Ego-ji and Fear, Anger and Sadness
By Katie Davis, Author, Awake Joy
The invitation of this reading is to allow it to be "multi-dimensional." That is to say, the words are flowing as a river through consciousness and are only pointers. There is something deeper here, something ineffable; the radiant stillness within. This stillness is behind and permeating every word.
If you are not aware of the stillness now, please take a moment to be conscious of the breath and follow it into the silence. While reading, if you find that you are only reading intellectually, please take a moment to stop; consciously breathe. Are you aware of being? The truest teaching is not within the words. The words always point to the stillness.
Friends of the Heart
Newsletters
Nothing Ever Happened
BySundance Burke, Author, Free Spirit
May 2010
Volume 10 Number 5
Volume 10 Number 5The phantom named ego is an altered state of consciousness, whose primary belief is the mental idea of "me." Its false assumption is that its identity is the body and that it was born and therefore must die. In identification with the mind-made self, you cannot be conscious of the magnificent Heart that you genuinely are. Instead, the ego believes itself to be only a fraction and its mantra is "me against the world."
This sense of separation creates the delusion of a tremendous pain gap that manifests in the life situation as all forms of negativity; from a general sense of unease, impatience or frustration, to anger or rage, sorrow or misery and fear, dread or even terror. I suppose that one could say that in its altered state, Ego-ji is fear.
For the ego that thinks it is the body, the deepest fear is the threat of death, annihilation and extinction. With great compassion and understanding, we could note that anyone who still believes that their identity is the body is under a constant sense of threat and more likely than not, unaware of the related stress and negativity.
This fraction is in constant search to complete itself through some other, causing anxiety or trying to escape all that it suspects to be a threat. Whether seeking pleasure to avoid pain or trying to escape what it fears, its baseline within time will always be some form of fear.
The most armored state of the ego and therefore the most fearful is anger. When we encounter an angry ego, the misperception is that it is very powerful, when in fact it is demonstrating the strongest need to control in order to protect itself. When we directly investigate and allow anger to consciously arise within us in order to feel it fully, understand its structure and how it perpetuates, in that acceptance, the anger begins to dissolve.
Just underneath the anger as it fades away, we then encounter the next protective layer of the ego, which is sadness. Some cultures have conditioned the ego to believe that crying is a weakness. When in fact, this ego state of consciousness is allowing more vulnerability and is therefore less fearful. When we allow the sadness to fully arise consciously, after first resisting the emotion, it is similar to a floodgate opening. The emotion gushes forth and allows a certain freedom in the release. In its emptiness, one may even realize the birth of true compassion.
Once again, if there is a willingness to attend, allow and understand the accompanying psychological voice and how it perpetuates negativity, we have brought what was previously hidden and subconsciously operating into the light of consciousness. When we completely allow and accept the emotion, it begins dissolving.
If you are courageous and curious enough to investigate the next layer of the ego's negativity, you will encounter fear; the least guarded and protected human emotion. As with all of these negative emotional states, there are many degrees of intensity within the same emotion. So if you are inviting in fear for the purpose of investigation, why only allow a little bit? Let this be the opportunity to follow it from fearful to terrorized to petrified of death or extinction.
A helpful question might be, "Is there anything deeper?" Follow it into the "valley of the shadow of death" and find out whether death is a reality.
Psychological fear is always based on what the ego imagines and never on what is actually happening. For instance, the survival instinct might arise if a tiger jumped out right now from behind your computer screen. For certain, the body intelligence would immediately jump to safety. This is not the fear of which I am sharing. Psychological fear is purely psychological, without clear and present danger. Fear arises due to imagining what might be, so it is a chronic future fixation that is based on separation.
Without time, the ego does not exist. The identification with the ego-I requires the delusion of time and separation. So when we are fiercely being now, separation and its fear are not possible.
Likewise, when we apply the Self-inquiry question, "Who am I?", the mind's attention is turned inward and therefore the veil of ego is immediately dropped. Instead, we look to see from whence that thought is arising.
In either case, whether being now or through Self-inquiry, whatever is subconscious or unconscious will eventually arise into consciousness. This is important, since the darkness cannot survive the light of consciousness and this is the true liberation to which I point. This liberation is not possible if you assume what I am sharing to be true as another belief. It is only available to the brave heart who wants to know the truth by directly investigating.
One could say that there is no escape. In fact, the sooner that you are willing to allow and investigate the deepest fears of the psyche, the sooner those imaginary fears will dissolve into the pure love that you genuinely are right now.
Listen ...
Ego-ji is scared because it imagines that it is separated. It is then angry, because it imagines its weakness in sorrow. It is sad because it is defending against what it imagines fear to be. It greatest fear is the imagination of what death is.
The truth of the matter is that Ego-ji was never born and cannot die. Ego-ji itself only exists in its imagination. Upon this revelation, it all seems quite amusing and yet when caught up in the dream, it is a nightmare. The opportunity of the awakening is to free all of these ghosts and see things aright. In this, you are fearlessly free. In fact, you are free now and yet may not be conscious of the fact.
Moraira, Spain ~ Europe Tour 2009
If I flashed you a peace sign with two of my fingers, you wouldn’t mistake my act of signing for peace. Everyone knows that a peace sign points beyond the symbol to a deeper reality. Similarly, the word “peace,” whether written or spoken, is also a symbol and nothing more. If someone made the suggestion, “you need to understand what peace is ,” this
points out that you must leave the idea of peace to inhabit its reality. This is the same for realizing the Self… what you are. Labeling, imagining or naming the Self alone will not lead you to realization. Something more than hanging your hat on an image or idea of self is required. It doesn’t serve you to merely talk or think about who you are. As an example, the idea of one’s humility is clearly not the fact of humility. Only “being that” is the key and with regard to Self-realization, there is no substitute for this “being” factor.
So, how do we get from thinking, imagining and believing to being?
We stop dreaming in mind. We wake up.
How do we do that? How do we awaken from dreaming?
Fortunately, there is no “how” to this, as the truly awakened Being that you are is not to be found in the field of your conscious experience. And, “what is really going to bake your noodle,” as the Oracle said in the Matrix movie, is realizing that the awakening unto Self is also a dreaming state of mind. We never truly awaken from our nighttime dreams, because the entire experience of selfhood in any individual form or context is also the product of the dream state. In Reality, “nothing ever happened” and our efforts to become and awaken are in the words of Shakespeare, “much to do about nothing…We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded by a sleep.”
Self-Being is not a product of your mind, rather it is the other way around. All your conscious experience is sourced by pure awareness, and this awaring power is the essence of who you are; the changeless, timeless and formless source of all the energy comprising the dream of time and space.
If you can apperceive and intuit this pointer truly, you will immediately recognize the absolute futility of seeking your Self in experience. To apperceive means to be aware that you are aware, now and always. For nothing can appear to be without the awareness of its being. To seek the light by which you see is a needless and futile search. It is better to be still.
As this all-knowing light, you have no desire to call the images of consciousness out or defend them in any way. You awaringly witness that the mind is a fine mirror and a poor self-identity, as it merely reflects a fragmented mental image of the unimaginably whole and perfect. Pure Awareness is never tainted by that which appears within its knowing presence. To the All-Knowing, All-Present and All-Powerful Self, nothing ever really happens.
Contemplate this question, if you will. Who knows the consciousness that appears as “I Am”? Is it one thing to another or does your self-inquiry leave you empty-handed and in reverent quietude?
The impulse to truly know thyself, brings you to the edge of the rabbit hole of Self-discovery. Leave all your knowledge behind, because the past known and the timeless now are incompatible, as of these two, only one is real. Past memory and future expectation simply don’t play in the timeless presence of the All-Possible. Your memory leaves footprints that if followed will appear to hold you to experience. The Self is absolutely not an experience, nor is your realization. The changing self is merely a dreaming. Only the pure Knowing One survives this experience unscathed.
Warrior of Silence
By Ethan Walker III
˙·٠•●♥ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ♥●•٠·˙˙·٠•●♥ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ♥●•٠·˙˙˙·٠•●♥ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ♥●•٠·˙˙·٠•●♥ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ♥●•٠·˙˙·٠•●♥ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ♥●•٠·˙˙˙·٠•●♥ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ♥●•٠·˙
Mother Kali
Warrior of silence
you hold the crackling thunder of emptiness
in your begging bowl of endless time
Your radiant blackness
illuminates the death of mortality
and into this ancient cauldron of mystery
you direct the concentrated attention
of your awestruck children
By gazing into your fiery eyes of dissolution
your children embrace the final surrender
of finite existence
Having attained the totality
of your wisdom path
they are granted liberation
from birth and death
once and for all
My precious Mother Kali
I am weeping for you
to help this child
as I have no resource for liberation
that I can call my own
Having been lost
in the morass of egocentricity for eons
I have nowhere else to go
and I have fallen
so deeply in love with you
Mother, I pray
that you will not turn your back to me
as I am still a small child
who can only cling to your midnight feet
like the pale silvery moon
that clings to the dark velvet void
of endless space
Compassionate Mother
show me your warm sweet motherly smile
or show me your terrifying
demon destroying face
with red tongue extended
and crazed blazing eyes!
Both are the same to this child
who loves you so intensely
Mother, why can I not stop weeping for you?
Is it your play
that I am me
and you are you?
You have taken everything
O Great Destroyer Goddess
You have taken my pride
and my will to live without you
Mother, please grant me just one desire
grant that I might be held tightly in your arms
and then let me whisper, "I love you"
again and again
until eternity itself is flooded
with the tears of my love and affection
˙·٠•●♥ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ♥●•٠·˙˙·٠•●♥ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ♥●•٠·˙˙˙·٠•●♥ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ♥●•٠·˙˙·٠•●♥ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ♥●•٠·˙˙·٠•●♥ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ♥●•٠·˙˙˙·٠•●♥ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ♥●•٠·˙
From Soft Moon Shining: Poems for the Mother of the Universe by Ethan Walker III
Katie Davis Satsang Spiritual Teacher, Non-duality, Self-Inquiry, Spirituality, Non-dual Satsang
Author, "Awake Joy: The Essence of Enlightenment"
