Going Beyond Your Ego

words no matter whether they are

vocalized and made into

sounds or remain unspoken as

thoughts can cast an almost hypnotic

spell upon you you easily lose yourself

in them

and become hypnotized into implicitly

believing

that when you have attached a word to

something

you know what it is the fact is

you don’t know what it is you have only

covered up the label

the mystery with a label

everything a bird a tree

even a simple stone and most certainly

a human being is ultimately unknowable

all we can perceive see experience

is the surface level of reality

less than the tip of an iceberg

when you look at something and let it be

without imposing a word or mental label

on it

a sense of awe arises within you

and its essence silently communicates

itself back to you

this is what great artists sense and

succeed

in conveying in their art van gogh

didn’t just say that’s just an old chair

he looked and looked and looked

then he sat in front of the canvas and

took up the brush

the chair itself would have sold for the

equivalent

of a few dollars but the painting

of that same chair today would be worth

25 million dollars

the way you look at something can

greatly affect its value

just like with words and with human

beings

when you don’t cover up the world with

thoughts and labels a sense of the

miraculous

returns to your life that was lost a

long time ago

when humanity instead of using thought

became possessed by thought things

regained their newness

their freshness and the greatest miracle

is the experiencing of your essential

self

as prior to any words thoughts

and labels

we need to disentangle our sense of i

from all the things it has become mixed

up with

don’t only look at a person through your

perspective

but see them as a being independent of

yourself

because the quicker you are in attaching

mental or verbal labels

to things people or situations the more

shallow and lifeless your reality

becomes

wisdom is lost and so are joy

love creativity and aliveness

but of course we have to use thoughts

and words

they have their own beauty but do we

need to become

imprisoned in them language

words reduce reality to something the

human mind can grasp

which isn’t very much language consists

of five basic sounds

produced by the vocal chords those are

the vowels

a e i o and u the other sounds are

consonants produced by air pressure s

f g and so forth do you believe

some combination of such basic sounds

could ever explain who you

are the word i

embodies the greatest truth and the

deepest error

depending on how it is used in

conventional usage it is not only

one of the mostly used words in the

language

together with the related words me

myself

mine and my but it’s also one of the

most misleading

the word i embodies the primordial error

a misperception of who you are an

illusory sense of identity

your reality becomes a reflection of the

original illusion

and this is the ego

when i was a young child i learned the

word i

and started to acquit it with my name

which i acquitted with who i am

then other thoughts came and merged with

the original i thought

um it became

identified with my possessions

so when my toy breaks down or is taken

away

intense suffering would arise not

because of any intrinsic value that the

toy had

um i soon lost interest in it it became

replaced with other toys other objects

but because of the thought of mine the

toy became

part of my developing sense of self of i

and so as i grew up

the word i became identified with other

thoughts

like gender possessions the sense

perceived body

nationality race religion

other thoughts the identifies with are

likes and dislikes

and also things that happened to me in

the past

the memory of which are thoughts that

further define my sense of self

as me and my story

they are nothing else than thoughts held

together precoriously

by the fact that they are all invested

with a sense of self

this mental construct is the ego

which also leads to putting labels on

people as you associate them with

something as well

as an extension to the eye thought

so the reason why such acute suffering

occurs

is concealed in the word my and it is

structural

the unconscious compulsion to enhance

one’s identity

with association with an object is built

into the very structure of the egoic

mind

the people in the advertising industry

know very well

that in order to sell something that

people don’t really need

they must convince them that it will add

something

to how they are seen by themselves or by

others

and so by implication adds something to

their sense of self

they do this for example by telling you

that you will stand out from the crowd

by using this product and so by

implication

be more fully yourself so in many cases

you’re not buying a product but an

identity enhancer

paradoxically what keeps the so-called

consumer

society going is the fact that trying to

find yourself through things doesn’t

really work

ego satisfaction is short-lived and so

you keep on buying keep consuming keep

wanting more

but we cannot really honor things if we

use them as a means to self-enhancement

which is exactly what the ego does

ego identification with things creates

attachment to things

obsession with things which in turn

creates our consumers

society and economic structures where

the only measure of progress is always

more the unchecked striving for more

for endless growth is a dysfunction and

a disease

it is the same dysfunction the cancerous

cell manifests

whose only goal is to multiply itself

unaware

of the fact that it is bringing about

its own destruction

by destroying the organism of which it

is a part

some economists are so bound to the

notion of growth

that they can’t let go of the word so

they refer to a period of recession

as negative growth we need to be alert

and honest in order to find out for

example

whether our sense of self-worth is bound

with the things we possess

do certain things induce a subtle

feeling of superiority or

importance does the lack of them make

you

feel inferior do you feel resentful

or angry when someone has more than you

or when you have lost the prized

possession

here’s the story my parents and i moved

around a lot

and recently we’ve moved to turkey and

while unpacking our bags

and boxes my mom was relentlessly

looking for our family’s ring

one that has been passed down through

generations

it was becoming to look very clearly

that the ring was lost

and so after trying to hopelessly find

the ring

i finally asked my mom if it will affect

us in any way

after all it’s just an object i said

a couple days later she eventually found

a ring but

i now realize that in order to calm down

my mom i should have asked

has who you are who we are

been diminished in any way shape or form

i understand now that you can care and

value for things

but whenever you get so attached to them

you will know is the ego

and you are never really attached to a

thing but to a thought

that has me mine or mine in it

whenever you completely accept the loss

you go beyond your ego

and who you are the i am which is

consciousness itself

emerges because you represent more than

your objects

and so do others so don’t put a label on

them based on what they own

also going back to words the ego

acknowledges

any sort of perceived diminishment in

the form of verbal communication

automatic ego repair mechanisms come

into effect restore the mental form of

me

when someone blames or criticizes me

that the ego is a diminishment and it

will immediately attempt to repair

itself

through self-justification blaming or

defense

whether the other person is right or

wrong

is irrelevant to ego which is much more

interested in self-preservation

rather than the truth

when someone criticizes you or blames

you

instead of immediately retaliating and

defending yourself

do nothing allow the self-image to

remain diminished

and be alert to how that feels like deep

inside you

for a few seconds it may feel

uncomfortable

as you have shrunk in size

but then you may feel an inner

spaciousness that feels completely alive

you haven’t been diminished at all in

fact

you have expanded

you may then come to an amazing

realization

when you are seemingly diminished in one

way but remain an

absolute non-reaction not just

externally but also

internally you realize that nothing real

has been diminished

and that you in fact have expanded

true power who you are beyond form

can then shine through the apparently

weakened form

turn the other cheek is a very famous

expression

parents often tell their children and

this shows that they are more mature

and there is a reason for it but it

doesn’t mean of course that you invite

abuse or turn yourself into the victim

of unconscious people

sometimes a situation may demand that

you tell someone to back off

in no uncertain terms but without egoic

defensiveness there will be power behind

your words

yet no reactive force

thus you become an utterly changed human

being with heightened perception and

sensitivity to what really matters

you become reborn as a human being who

can see through stereotypical labels

the purest form of what can humanly be

perceived

you start to cherish yourself and those

around you

and stop letting words or labels fuel

your ego strive to become reborn

thank you