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