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The energies have reached a place where I’m feeling urges to drop large chunks of formerly relevant and insistent parts of myself.
The most insistent large chunk is the ego.
Of all the “I’s” that I am, the “I” of the ego feels most like an anchor that holds me down from rising into bliss.
The I of the ego functions to promote the survival of me and everything I identify my survival with – my partner, my children, my extended family, my house, my car, etc.
Once survival settles down as an issue, the ego functions to promote my pleasure and avoid pain.
The ego is like a spider that has spun its web. Its web is my vasanas (core issues) and conditioning.
The ego has taken each explosion and arrived at a conclusion about it and a decision as to what to do in the future. The courses of action mandated by the decisions become the strands of the web, which the ego uses to entrap other people and render them powerless to oppose or threaten me.
Even after the vasanas are cleared, the conditioning can persist.
A lot of what we’re clearing now may not be seen as tied to a vasana. We may just think of it as the way we’ve always done things.
Focusing on the ego itself, rather than its detritus or residue (conditioning), the ego seems to me to be at about a caveman level of development. It’s strictly self-serving. It seems able to justify anything. The individual who’s unaware of its existence or leading role in some things simply thinks that “I” feel this way or “I” want to do that.
But gradually, as awakening expands, the individual begins to become a little shocked by some of the things that some part of them puts forward, speaks, etc. The “I” of everyday consciousness begins to distinguish between itself and the other “I’s” and wonders who this insistent, often aggressive, often unforgiving voice within itself is.
In my experience, the more the ego is seen, the more we become able to contemplate letting go of it.
But we don’t seem willing to do that in a thorough-going manner until we have something to replace it with, something that satisfies us as much as the ego’s drama used to, something that promises to ensure our future as much as the ego did.
That something is transformative love or bliss. Either sweeps the ego aside. Either offers something so satisfying that the ego is seen as no longer needed.
I’d like to say that transformative love and bliss are the magic carpets that take us higher dimensionally, but I’m just guessing. I’m not an enlightened man and certainly not a spiritual teacher. This is all guesswork on my part, based on my own limited experience.
The degree to which I relate to others openly and peacefully seems inversely related to the degree to which I allow the ego the commanding role in my life. Less ego, more openness. More ego, less openness.
Sages like Ramakrishna and Shankara suggest that the ego does not disappear. After Sahaja, it has all the substantiality of a burnt rope. It then becomes what it was always meant to be: our obedient servant and willing guardian in situations of purely physical danger or threat, such as watching for traffic when we cross the street or running from imminent danger.
In our case, in the matter of letting the ego go, we can count on the help of the Company of Heaven, our star brothers and sisters, and our guides and we have the assistance of the rising energies. We’ve given our issues over to them. Now it’s time to give them our ego.
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