the Ego

[Guest guest]

http://www.leonardjacobson.com/mystic_set.html

 

 

If God and Oneness is the foundation of our existence, then why does

the ego exist? What exactly is the ego?

 

 

When you were born into the physical world, you were fully present,

even though you were only a tiny baby. However, you came into a world

where most people, including your parents, lived and functioned

within the limited world of the mind. To a large extent they were

unconscious. They were not fully present.

As a result, you were hurt over and over again. Your needs were not

met in a way that would have helped you to relax and feel safe. You

got angry in an attempt to get what you want, but that too was not

allowed.

It was all too much for you to bear and so the ego gradually

developed as a way to protect yourself from the fear and hurt and

anger. Essentially, the ego is an aspect of your personality, which

becomes a kind of overseer of your internal experience and it also is

in charge of how you relate to the outside world.

Its role is to manage the repression and denial of unpleasant and

unsafe feelings, like rejection, unworthiness, isolation etc. It also

develops strategies for coping in an unconscious world.

All of this is occurring within the world of the mind, so that as the

ego develops, you are being absorbed into the world of the mind, just

as your parents were, many years before you.

As you mature, the ego becomes stronger and more sophisticated and

the distinction between the truth of who you really are, and the ego,

becomes more and more blurred. After a while the ego thinks it is

you, and so the game becomes one of protecting itself and its role as

your protector.

If it is going to successfully protect you against hurt and

rejection, and if it is going to successfully develop strategies to

gain you love, acceptance and recognition, it will have to be in

control of you and everything in your life. Every experience has to

be filtered through the world of the mind. Eventually it becomes

addicted to the power of control, and it becomes very unwilling to

surrender that control.

The ego can only be in control of what it knows and everything it

knows is based on past remembering or future imagining. The one thing

the ego does not know is the present moment, and so it will resist

your becoming fully present. Indeed, it has a very effective bag of

tricks to keep you in its world of past and future thought, which

will in turn prevent you from entering fully into the present moment.

If you do become fully present (awake in the world of NOW) it will

not allow you to remain there.

The ego does not mind you being on a spiritual path, because it loves

to acquire spiritual knowledge. From the ego's perspective,

enlightenment is the ultimate accomplishment, even above fame and

fortune. But the ego's desire for enlightenment dissolves very

quickly if it comes to recognize that to be awake and enlightened

means that you will become fully present.

When you become fully present, it is a kind of death for the ego, and

even if you successfully reassure it that it is not dying, it is

still very unwilling to surrender its role as protector and

controller. The ego is sitting in the throne of God and it loves it.

The transition from the world of the present moment into the world of

the mind and ego occurs during the first four or five years of life.

Essentially it is a transition from Oneness into separation.

This transition into the world of the mind is a reflection of a

similar and more traumatic transition that occurred at some time in

your soul's past. It is a movement into separation that occurred at

many levels and dimensions of your multi-dimensional existence.

Why would this occur? The answer to this question is complex. It has

to do with the Eternal dilemma of God. I do not want to go into too

much detail, but I speak on this topic in my third book, Bridging

Heaven & Earth.

Let me just say here that the only way the Creator can experience the

Creation is within the dance of duality.

That which exists in perfect Oneness can never know itself, for to

know Oneself requires the existence of the knower and the known. If

God exists as Oneness and Is-ness, then God cannot know God's self.

Thus there was a journey from Oneness into separation, so that

Oneness could eventually know itself. It is within the context of

duality that knowing arises. The original duality exists in the

movement from Oneness into separation. This makes possible all other

aspects of duality. Some of the more significant aspects of duality

are God as Creator and God as Creation, light and dark, creation and

destruction, birth and death and of course, the duality of past and

future, which gives rise to the existence of time.

The separation I am speaking of exists within different dimensions.

In each of these dimensions, there is a Custodian of the separation.

In the context of life lived in physical form, the ego is the

anointed custodian of the separation.

To awaken simply means to awaken out of the past and future world of

the thinking mind into the truth and reality of the present moment

which is the world of NOW. If you truly awaken, the ego will relax

and surrender and allow you to become more and more present. As you

awaken, separation dissolves and you are restored into Oneness.

At the deepest levels of Presence, you will find yourself in the

eternal dilemma of God. For when you are fully present, you are in

perfect silence and Oneness, and so once again, you will not know who

you are!