Inside of you there is a wise guide, a part of your true self that walks with you as you progress along the path of your sacred quest. Rinpoche concludes: “The memory of your real nature, with all its splendor and confidence, begins to return to you…. You will find that you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide. Because he or she knows you through and through, since he or she is you.”
This inner wise guide is you, not the idea that you have of yourself. Think of this inner guide as your true self and allow yourself to listen to this wise guide. Instead of listening to the gossip of the ego, you will hear clear and inspiring messages of wisdom. Eventually you will free yourself from the demands of the ego.
I am not suggesting that you conquer, defeat, or despise the ego. It is important to honor and love all aspects of ourselves. This includes the visible world of sensory perception and the invisible world of divine spirit.
This fourth and final key to higher awareness is about freeing yourself from the ego-sponsored illusion that the ultimate meaning and gratification of your life will be found outside of yourself. Taming the ego is a way of inviting the higher aspects of yourself to function in their natural, loving and integrated design.
A Course in Miracles makes this point clear: “Your mission is very simple. You are asked to live so as to demonstrate that you are not an ego.” If you are not feeling a deep, rich sense of yourself and your purpose in now-here, it is probably because you believe you are your ego.
SEVEN PRIMARY EGO CHARACTERISTICS
Freeing yourself from the illusions of the ego will be easier when you recognize ego’s characteristics.
1. Ego is your false self. Your true self is eternal. It is the God force within you that provides the energy for you to roam around in the clothes you call your body—a quiet, empty space surrounded by form. Believing you are only the physical self, the body enclosing the energy, is a false belief.
You needn’t repudiate the ego when you recognize it as a false self. What you are really recognizing is the ego as an idea of the self that is inconsistent with your true, sacred identity.
We are more used to thinking we are a body with a soul than we are to realizing that we are a soul with a body. Viewing yourself in the way of the ego—with the emphasis on you as a physical being—is a form of amnesia, which is cured when you recognize who you truly are.
Tagore touches on the falsity of the ego in this telling passage:
He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon. I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow. I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand lest a least hole should be left in this name; and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being.
The wall is the ego that we construct. It imprisons us in a dungeon of frustration. Notice that Tagore uses “true being” to describe that which the ego shields from his awareness. The ego is the opposite of that true being. It is the false being—only an idea about the true being.
This idea has been with us ever since we began to think. It sends us false messages about our true essence. When we listen to it without the loving presence of the witness, we enter darkness. We make assumptions about what will make us happy and we end up frustrated. We push to promote our self-importance as we yearn for a deeper and richer life experience. We fall into the void of self-absorption repeatedly, not knowing that we need only shed the false idea of who we are.
2. Ego teaches separateness. Ego wants to convince you to believe the illusion of separateness. With each painful experience of feeling alone, apart or separate, ego tightens its hold. This false belief is continually reinforced by our outer culture.
Convinced of our separateness, we view life as a competitive exercise. The competition increases the feeling of separateness and fosters anxiety about our place in the world. Unable to see ourselves connected to the invisible intelligence, the God force, our anxiety mounts and our sense of aloneness drives us to seek outer connectedness.
Substituting outer for inner connectedness is what you are attempting to do by needing to prove yourself better than others. Your need to look better, achieve more, accumulate more, judge others and find fault are all symptoms of the erroneous belief that you are disconnected and separate.
The idea of separateness begins early in life. Without someone to model a rich inner life, we grow up experiencing the pain of loneliness, injuries and peer criticism, which intensify feelings of being apart from rather than a part of our true self.
The ego’s development is reinforced with the central belief in our separateness. We become convinced that the physical life is all that there is; we spend a lot of time believing we are better than others; our interpersonal philosophy is to get the best of the other guy first. Lack of purpose and meaning in life is countered with the belief that you are born, you shop, you suffer and you die. Since this ego illusion is all there is to life it becomes important to fight for what one wants and to defeat others.
The feelings of separation are so deep with this ego attitude that convincing someone otherwise is a major undertaking. However, you know inside yourself whether what you have just read describes you. And you can make the choice to no longer allow your ego to insist that you are separate from your sacredness.
When you drop your ego beliefs, you are on the way to becoming one of those people Jean Houston describes who have managed to grasp their spiritual identity and fulfill their sacred quests. In a taped interview from New Dimensions Radio, Houston says of these people: “They all had little of narcissism, little of self-interest. They actually had very little self-consciousness at all. They simply didn’t waste time worrying about their self-presentation. They were in love with life. They were in a state of constant engagement with all fields of life, whereas most people are encapsulated bags of skin, carrying around little egos.” In order to get to this place you have to shatter the illusion of your separateness.
Your idea of yourself, which is what your ego is, will make itself known over and over as you attempt to shatter the illusion. And when you know that you are not separate, when that idea of yourself has shattered, you will experience a new kind of peacefulness.
No longer will you have to compete or be better than anyone. No longer will you need to accumulate, achieve or seek outer honors. You will have left behind an idea that you had cultivated most of your life. Rather than view yourself as distinct from God and everyone else, you will experience your life as connected rather than separate.
The eternal aspect of your self will know its freedom to influence your life. You will experience the connectedness to your self and all life in a way that ego’s illusion couldn’t begin to comprehend.
3. Ego convinces you of your specialness. The ego cannot recognize that the loving presence sees everyone as divine and lovable. “No one is special” is not an idea that the ego takes lightly. As a culture we tend to agree with ego that there are special people and special situations.
This attitude of specialness contributes to our social and economic problems by putting our country into debt and maintaining life support systems that mock the meaning of life.
Specialness implies that some are more worthy than others, as if God has favorites. When we offer this belief to our higher selves, we quickly see that it is preposterous. However, we allow our egos to create special categories and we ask others to honor them.
Specialness denies the perfect equality of creation. It also denies the totality of God’s love. Your ego may insist that God loves you more than someone else, denying the totality of unconditional love that is God and that is you. Your ego’s insistence also subjects you to the fear of not being special.
That fear of not being special then keeps you from knowing the peace of God, the harmony of oneness that leads to the bliss of your higher self. Ego specialness prevents you from authentic feelings of your sacredness by creating an inner expe
rience of fear. Self-esteem, which is a given because you are a spiritual being having a human experience, becomes dependent on believing you are special or virtuous in the eyes of God.
Who you are is not special. It is eternal, invisible, blissful and sacred. Your self-esteem is not something you have to earn. A self-realized person does not ever think about self-esteem because he or she cannot doubt their value. They know to do so would be to doubt the value of God.
Attachment to your specialness creates enormous blocks to awakening to your true identity. It cultivates fear and resentment and prevents your awareness of unconditional love.
To discover your sacred self is to let go of any attachment to specialness or identification with the ego. These are mere symbols of what you have come to regard as success. The ego encourages you to accumulate, believing you will increase your happiness.
But you know that happiness is not found in the more-is-better lifestyle. You know that something outside of yourself cannot give you inner peace. You know that this is backwards thinking.
Turn those thoughts around. Look at the inner path, where you see yourself connected to God and all of life.
4. Ego is ready to be offended. Whenever you are offended, you are at the mercy of your ego. Setting up external rules of how you are to be treated is a way of guaranteeing a terminal state of being offended. It is the ego’s way.
A favorite story of mine concerns Carlos Castaneda and his spiritual teacher, the Nagual don Juan Matus. After having been chased by a jaguar in the mountains for several days and being thoroughly convinced that this jaguar was going to tear him limb from limb and eat him as his prey, Castaneda was finally able to escape the fierce beast.
For three days he had lived with the horrible fear that he was about to be shredded and devoured by the jaguar. When his teacher asks him about this experience, Castaneda, writing in The Power of Silence, replies:
What had remained with me in my normal state of awareness was that a mountain lion—since I could not accept the idea of a jaguar—had chased us up a mountain, and that don Juan had asked me if I had felt offended by the big cat’s onslaught. I had assured him that it was absurd that I could feel offended, and he had told me I should feel that same way about the onslaughts of my fellow men. I should protect myself, or get out of their way, but without feeling morally wronged.
All the things that offend you in some way play to your sense of self-absorption. That which offends you doesn’t offend the real you—it offends your idea of who you are. In the world of the eternal you, nothing ever goes wrong, so there is nothing to be offended by.
But in the world of your ego, you are immediately jolted out of the blissful place of higher awareness into a world where you determine how others think, feel and behave. When they are not the way you believe they should be, you are offended.
When you have sufficiently restrained your ego, you will be able to treat the onslaughts of others in the same way that Castaneda was taught to think about the jaguar. It obviously makes no sense to be “offended” by a jaguar’s attack, because it is just doing what jaguars do.
Whether you like it or not, your fellow human beings are in some ways like the jaguar. They are doing what they do. If you can allow that without being offended, you will have put your ego’s idea of who you are in its proper position in relation to the loving presence within you. Then you can be motivated to make the world a better place, without first needing to be offended.
When you have tamed your ego, you are no longer offended by your fellow humans. Free of ego’s illusions, you see your fellow human beings as they are rather than as you think they should be. The way of your sacred self becomes clearer.
5. Ego is cowardly. Your ego thrives on convincing you that you are separate from God. To keep this belief strong, it promotes the illusion of your guilt and sinfulness in a cowardly attempt to avoid the face of God, which is your true self.
The ego thrives on keeping you convinced that you are separate from God and will do anything to keep you in that mind-set. It will even take the coward’s way of dealing with fear by encouraging your belief that you are a worthless sinner.
Your higher self knows better. That loving presence knows that at the core of your being is a divine spirit, drenched in the light of love and bliss. When you find ideas of guilt continually surfacing, they are the cowardly acts of the ego, trembling in fear at the idea of your knowing that you are an extension of God.
But just as fear of the dark is transformed by turning on outer light, so is the cowardice of the ego transformed by your inner light. Cowardly behavior is simply a symptom of great fear. The antidote to fear is courage.
You can courageously deal with ego’s fear and cowardice if you know that the part of God that you are is not separate from divine energy. That knowing provides the courage to shine the light of your inner love on the darkness of ego’s fear. Thus illuminated, ego’s idea—its illusion of you as exclusively a part of the physical world—is enlightened.
6. Ego thrives on consumption. The false self will continually bombard you with the idea that you must have more in order to have peace. The ego pushes you toward external validation of yourself and is threatened by the notion that you can find peace within yourself. This push toward looking outward is what I have called “facing the wrong way.”
The ego tries to keep you looking outward for your sense of peace and for a deeper and richer feeling of love. Its position would be weakened if you were to become acquainted with the love and richness within you. The ego is thus involved in a major endeavor to keep you facing the wrong way.
As you look outward in this futile attempt to find peace, you convince yourself that possessions will bring you the peace and fulfillment you yearn for. The ego has succeeded at this point in directing your life energy outward toward external pursuits, and it rejoices as you focus all your energy on acquisitions.
With your attention centered on what you see as wrong, you attempt to fix those wrongs by getting more of something outside of yourself. Those circumstances distract you from knowing the decision-making power of your mind to choose peace and love over anxiety and fear. This is how the ego system stays intact. It is imperative that you reclaim the power of your mind in order to transcend ego’s false beliefs.
It is impossible to consume your way to peace. You cannot buy love. There is no peace in more-is-better, as I’ve already written. That way leads only to a lifetime of striving without ever arriving. The ego is threatened and frightened of your arriving. It wants you to consistently push yourself to new and more elaborate ways.
When you discontinue seeking what cannot be gotten from outside of yourself, you arrive and relax in peacefulness. Your false self will be tamed.
7. Ego is insane. My definition of an insane person is someone who believes that they are something they are not and acts on that belief in the world. This is precisely what the ego believes. And it is constantly attempting to convince you to believe that too.
The insanity persists because ego fears death. We could say that ego has an insane belief that it has to die if you start knowing your true self. As this insanity takes hold of your life, you absolutely come to identify with this false idea of yourself. Unaware, you involuntarily join most of the rest of the world who also practice this insanity.
Keep in mind this quotation from A Course in Miracles: “This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched.” Yet, the world is filled with people who are convinced that the holy spirit is something separate from them. And they spend their lives attempting to convince others of this insanity as well!
All human violence is a reflection of the belief in our separateness. If we knew we were all one and that God is within us, we’d know that any harm to another is a violation of God. We would not be able to behave as we do to each other. But the insanity of the ego has convinced us that we are separate and encouraged us
to pursue our vendettas of hatred.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French theologian and paleontologist, wrote: “We are one, after all, you and I; together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other.” This is sanity—knowing that you are one with God.
For the ego, this is a dangerous proposition to announce because it threatens ego’s importance. Total capitulation to ego’s fears is insanity. For instance, Teilhard de Chardin was forbidden by his Jesuit order to publish his metaphysical and philosophical papers. His pain must have been deeply felt, but his sanity was not compromised by an untamed ego. His knowing was stronger than ego and the church authorities. Today his published works are accepted classics.
One of the most insane ideas that your ego offers you is that you are morally and spiritually superior to those who are not consciously seeking their sacred selves. This idea of spiritual superiority is a separatist belief.
According to this belief, those who are spiritual are separate from those who are ego-bound. This is another ego trick attempting to satisfy your longing to know your higher self, by creating a false dichotomy in which you are better than others. The reality is that there is no inherent superior/inferior dichotomy in humanness.
Each of us has our own path to traverse, and each of us will be tested in many ways. Your inner awareness of God does not make you superior to anyone—it simply brings you a deeper, richer sense of your purpose. Those who have not yet seen their inner light are still a part of you. They are you in other forms—different shapes with different behaviors.
The essence of you and of them is still the one source: the celestial light of God. It is insane to let ego convince you to attach labels of inferior or superior to the loving presence within us all.
The above seven characteristics of the ego are merely an introduction to this topic. They are the primary general characteristics of how ego is involved in our individual lives.
Your Sacred Self Page 16