego. It mistakenly believes by being good and performing good deeds that somehow it can bargain it’s way to Eternity without having to examine and forgive it’s selfish and destructive actions and judgments.
Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is the ego’s way of keeping us from the present. It spends every waking moment manipulating events to try a secure greater pleasure or avoid pain. The result is that we are never truly in the present. We are never here and now, able to look on each moment with new eyes. The ego is always projecting a past hurt and telling us how to avoid being hurt again or seeking how to ‘give to get’ what it thinks it wants.
We live in the realm of duality – good against bad, pro against anti, for and against, each entirely inconsistent. What is good today was bad yesterday. A good judgment made today is a bad judgment tomorrow. We can see clearly the malfunctioning of the ego system at work. Its objective is to keep us confused and separated. Truth is non-dualistic. There is only one of us. We are one, there is no opposite except for the ego’s choice to perceive opposites and therefore entrench our separation and isolation. What we give we receive so when we extend love and forgiveness we are giving to ourselves!
Ultimately, the ego is like a malfunctioning program, unable to make sense of anything yet commanding us with a set of random, hypocritical and incorrect instructions. It keeps us focused on the external as the cause of our lives…when in truth our mind is the cause and all that happens externally and the world is its effect. The ego’s main game is to keep us from self-examination as it would expose the ego as the perpetrator of all our suffering.
Our goal then becomes to re-gain control of our mind - To realize that a malfunctioning system is currently in place and to reinstall our right mind as the only guiding system.
Our right mind is that part of us that is eternal. We are an extension of God, made perfect yet forgotten. It is experienced as the gentle Voice within, intuition and inspiration. It is the voice of Truth as yet unknown by many of us.
We believe this world to be real. Birth, death, conflict, pain and suffering seek to confirm this reality. We believe we have free will and choice yet we limit our choices to ones made by the ego which only seeks to imprison us further. We have never stopped to make the only choice we need to make – Do we choose to operate from the Voice of love or the ego’s voice of fear?
We are Love; we are a part of the Sacred and as such, have no unmet needs. We’ve heard this often enough but we don’t know it in our hearts because we have never let go fully and developed enough trust to discover who we truly are. We don’t realize our magnificence and beauty. And we don’t really believe that we are totally looked after. We lack the faith that, ‘Love wants for us what we yearn for in the deepest part of our being.’
Awakening to who we are is not an intellectual pursuit. While it can be helpful to have some foundation, in the end, awakening has to be experienced, not intellectualized. All the dogma in the world will only make you a scholar if you are not actually engaged in developing trust and undoing the ego. Love is not something we can learn intellectually, it must be experienced. It has to be contrasted against the ego’s ways for us to develop a true perception.
Until we realize that we cannot consign the search for Truth to the ego, we will continue to experience disappointment and disillusionment. In fact for many of us, it won’t be until we experience great disillusionment that we are prepared to look for another way.
Why wait till then, when we can start now? There’s only one reason for time and that is for our awakening. Yes, we will all eventually awaken but why wait? We have already spent many thousands of years in pain and suffering. Isn’t that enough?
We can take full responsibility for our lives now. There is no other moment. Whilst the ego would like to fool us into believing there is so much to do. In truth, there is only one choice to make – to undo the ego and allow Love’s presence to show us who we are beneath the illusory ego.
All that seems to happen to us, is a mere reflection of the conflicted mind within. The world is mirroring back to us our un-owned traits and our unconscious judgments. As we change our mind, as we forgive everyone and everything, as we withdraw our projections of an unsafe world, our true vision will be restored.
Does this mean we will live in a blissful world? No, but it does mean that we will not experience suffering. Suffering is but a belief, an idea we hold dear. If we hold no attachments to outcomes, to what is, if we know that all change is beneficial, if we withdraw the need to attack or defend, we will experience peace regardless of what goes on around us. This is what Jesus taught about ‘being in the world but not of it’. We no longer hold attachments because we realize that we are not the body and that the world and all it presents is but a tool for our forgiveness.
The journey to Truth does require our conscious participation because the ego is the default system of belief made stronger by the seeming reality we ‘see’. We must be prepared to allow the Universal Inspiration to show us the fallacy of our beliefs. The choice is simple – Love or fear.
The outcome of undoing the ego is a deep sense of peace, a consistent peace that cannot be shattered by the world’s illusory events. We remember that we are not of this world and that nothing and no one can take anything from us.
Footnote: Nouk Sanchez and Tomas Vieira are the authors of best seller “Take Me to Truth; Undoing the Ego”. Published by O- Books UK. ISBN 1 84694 050 7 They will be conducting workshops in the UK this coming summer (2008). For more details go to www.takemetotruth.com