Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts.
It often occurs that pride and selfishness are muddled with strength and independence. They are neither equal nor similar; in fact, they are polar opposites. A coward may be so cowardly that he masks his weakness with some false personification of power. He is afraid to love and to be loved because love tends to strip bare all emotional barricades. Without love, strength and independence are prone to losing every bit of their worth; they become nothing more than a fearful, intimidated, empty tent lost somewhere in the desert of self.
Naive people tend to generalize people as—-good, bad, kind, or evil based on their actions. However, even the smartest person in the world is not the wisest or the most spiritual, in all matters. We are all flawed. Maybe, you didn’t know a few of these things about Einstein, but it puts the notion of perfection to rest. Perfection doesn’t exist in anyone. Nor, does a person’s mistakes make them less valuable to the world. 1. He divorced the mother of his children, which caused Mileva, his wife, to have a break down and be hospitalized.2.He was a ladies man and was known to have had several affairs; infidelity was listed as a reason for his divorce.3.He married his cousin.4.He had an estranged relationship with his son.5. He had his first child out of wedlock.6. He urged the FDR to build the Atom bomb, which killed thousands of people.7. He was Jewish, yet he made many arguments for the possibility of God. Yet, hypocritically he did not believe in the Jewish God or Christianity. He stated, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.
Realizing the seriously ruthless, venomous habits and agendas of evil always instills a more fierce passion and longing for a closer God. Men, out of pride, may claim their own authorities over what constitutes good and evil; they may self-proclaim a keen knowledge of subjective morality through religion or science. But that is only if they are acknowledging the work of evil as a cartoon-like, petty little rain cloud in the sky that merely wants to dampen one's spirits. On the contrary, a man could be without a doubt lit with the strength, the peace, and the knowledge of the gods, his gods, but when or if the devils grow weary in unsuccessful attempts to torment him, they begin tormenting his loved ones, or, if not his loved ones, anyone who may attempt to grasp his philosophies. No matter how godly he may become, God is, in the end, his only hope and his only grace for the pressures built around him - it is left up to a higher authority and a more solid peace and a wider love to eclipse not just one's own evils but all evils for goodness to ultimately matter. If all men were gods, each being would dwell in a separate prison cell, hopeless, before finally imploding into nothingness.
Hate. Huh. He'd never hated himself. If anything, he'd always liked himself a little too much. Once, a human female had even accused him of picturing his own face while he climaxed. He hadn't denied it, either, and next time he'd slept with her, he'd made sure to scream, "Strider" at the pivotal moment." --Strider, keeper of the demon of Defeat--
God judges men from the inside out; men judge men from the outside in. Perhaps to God, an extreme mental patient is doing quite well in going a month without murder, for he fought his chemical imbalance and succeeded; oppositely, perhaps the healthy, able and stable man who has never murdered in his life yet went a lifetime consciously, willingly never loving anyone but himself may then be subject to harsher judgment than the extreme mental patient. It might be so that God will stand for the weak and question the strong.
I was transformed the dayMy ego shattered,And all the superficial, materialThings that matteredTo me before,Suddenly ceasedTo matter.
Accomplishments don’t erase shame, hatred, cruelty, silence, ignorance, discrimination, low self-esteem or immorality. It covers it up, with a creative version of pride and ego. Only restitution, forgiving yourself and others, compassion, repentance and living with dignity will ever erase the past.
The human ego is the ugliest part of man. We lift up men who only show us darkness, and put down those brave enough to show us the light. Likewise, people engage in darkness when it is light outside, and acknowledge the light only when it is dark. We abandon those fighting for us to cheer behind those fighting against us. And, we only remember good people and God when it is convenient for us, and take them for granted because their doors are always open - only to chase after closed doors and personalities void of substance and truth.
Glory of the world makes life meaningless. Glory of God fulfills it.
If the Creator stood before a million men with the light of a million lamps, only a few would truly see him because truth is already alive in their hearts. Truth can only be seen by those with truth in them. He who does not have Truth in his heart, will always be blind to it.
To seek truth requires one to ask the right questions. Those void of truth never ask about anything because their ego and arrogance prevent them from doing so. Therefore, they will always remain ignorant. Those on the right path to Truth are extremely heart-driven and childlike in their quest, always asking questions, always wanting to understand and know everything — and are not afraid to admit they don't know something. However, every truth seeker does need to breakdown their ego first to see Truth. If the mind is in the way, the heart won't see anything.
The more doors you open to the mysteries, or sacred knowledge, the smaller you feel. And because you begin to feel smaller and smaller until your ego disappears, the more humble you become. Therefore, any man who behaves arrogantly with what little he knows, or claims to know all, only reveals to all that he really knows nothing. Real greatness does not reside inside those who feel large. The truly wise are meek. Yet being small and meek do not make one weak. Arming oneself with true knowledge generates strong confidence and a bold spirit that makes you a lion of God. The Creator does not want you to suffer, yet we are being conditioned by society to accept suffering, weak and passive dispositions under the belief that such conditions are favorable by God. Weakness is not a virtue praised by God. How could he desire for you to be weak if he tells us to stand by our conscience? Doing so requires strength. However, there is a difference between arrogance when inflating your ego, and confidence when one truly gets closer to God. One feels large, while the other feels small. Why? Because a man of wisdom understands that he is just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms, and that in the end — we are all connected. And did you not know that the smaller a creature is, the bolder its spirit?
I believe that if there is a huge chunk of white/truth in you, you will be drawn mostly to truth. If there is a lot of black/ego in you, you will naturally migrate to darkness/ego. We can't change our natural compositions or our attraction to certain lighting, but we can slowly change our angle of perception. Anyone can work on balancing their inner lighting simply by adjusting their outer lenses. All you have to do is learn to use your heart before your mind to see things. There is no light greater than truth, and it shines at the heart of all creation. Be like a butterfly and celebrate it every day. It is inside you. Be aware of it so it can cultivate it to grow stronger and bigger.
A conscious human is driven by their conscience, not popular opinion.
Your mind can be your enemy or friend. If you always follow your heart, your mind will feel neglected. If you follow only your mind, your heart will never forgive you. Never ignore your conscience, yet always be conscious of reason. Make your heart and mind friends and you will have peace of mind throughout life's seasons.
These are the three stages of enlightenment, the three glimpses of satori. 1. The first stage enlightenment:A Glimpse of the WholeThe first stage of enlightenment is short glimpse from faraway of the whole. It is a short glimpse of being. The first stage of enlightenment is when, for the first time, for a single moment the mind is not functioning. The ordinary ego is still present at the first stage of enlightenment, but you experience for a short while that there is something beyond the ego. There is a gap, a silence and emptiness, where there is not thought between you and existence. You and existence meet and merge for a moment. And for the first time the seed, the thirst and longing, for enlightenment, the meeting between you and existence, will grow in your heart. 2. The second stage of enlightenment:Silence, Relaxation, Togetherness, Inner BeingThe second stage of enlightenment is a new order, a harmony, from within, which comes from the inner being. It is the quality of freedom.The inner chaos has disappeared and a new silence, relaxation and togetherness has arisen.Your own wisdom from within has arisen.A subtle ego is still present in the second stage of enlightenment. The Hindus has three names for the ego:1. Ahamkar, which is the ordinary ego.2. Asmita, which is the quality of Am-ness, of no ego. It is a very silent ego, not aggreessive, but it is still a subtle ego.3. Atma, the third word is Atma, when the Am-ness is also lost. This is what Buddha callas no-self, pure being.In the second stage of enlightenment you become capable of being in the inner being, in the gap, in the meditative quality within, in the silence and emptiness.For hours, for days, you can remain in the gap, in utter aloneness, in God. Still you need effort to remain in the gap, and if you drop the effort, the gap will disappear. Love, meditation and prayer becomes the way to increase the effort in the search for God. Then the second stage becomes a more conscious effort. Now you know the way, you now the direction. 3. The third stage of enlightenment: Ocean, Wholeness, No-self, Pure beingAt the third stage of enlightenment, at the third step of Satori, our individual river flowing silently, suddenly reaches to the Ocean and becomes one with the Ocean.At the third Satori, the ego is lost, and there is Atma, pure being. You are, but without any boundaries. The river has become the Ocean, the Whole.It has become a vast emptiness, just like the pure sky. The third stage of enlightenment happens when you have become capable of finding the inner being, the meditative quality within, the gap, the inner silence and emptiness, so that it becomes a natural quality. You can find the gap whenever you want.This is what tantra callas Mahamudra, the great orgasm, what Buddha calls Nirvana, what Lao Tzu calls Tao and what Jesus calls the kingdom of God.You have found the door to God. You have come home.
Anyway, the trick is simply this: No matter what happens, keep your heart open. Wide open. The heart is made of love, and love is indestructible, and only the arrogance of ego would presume that it requires protection. To open your heart is to reduce your ego, and this is the only magic that is ever required to experience the naked truth.
I've helped many friends and even strangers, start successful businesses, by encouraging their ideas, reshaping such visions and giving them a clear image to hold on to. But in the end, they forget me easily. I've noticed that they rather have the ones that didn't support them around them. They prefer to forget me as fast as possible when success is acquired. And why? Because the ego is always stronger than the spirit. And the ego is ashamed to admit its defeat, to say thanks and appreciate. The weak don't know that it is the spirit that calls them for success, and not the ego. With the ego, you go nowhere. And being very religious will never help with that. Simply because God can't do much for those who are blind by their ego. And yes, I've also met many incompetent but highly religious individuals that fail in life with the grace of God, proving that the God of life and success is not the God of the fools and most selfish. This duality confuses only the most egotistical. The plans of God are so very clear that He could be dead and they would still work as I outlined here.
COMING FORTH INTO THE LIGHTI was born the dayI thought:What is?What was?AndWhat if?I was transformed the dayMy ego shattered,And all the superficial, materialThings that matteredTo me before,Suddenly ceasedTo matter.I really came into beingThe day I no longer cared aboutWhat the world thought of me,Only on my thoughts forChanging the world.
The source of wisdom and power, of love and beauty, is within ourselves, but not within our egos. It is within our consciousness. Indeed, its presence provides us with a conscious contrast which enables us to speak of the ego as if it were something different and apart: it is the true Self whereas the ego is only an illusion of the mind.
If you're jealous of someone else it simply means you have not come to a true acceptance and appreciation of yourself.
Don't show a friend your gift, or your bag of money if you still want to maintain your relationship, but if nay, go on, and all you'll see is hate and jealousy, and you'll fight with him in the street like a dog and all you'll feel is regret.
When true happiness shows up, the ego is bored with it: It's too plain, too ordinary, and it doesn't leave us feeling special or above the fray. It doesn't take away our problems, which is the ego's idea of happiness. The ego wants no more difficulties: no ore sickness, no more need for money, no more work, no more bad feelings, only unending pleasure and bliss. Such perfection is the ego's idea of a successful life. However, the happiness the ego dreams of will never be attained by anyone. The ego denies the reality of this dimension, where challenges are necessary to evolution and blissful states and pleasure come and go.
Beware ! Heart is too small to feel happy but soul is too big to take glory
Wasting time is living in self glorification instead of glorifying God as God is time
Religiousity is unself glory not purity
When we live holy we will glorify self but when we glorify God we will live holy
Biggest tragedy of life is when God ask us to glorify Him for our sakes but we choose to glorify self for satan's good.
What "wasting time" means? At the time we glorify self instead of glorify God, at that time we are wasting our time as... God is Time.
Greatest irony of life is living in self glory while glorifying God which is the ultimate joy is left behind.
It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years.Wasn't it, after all, a kind of life?And there were houses, he knew it, that breathed. They carried in their wood and stone, their brick and mortar a kind of ego that was nearly, very nearly, human.
Anger gets you into trouble, ego keeps you in trouble.
Passion makes you good, but pride stops you to get better.
In general, poor is polite and rich is rude.
Education makes your maths better, not necessarily your manners.
sometimes when everything seems atits worstwhen all conspiresand gnawsand the hours, days, weeksyearsseem wasted – stretched there upon my bedin the darklooking upward at the ceilingi get what many will consider anobnoxious thought:it’s still nice to beBukowski.
You have a great deal of yourself on the line, writing— your vanity is at stake. You discover a tricky thing about fiction writing; a certain amount of vanity is necessary to be able to do it all, but any vanity above that certain amount is lethal.
We are searching for the core of our lives; our culture intuits that writing, that ancient activity, might be the pathway...Awakening does not feed ego's needs and desires; it pulverizes the self. Our society couldn't knowingly bear such reduction, so we've tricked ourselves into the same path but call it writing.
Diversity of character is due to the unequal time given to values. Only through each other will we see the importance of the qualities we lack and our unfinished soul's potential.
If one does not make an ego out of gender, one would still know whether one is a man or a woman, gay, straight, bisexual, transgender—whatever else we may think of. But those identities need to fit very loosely and be worn very lightly. All sense of privilege or deprivation that has developed around one’s gender identity, all rigidity regarding proper roles and behaviors for the various genders, must be cut through.
He had seen the whole Universe stretching to infinity around him—everything. And with it had come the clear and extraordinary knowledge that he was the most important thing in it. Having a conceited ego is one thing. Actually being told by a machine is another.
So the paradox goes: No man who is really ignorant is ever aware that he is ignorant. That is its finest, most faulty manifestation; there can be no true ignorance without first some claim of intelligence or consciousness, or superiority or enlightenment.
Every action (‘doing’) causes bondage. ‘Doing’ is not needed for Liberation. For liberation, ‘action’ of Knowledge is required. Action of ignorance [of the self] is bondage. Action done with egoism is known as ignorant-action and the action done without egoism is known as knowledge-action.
The truly wise are meek. Yet being small and meek do not make one weak. Arming oneself with true knowledge generates strong confidence and a bold spirit that makes you a lion of God. The Creator does not want you to suffer, yet we are being conditioned by society to accept suffering, weak and passive dispositions under the belief that such conditions are favorable by God. Weakness is not a virtue praised by God. How could he desire for you to be weak if he tells us to stand by our conscience? Doing so requires strength. However, there is a difference between arrogance when inflating your ego, and confidence when one truly gets closer to God. One feels large, while the other feels small. Why? Because a man of wisdom understands that he is just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms, and that in the end — we are all connected. And did you not know that the smaller a creature is, the bolder its spirit?
Knowledge of all living beings of the entire world is in only one Soul. But the knowledge that sees the ego and everything, as objects to be known (gneya); only that knowledge is called as the ‘Knowledge’. However, that is partial Knowledge but only from that moment it is regarded as real applied focused awareness. Where there is Knowledge, the focused applied awareness may be partial or complete.
There is a secret a person with great knowledge discovers along the path to truth. That is, the more doors you open to the mysteries, the smaller you feel. And because you begin to feel smaller and smaller until your ego disappears, the more humble you become. Therefore, any man who behaves arrogantly with what little he knows, or claims to know all, only reveals to all that he really knows nothing. Real greatness does not reside inside those who feel large. The truly wise are meek.
Beware ! Discipline goes to two different directions : success and self glory. Self glory is the biggest failure of life.
Kingdom of God will surely come upon someone if glory of man leaves him
It is not reputation, fame, success or religiosity that glorifies God, it's slavery.
Our whole education system is calculated to produce *feelings* in us, impart them to us, instead of leaving their production to ourselves however they may turn out...Thus stuffed with imparted feelings, we appear before the bar of majority and are 'pronounced of age." Our equipment consists of "elevating feelings, lofty thoughts, inspiring maxims,eternal principles.
It is a healthy approach not to expect persons to turn out precisely how you would have wished.
Often we take personally the slings and arrows of our 'abusers'. But frequently we are merely the interchangeable pawns of their own neurotic dramas. Anyone else in your position would have received the same treatment. There is nothing especially noxious or negatively noteworthy about you.
In this storyI am the poetYou're the poetry.
To get the most out of the relationship you are in, it won't be helpful to listen to the ego's stories about it. They will only bring separation and conflict. Essence would tell a different story about your loved one. It would probably be something like: "This person is in my life for me to love to the best of my ability. Let's see what happens if I do that." As Essence, we are here to serve others and serve life. The ego, on the other hand, is all about serving itself.
I once found an ego, crawling around and trying to shine on me. I took it in my arms and the ego turned itself into a virus. First it took over my mind, then my heart, and finally attempted to destroy my soul by corrupting me with fear and guilt. Therefore, with as much energy as I could gather, I trapped the ego within my anger and pulled it out of me. Once on the floor, the ego begged me for mercy and compassion, promising to give me joy in return. I allowed it once again into my life, and again, it tried to hurt me once more, this time with abandonment. So I unveiled the ego for what it truly was, and that was resentment filled with desire for power, a power the ego was feeding from me, from my compassion and willingness. Now unprotected by deceit, the ego shown itself weak and scared. In panic, it run from me, boasting a delusional victory. And when it looked back, searching for another chance, I stepped on it. But believe me, it hurt me far much more than it hurt the ego.
Relationships are used by the darkness to keep people revolving around the ego’s demands. For a moment, people see the light of the divine in each other. They run to it and then quickly forget the light they once saw as their fears reclaim their consciousness. Thus begins the ongoing battle to protect one’s own ‘rights’, in case they be forgotten or betrayed. The tally of what is owed is counted, the guilt of perceived wrong doings is cast upon the other, one’s freedom must be paid as the price for ‘love’, and it is only in short periods of peace when all of this is forgotten. Those moments are the precious windows of the Soul.
A man of wisdom always looks at every problem from the other’s point of view also. You cannot be wise if you have only one point of view. Sometimes try to stand in others’ shoes and just look from there. And if you can understand the other, you will be able to understand yourself more. The other always sees that you are an egoist. You never see it, you are blind to yourself.
Love is not the answer, peace is. Throughout my whole life I have experienced and seen others use love as a reason to treat people with unkindness by being controlling, jealous, shouting in anger, and projecting guilt and shame. If you love someone but there is not peace in your heart when you think of that person then your work is not done. Do not stop at love, continue all the way towards the freedom of inner peace. Love starts when peace begins. Without peace love is simply a mask for our insecurity, judgment, and egoic attachments.
Chasing a person doesn’t give you value or build values in you. You earn your value by chasing morality and practicing dignity.
The pathos of the human life teaches one that idolatry of the ego is a sham. Only by living in harmonious accord with the entire world can a person distill happiness that flows from cultivating a state of mindfulness.
Make peace with yourself before you move forward. Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward.
The greatest win is walking away and choosing not to engage in drama and toxic energy at all.
At best he read popular science magazines like the Scientific American he had now, to keep himself up-to-date, in layman's terms, with physics generally. But even then his concentration was marred, for a lifetime's habit made him inconveniently watchful for his own name. He saw it as if in bold. It could leap out at him from an unread double page of small print, and sometimes he could sense it coming before the page turn.
If there was one overriding element to Faraday's character, it was humility. His 'conviction of deficiency,' as he called it, stemmed in part from his deep religiosity and affected practically every facet of his life. Thus Faraday approached both his science and his everyday conduct unhampered by ego, envy, or negative emotion. In his work, he assumed the inevitability of error and failure; whenever possible, he harnessed these as guides toward further investigation. Faraday adhered to no particular school of scientific thought. Nor did he flinch when a favored hypothesis fell to the rigors of experiment.
The aspirant would do well to avoid those ‘spiritual teachers’ who delight in pointing out the evils of the world. These are immature egos attempting to discard their own negativities by projecting them onto others. The true yogi is one who is like a lion with himself, always striving to eradicate that which shadows his inner light, and like a lamb with others, always striving to see their inner light, no matter how dense may be the clouds that hide it. He is the king of the jungle of his world. He hides from no one and seeks escape from nothing. (88)
opting to complain, life gives you things to complain aboutthis vicious circle ensures your happiness droughtlife responds to us according to our actions and beliefthus reinforcing those beliefs to no reliefthere is no first cause—still, break the cycleabide in peaceful Silence or experience an inner hell“others” are often a reflecting mirror shining backrevealing to us what loads are left to unstackwhat are friends for but a means to practice kindnessand for fortifying the ego’s belief in disconnectednesspeople cater to me according to my own natureso they are me—there is no individual self, rest assuredtweak your thoughts about her and she then treats you thusall minds are one, and all is illusory, as priorly discussedshe is you, and you, herthe shroud of separateness shall now henceforth witherlook back at your life’s recurring patterns and themesand the façade of the ego will start to crack at the seamsuntranscended mindsets follow wherever we gothe common denominator is what your mind has sownthat which supports life is automatically supportedthe get-gain-obtain mentality can be safely aborted
everyone and everything a fluid living seaUniversal Consciousness as both you and mebeing in rapturous love with all life and every personbut this wasn't maintained and things were about to worsenego crept back in believing it was Enlightenedit turns out consciousness only temporarily heighteneda momentary samadhi can sometimes deceiveif untold by a Master because our mind is naïveask enlightenment teachers today about their ego deathdon't even need to for their answer we can already guessare they right this moment experiencing Allness?the spiritual ego is crafty and teaches regardlesstheir words proceeding from the intellect, Power is lackinga Divine Transference is required to send the ego packingif inspiration hits by all means sharebut state your current un-State or others you'll ensnareTrue Teachings are on a whole different levela powerful quieting effect, they silence the mentalmake no bones about it—dying to God is involvedif not ready for this step then observe truths lesser evolved
It is not possible to be seduced by the lure of ego-gratification or intimidated by the tyranny of imposters when we know that we are as the angels. We are loved beyond comprehension. So, we must claim our rightful inheritance and live with the confidence of protection.
In the last 10 years, we have seen a rise in selfishness: selfies, self-absorbed people, superficiality, self-degradation, apathy, and self-destruction. So I challenge all of you to take initiative to change this programming. Instead of celebrating the ego, let's flip the script and celebrate the heart. Let's put the ego and celebrity culture to sleep, and awaken the conscience. This is the battle we must all fight together to win back our humanity. To save our future and our children.
The gut is the seat of all feeling. Polluting the gut not only cripples your immune system, but also destroys your sense of empathy, the ability to identify with other humans. Bad bacteria in the gut creates neurological issues. Autism can be cured by detoxifying the bellies of young children. People who think that feelings come from the heart are wrong. The gut is where you feel the loss of a loved one first. It's where you feel pain and a heavy bulk of your emotions. It's the central base of your entire immune system. If your gut is loaded with negative bacteria, it affects your mind. Your heart is the seat of your conscience. If your mind is corrupted, it affects your conscience. The heart is the Sun. The gut is the Moon. The pineal gland is Neptune, and your brain and nervous system (5 senses) are Mercury. What affects the moon or sun affects the entire universe within. So, if you poison the gut, it affects your entire nervous system, your sense of reasoning, and your senses.
When the world shifts its focus on heart over mind, we will finally experience a beautiful global village for our children.
I was driven to go into book writing by the very nature of journalism and blogging. Both are ephemeral. Journalists and bloggers can have humongous egos. But in the end, what they write is really a passing show. I wanted something more lasting — a record of sorts, something people can look back to and relish again like hot, home–brewed coffee.
War within ourselves is always a prelude to war outside ourselves. All war starts within our own hearts. When our egos are inflated or our desires insatiable, we go to war with the other for the sad joy of maintaining our one-dimensional worlds.
The pain of the narcissist is that, to him, everything is really a threat. What doesn't surrender in reverence is blasphemous to a high opinion of oneself - the burden of self-importance. The narcissist reconstructs his own law of gravity which states that all things and all creatures must adhere to his personal satisfaction, but when they do not, the pain is far more intense than it is for one who is free from the clamors of 'I'.
The assumption is that if I expend myself for myself in the end all I’ll be left with is myself, and that alone is frightening. But what I’ve failed to consider is that I have to expend so much of myself living for myself that in the end I’m really left with very little of myself, and that is unimaginably frightening.
Insecurity is the lack of trust in your abilities and worth. When you enter into a secured state of consciousness, everything that helped boost your confidence will return.
We mistakenly assume that bodily survival has a higher precedence than ego survival. This is simply not generally true. Ego will happily destroy the body for its own sake. Look at overweight executives headed for heart attacks on the way to getting their pictures in Fortune or anorexic models suffering slow starvation on their way to getting their pictures in Vogue. Protecting ego is the general case.
Love is not sacrificing for each other, but helping each other to become more unified - Mentally by respecting each other's EGO; Psychologically - by understanding and overcoming the subtle nuances of the mind that are detrimental to each other's progress and Spiritually - becoming one with the cosmic whole. This organic growth in all sphere of life is what we call LOVE! Have you experienced this?
You’re like a god from a Greek myth, Saiman. You have no empathy. You have no concept of the world beyond your ego. Wanting something gives you an automatic right to obtain it by whatever means necessary with no regard to the damage it may do. I would be careful if I were you. Friends and objects of deities’ desires dropped like flies. In the end the gods always ended up miserable and alone."— Kate Daniels
If [Patricia Highsmith] saw an acquaintance walking down the sidewalk she would deliberately cross over so as to avoid them. When she came in contact with people, she realised she split herself into many different, false, identities, but, because she loathed lying and deceit, she chose to absent herself completely rather than go through such a charade. Highsmith interpreted this characteristic as an example of 'the eternal hypocrisy in me', rather her mental shape-shifting had its source in her quite extraordinary ability to empathise. Her imaginative capacity to subsume her own identity, while taking on the qualities of those around her - her negative capability, if you like - was so powerful that she said she often felt like her inner visions were far more real than the outside world. She aligned herself with the mad and the miserable, 'the insane man who feels himself one with all mankind, all life, because in losing his mind, he has lost his ego, his self-ness', yet realised that such a state inspired her fiction. Her ambition, she said, was to write about the underlying sickness of this 'daedal planet' and capture the essence of the human condition: eternal disappointment.
External relationships seem to have been emptied by a massive withdrawal of the real libidinal self. Effective mental activity has disappeared into a hidden inner world; the patient's conscious ego is emptied of vital feeling and action, and seems to have become unreal. You may catch glimpses of intense activity going on in the inner world through dreams and fantasies, but the patient's conscious ego merely reports these as if it were a neutral observer not personally involved in the inner drama of which it is a detached spectator. The attitude to the outer world is the same: non-involvement and observation at a distance without any feeling, like that of a press reporter describing a social gathering of which he is not a part, in which he has no personal interest, and by which he is bored. Such activity as is carried on may appear to be mechanical. When a schizoid state supervenes, the conscious ego appears to be in a state of suspended animation in between two worlds, internal and external, and having no real relationships with either of them. It has decreed an emotional and impulsive standstill, on the basis of keeping out of effective range and being unmoved.
From birth to death and further onAs we were born and introduced into this world,We had a gift hard to express by wordAnd somewhere in our continuous road,It kind of lost it sense and turned.There was that time we sure remember,When everything was now and 'till foreverChildren with no worries and no regrets,The only goal was making a few friends.But later on everything has changed,By minds that had it all arrangedTo bring the people into stress,Into creating their own mess.We have been slaved by our own mind,Turned into something out of our kindSlowly faded away from the present time,Forced to believe in lies, in fights and crime.They made it clearly a fight of the ego,A never ending war that won't just goThey made it a competitive game,To seek selfish materialistic fame.They turned us one against eachother,Man against man, brother against brotherDividing us by religion and skin color,Making us fight to death over a dollar.Making us lose ourselves in sadly thoughts,Wasting our days by living in the pastDepressed and haunted by the memories,And yet still hoping to fly in our dreams.Some of us tried learning how to dance,Step after step, giving our soul a new chanceSome of us left our ego vanish into sounds,Thus being aware of our natural bounce.Some tried expressing in their rhymes,The voice of a generation which never diesThey reached eternity through poetryLeaving the teachings that shall fulfill the prophecyOthers have found their way through spirituality,Becoming conscious of the human dualitySeeking the spiritual enlightenment,Of escaping an ego-oriented fightingScience, philosophy, religion,Try to explain the human origin.Maybe changes are yet to come,And it shall be better for someDeath's for the spirit not an end,But a relieving of the embodimentSo I believe that furthermore,We'll understand the power of our soulBut leaving behind all we know,And all that we might not yet knowIt all resumes to that certain truth,That we all seek to once conclude.
Of course, if one does not fully trust the promise of God's Kingdom, he will have a hard time taking risks and making sacrifices in this life. A gospel centered around the temporal self - fleeting happiness, earthly success, vain prosperity, things such as these - is the primary ambition of the half-hearted Christian; the one who somewhat believes he is subject to an eternal death; the one who just might believe in men before God, who morbidly fears seeming less than anyone else. The man of this school feels deeply that he has but one life to live, that this must be his only chance, and therefore must have it all in his favor - from glory to comfort to riches - and have it right this instant. He is but hinting that he is overcome because he insists always that he must overcome, that his judgment comes now and by the persons around him. The point is, however, in this sense, that by grace the Christian is indeed free, but only for as long as he wants to be free - the practicality of true freedom: that of God which offers not so much freedom to be like the world as it does freedom from the pressures of having to be like the world. For Divine Law is based solely on love and freedom; whereas secular law, pressure and imitation.
Liberate yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part; for it is not given to every one to break through all limits,or,more expressively, not to every one is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently,do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others...He who overturns one of his limits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of their limits remains their affair.
Humility is by far the most spiritual virtue of the lot. The only way by which one may cease obsessing over himself is to wholly step outside his flesh. But who could do this by himself? And who would really want to under his natural pretense? And even if somehow he could and he succeeded, would not it be artificial? Would not he seem far too aware of his own talents of achieving humility for it to be such? Alternatively, he would need a distraction, something else to love; it is not that the Humbleman thinks poorly of himself, nor highly for that matter, but rather he does not think of himself at all - and this is because he is too busy loving something or someone else to do it. For the humility of this kind 'rears its head' as the most love-driven and free, spiritual of virtues; whereas its opposite, pride, the most self-imprisoning human vice.
When man penetrates the mysteries of Nature, the "facts of Nature" become transparent symbols, revealing the "divine energies" and the "angelic" state which fallen man has lost, and which he may recover only for a moment, as when he is enraptured by the beauty of music or of a lovely face. At such moments man forgets his limited self, his individualistic dream, and participates in the cosmic dream, thus becoming freed from the prison of his own carnal soul.
Embrace contradictions for they make upall of life:You will eternally be looking for yourself andseeking ways to lose yourself.
First, create your ego. Then destroy it. This is all of life.
The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo – even when it's not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future.
The ego might resist change until a person’s level of discomfort becomes unbearable. A person can employ logic to overcome the ego’s defense mechanism and intentionally integrate needed revisions in a person’s obsolete or ineffective beliefs and behavior patterns. The subtle sense that something is amiss in a person’s life can lead to a gradual or quick alteration in a person’s conscious thoughts and outlook on life. Resisting change can prolong unhappiness whereas implementing change can establish internal harmony and instate joy in a person’s life.
Yesterday i was clever so i took the glory for me. Today HE makes me wise so i give the glory to HIM.
Big things in the glory of the world mean nothing. Small things in glory of God mean everything. Truly..., size doesn't matter in this world or in the world to come.
Sweet wine makes drunk, sour wine (insult) is "tetelestai". Life is not about what we have done and become, but how God to be fully glorified.
Whatever we have in the glory of man is "away". Those are just not enough before we go "home" to the glory of God.
Yesterday I was clever, so I took the glory for me. Today He makes me wise, so I give the glory to Thee
If we glorify God (not self) in everything we do then everything on earth will glorify God.
If I see God as nothing more than a caricature of history or imagination I cannot do anything less than make myself my own ‘god’. And once I realize that in doing so my rendition of being a ‘god’ is embarrassingly inferior to the very caricature I am mimicking, I quickly come to realize that maybe the only thing that can be ‘god’ is a God. And if that is the case, I suddenly find myself hounded by the stunning reality that God is not a caricature.
...the great experiences which form him, arise out of the discontinuity and disharmony between man and the world. Particularly in great personalities, we see how much of their beauty and excellence is really due to trials suffered earlier at the hands of the world. Beauty--as many have recognized--is pain suffered and transformed. Because the animal is adapted to its environment, it is denied the possibility of developing inward maturity and greatness. As an individual creature it cannot grow beyond the limits of its kind; and again, at death, it falls back with its capacities into the group Ego, from which its soul was something like an offshoot or a patrol sent out on reconnaissance.
Dharma (function or properties) of the mind, dharma of the intellect, dharma of the chit, dharma of the ego – when all these dharma and the dharma of the Self (Soul) come into their own dharma (functions); that is known as Gnan (Knowledge of Self). And if we (self) insist upon any one’s dharma; it becomes ignorance (agnan).
All spiritual techniques seek to awaken fallen man from the dream in which he lives : he dreams continuously of individual state of being, and of the many forms through which the external world presents itself to him; he builds for himself a paradise of illusions, so as to forget the absence of God. To recover the vision of the spiritual world, the soul of man must "die" to this dream, this ceaseless flow of images which fallen man regards as normal, everyday state of his consciousness.
Egoism of the ignorant stage (ignorance of the true self) is considered live egoism. It becomes lifeless after attaining knowledge of the Self. If one takes the side of this lifeless egoism that, “I am not like that”- it will become alive again. Lifeless egoism is to be disposed off; it is not to be protected.
The ego dies and the ego lives, but people say that ‘I died’. That which takes birth and dies is the ego, and the Soul is in the same place (is always intact). Even Pudgal (the atoms that were charged; which are being discharged in the form of mind, body, speech) is in the same place. The issue is only of the ego in the middle.
So whenever that brittle voice of dissatisfaction emerges within me, I can say "Ah, my ego! There you are, old friend!" It's the same thing when I'm being criticized and I notice myself reaching with outrage, heartache, or defensiveness. It's just my ego, flaring up and testing its power. In such circumstances, I have learned to watch my heated emotions carefully, but I try not to take them too seriously, because I know that it's merely my ego that has been wounded--never my soul It is merely my ego that wants revenge, or to win the biggest prize. It is merely my ego that wants to start a Twitter war against a hater, or to sulk at an insult or to quit in righteous indignation because I didn't get the outcome I wanted. "At such times, I can always steady my life one more by returning to my soul. I ask it, "And what is it that you want, dear one?""The answer is always the same: "More wonder, please.""As long as I'm still moving in that direction---toward wonder--then I know I will always be fine in my soul, which is where it counts. And since creativity is still the most effective way for me to access wonder, I choose it.
Time and time again does the pride of man influence his very own fall. While denying it, one gradually starts to believe that he is the authority, or that he possesses great moral dominion over others, yet it is spiritually unwarranted. By that point he loses steam; in result, he falsely begins trying to prove that unwarranted dominion by seizing the role of a condemner.
Such excessive preoccupation with his faults is not a truly spiritual activity but, on the contrary, a highly egoistic one.The recognition of his own faults should make a man humbler, when it is beneficial, not prouder, which the thought that he ought to have been above these faults makes him.
Conflict forces us to be fully present because it shatters our ego – stripping away all hope of escape or sugar coating. It removes everything that is nonessential to our authentic being; it removes all superficial layers. Conflict is painful because it wakes us up out of our created illusions. And if we lean into it, conflict can be the catalyst to our enlightenment.
Isn’t it funny how we make rational excuses for being out of alignment? We say, “Well, this ____ and that ____ happened, so it makes perfect sense for me to be feeling like this ____ and wanting to do this ____.” Yet, to this day, I have never met a happy person who adheres to those excuses. In fact, each time I – or anyone else – decide to give in to “rational excuses” that justify feeling bad – it’s interesting that only further suffering is the result. There is never a good enough reason for us to be out of alignment with peace. Sure, we can go there and make choices that dim our lights… and that is fine; there certainly is purpose for it and the contrast gives us lessons to learn… yet if we’re aware of what we are doing and we’re ready to let go of the suffering – then why go there at all? It’s like beating a dead horse. Been there, done that… so why do we keep repeating it? Pain is going to happen; it’s inevitable in this human experience, yet it is often so brief. When we make those excuses, what happens is: we pick up that pain and begin to carry it with us into the next day… and the next day… into next week… maybe next month… and some of us even carry it for years or to our graves! Forgive, let it go! It is NOT worth it! It is NEVER worth it. There is never a good enough reason for us to pick up that pain and carry it with us. There is never a good enough reason for us to be out of alignment with peace. Unforgiveness hurts you; it hurts others, so why even go there? Why even promote pain? Why say painful things to yourself or others? Why think pain? Just let it go! Whenever I look back on painful things or feel pain today, I know it is my EGO that drives me to “go there.” The EGO likes to have the last word, it likes to feel superior, it likes to make others feel less than in hopes that it will make itself (me) feel better about my insecurities. Maybe if I hurt them enough, they will feel the pain I felt over what they did to me. It’s only fair! It’s never my fault; it’s always someone else’s. There is a twisted sense of pleasure I get from feeling this way, and my EGO eats it right up. YET! With awareness that continues to grow and expand each day, I choose to not feed my pain (EGO) or even go there. I still feel it at times, of course, so I simply acknowledge it and then release it. I HAVE power and choice over my speech and actions. I do not need to ever “go there” again. It’s my choice; it’s your choice. So it’s about damn time we start realizing this. We are not victims of our impulses or emotions; we have the power to control them, and so it’s time to stop acting like we don’t. It’s time to relinquish the excuses.
Master Teachers who genuinely embody an enlightened state of being never stop “doing the work”. The ego is what assumes it knows enough, causing cessation of these daily practices, and therefore, Masters without attachment to ego are forever students of the Universe. The Masters attain an illuminated state of “Being” as the outcome, yet it is the consistent “doing” that promotes and maintains their enlightenment.
Angels are good not simply because they see bad as bad, but also because they see bad as corny.
Never take advice about never taking advice. That is an old vice of men - to dish it out without being able to take it - the blind leading the blind into more blindness.
Question: You seem to advise me to be self-centered to the point ofegoism. Must I not yield even to my interest in other people?Maharaj: Your interest in others is egoistic, self-concerned, self-oriented. You are not interested in others as persons, but onlyas far as they enrich, or enoble your own image of yourself.And the ultimate in selfishness is to care only for the protection,preservation and multiplication of one's own body. By body Imean all that is related to your name and shape--- your family,tribe, country, race, etc. To be attached to one's name andshape is selfishness. A man who knows that he is neither bodynor mind cannot be selfish, for he has nothing to be selfish for.Or, you may say, he is equally 'selfish' on behalf of everybodyhe meets; everybody's welfare is his own. The feeling 'I am theworld, the world is myself' becomes quite natural; once it is es-tablished, there is just no way of being selfish. To be selfishmeans to covet, to acquire, accumulate on behalf of the partagainst the whole. I Am ThatNisargadatta Maharaj
[Pascal] was the first and perhaps is still the most effective voice to be raised in warning of the consequences of the enthronement of the human ego in contradistinction to the cross, symbolizing the ego's immolation. How beautiful it all seemed at the time of the Enlightenment, that man triumphant would bring to pass that earthly paradise whose groves of academe would ensure the realization forever of peace, plenty, and beatitude in practice. But what a nightmare of wars, famines, and folly was to result therefrom.
But the Egotist is stuck somewhere between his hidden triad of pride, fear, and insecurity; he is forever fighting to prove himself, instigating battles the Humbleman has unwittingly conquered, already sealed some time ago. Yes, the day he finally accepts face-to-face such an irony as humility - the irony that humility is indeed the mother of giants, that great men, having life so large, as needed, can afford to appear small - the world will then know peace.
Speaking a painful truth should be done only in love - like wielding a sword with no hilt - it should pain oneself in direct proportion to the amount of force exerted.
Cultural and religious traditions that forbid cross-cultural unions prevent peace on earth. Instead of rejoicing that our sons and daughters are heart-driven and love other humans outside of their familiar religious, social or cultural domains, we punish and insult them. This is wrong. Honor killings are not honorable by God. They are driven by ignorance and ego and nothing more. The Creator favors the man who loves over the man who hates. If you think God will punish you or your child for allowing them to marry outside of your tribe or faith, then you do not know God. Love is his religion and the light of love sees no walls. Anybody who unconditionally loves another human being for the goodness of their heart and nothing more is already on the right side of God.
How odd that we spend so much time treating the darkness, and so little time seeking the light. The ego loves to glorify itself by self-analysis, yet we do not get rid of darkness by hitting it with a baseball bat. We only get rid of darkness by turning on the light.
Why does it seem more difficult to heal a wounded ego than a wounded heart?Is it because the heart accepts the cold hard reality of rejection and tries to move on, while the ego has no capacity to act likewise?And while the heart weeps, the ego desires revenge: an eye for an eye, no matter what it takes?
All men and women on earth were created with two eyes. The left eye represents the moon (mind/ego) and the right eye represents the sun (heart/conscience). Both eyes represent the duality of human nature. The sun represents the light in the heart of man, and the moon represents the darkness in the mind of man. When you read in ancient and religious scriptures that the enemy of humanity will surface with only one eye, this simply means that this being will only see through his left eye and neglect the right. And without the light of the right eye, this being will be very dark and evil.
The battle of good versus evil is the oldest and most re-occurring story tale in the book of life. It never ends because no matter how you cut off the tail of evil, it will always grow back again and again. This old story will always continue into infinity until we closely examine our past errors to prevent giving the snake a new head in the future. You can destroy a demon, but a new one will always come back later in time. You can bring down a corrupt leader, but another one will rise up again with time. As long as the ego overcomes the heart of a man, evil will always exist, and the enemies of God will continue to multiply and thrive. If a tree is bearing bad fruit, you do not destroy the tree by cutting off its branches or eliminating its fruit, but by destroying its roots. I want you to look at the world as this poisoned tree. Even if we eliminate our enemies today, we will create new ones tomorrow. The forumla to cut off the head of the snake once and fall is very simple, and this basic solution is written in all your holy books — 'LOVE IS THE ANSWER'. The strongest counterspell to destroy all forces of black magic is love. Pure unconditional love. However, to be able to emit the right frequency of love, one must first succeed in their own personal battle of good versus evil: heart (conscience) vs. mind (ego). Once you learn how to use your heart to embrace all living things as you do your own reflection, and use your heart to detect truths and dictate your actions, your heart will not be fully activated to love all of mankind the right way. Where there is love, there will be truth and light. Take away the love or truth, and we will forever remain in the dark. Truth, light and love must all co-exist in perfect harmony to overcome evil on earth. And they cannot just be secluded to one part of the world, but reign as divine royalty across the entire globe.
Love is the true state of the human heart. When we love, we unguard our hearts. We open ourselves up to the world with- out any restraint. When passion flows, desires stir, our earthy senses become dull, and our ethereal self becomes illumined. At this stage, we are naked, totally naked, with little or no covering of ego.
I have worn my heart on my sleeve because it is too painful to carry it inside my chest.When I carry it on my sleeve, it has the freedom to exist, to beat in rhythm with the Universe.I feel like I'm more alive and yes, there are those who out of curiosity will say or do things that can cause its delicate existence to feel pain and sorrow.I would rather deal with that, than to put it back in its little cage where it knows nothing else but the rhythm of my body and my Ego.My heart was never meant to be part of my Ego.My heart was meant to experience the Soul.
All people are, at heart, egocentric. We exist at the center of our own little universes. We believe that we are living out our lives as best we can, and that we have our own sphere of influence which exists of both friends and enemies. They in turn have their own friends and enemies with whom they interact. That is a given. But we, each of us, tend to put ourselves ahead of others because we believe that we are significant. We must attend to our own needs, desires, wants, and aspirations, because each of us is our own greatest priority. No one else cares for us as much as we do, no one else can exist in our skin. We think we're important. It is where our sense of self-worth comes up, where our egos reside, where "we" are. And we believe that each of our lives means something.
Nostalgia has a way of blocking the reality of the past.
Over and over we lose this sense of feeling we are wholly in our skins by means already named as well as through extended duress. Those who toil too long without respite are also at risk. The soulskin vanishes when we are not paying attention to what we are really doing and particularly the cost to us.""We lose the soulskin by becoming too involved with ego, by being too exacting, perfectionistic, or unnecessarily martyred, or driven by a blind ambition, or by being dissatisfied - about self, family, community, culture, world - and not saying or doing anything about it, or by pretending we are an ending source for others, or by not doing all we can to help ourselves. Oh, there are as many ways to lose the soul skin as there are women in the world.""The only way to hold on to this sensual soulskin is to retain an exquisitely pristine consciousness about its value and uses.
Love without humility results in the inclination to act as everyone's parent, humility without love results in the need to be everyone's child, and love with humility results in the desire to be a friend.
More often than not, people who are obsessed with their desires and feelings are generally unhappier in life vs. people that refocus their attention on service to others or a righteous cause. Have you ever heard someone say their life sucked because they fed the homeless? Made their children laugh? Or, bought a toy for a needy child at Christmas time?
Our “selves”, our “being”, our “ego”, our “soul”, our individuality, our personality, … is only our mind continuously adapting to its environment to insure survival and well-being, working with whatever inherited predispositions (formed by previous generations of minds adapting to their environment) it has to work with.If we could only make our beautiful mind come in contact with the facts, ALL the facts… , we could trust it with the rest, ALL the rest.Our beautiful mind will always do the right thing.Always.The thing is to find the facts. ALL the facts. Not one less.
By assembling the mosaic image of our own mosaic of “truth” (our own version of the “truth”) from our accumulated knowledge and through comparisons with those of others, we shall not be free and do not get closer to Truth. We have only created a beautiful (or not so beautiful) spiritual mask, and behind it the Ego grins at us and the world created by itself.
I keep what I know about Sarah Lynn and Lawrence to myself. I also remind myself that even if Sarah Lynn does have a scary strict father, that doesn't release her from the responsibility of treating others with respect. Abuse of power is wrong, no matter the context, no matter the history.What is "power" anyway? Power is an ego trip. Power is a way to rise yourself up by lowering others, and I want nothing of it.
Power without compassion is like a giant that blocks the sunlight.
Power and influence: things that should be obtained not for means of greed, nor pride, nor ego, but rather to ensure that in the right moment, when your wisdom and benevolence are required to keep humanity strong and united, you can deliver and orchestrate others toward the greater good.
The Devil is a master of disguise and takes on many forms. He comes to conquer you, steal your joy, kill your spirit, and destroy your faith. When you are doing right, he attacks you from the left but know that God is all powerful and God is in you and that no weapon formed against you shall prosper.
In all honesty, I don’t envy you the possession of this power over memory, nor do I admire you. Because humans are usually completely unconcerned with the memories of other creatures. Human existence involves the willful destruction of the existential memories of other creatures and of your own memories as well. No life can survive without other lives, with the ecological memories of other living creatures have, memories of the environments in which the live. People don’t realize they need to rely on the memories of other organisms to survive. You think that flowers bloom in colorful profusion just to please your eyes. That a wild boar exists just to provide meat for your table. That a fish takes the bait just for you sake. That only you can mourn. That a stone falling into a gorge is of no significance. That a sambar deer, its head bent low to sip at a creek is not a revelation . . . When in fact the finest movement of any organism represents a change in an ecosystem.” The man with the compound eyes takes a deep sign and says: “But if you were any different you wouldn’t be human.
Your love is as stable as you are: It's not about how good a person makes you feel, but rather what good you can do for them.
You have two choices in life when it comes to truthful observations by others that anger you: You can be ashamed and cover it up by letting your pride take you in the extreme opposite direction, in order to make the point that they are wrong. Or, you can break down the walls of pride by accepting vulnerability as a strength, not a weakness. As you walk through your vulnerability, you will meet humility on the way to courage. From here, courage allows us to let go of shame and rise higher into the person we are meant to be, not the person that needs to be right. This is the road to confidence and self worth.
Nothing matures a Man like RESPONSIBILITIES,Nothing humbles him like MISSED OPPORTUNITIES,What makes him are his CHOICES,And nothing changes him like LOVE.Nothing defines a Man like his CHARACTER,Nothing teaches him like his EXPERIENCE,What drives him is his VISION,And nothing weakens him like BETRAYAL.Nothing scares a Man like losing his EGO,Nothing pursues him like his PASSION,What interests him is his GAME,And nothing intoxicates him like his DESIRES.But above all, NOTHING FAVOURS A MAN LIKE FINDING A GOOD WOMAN.
Expectations are nothing more than the rules we set, in order to maintain our ego and self esteem. What we seek from others is often that fulfillment of what we believe we require for happiness. However, many of us will raise the requirements so high that we can't even reach them or better yet, realize that we could find that expectation met by our own introspection and action.
Some churches, sects, cults or religious movements are basically collective egoic entities, as rigidly identified with their mental positions as the followers of any political ideology that is closed to any alternative interpretation of reality.
A lot of things are inherent in life -change, birth, death, aging, illness, accidents, calamities, and losses of all kinds- but these events don't have to be the cause of ongoing suffering. Yes, these events cause grief and sadness, but grief and sadness pass, like everything else, and are replaced with other experiences. The ego, however, clings to negative thoughts and feelings and, as a result, magnifies, intensifies, and sustains those emotions while the ego overlooks the subtle feelings of joy, gratitude, excitement, adventure, love, and peace that come from Essence. If we dwelt on these positive states as much as we generally dwell on our negative thoughts and painful emotions, our lives would be transformed.
Jesus was a man of love, of immense compassion. He loved this earth, the people, the threes, because that is the way to love God. God is life. Jesus is very life-affirmative. He says total yes to life. When you look into the eyes of each being that you meet, you meet God. Everybody is an incarnation of God - the threes, the flowers, the rocks, the animals, the people and the mountains. Love the people, love the threes, love the animals - and through the love you meet God. All are brothers here, because God is one. The threes, the flowers, the birds and the rocks are all your brothers, because they all come from the one source. if you are not reconciled with the world, you cannot pray to God. Prayer is only possible when you are in harmony with existence. The whole existence is your brother. The first step for prayer is to be reconciled with your brother. And your brother means all beings. Jesus is a celebration of being, a celebration of life. If you deny life, you deny God. If you say no to life, you say no to God, because God is life. To understand Jesus, you have to understand that life is God. If you say yes to life, you will feel a prayer arising in your heart, a yes arising in your being. The ego is a no to life, the ego is a separation from life. The inner being is a yes to life. The inner being is a deep yes and acceptance of life. Saying yes bridges you with the whole. It makes you a part of the whole. Saying yes will make you more and more spiritual. Jesus whole message is yes. The word "amen" means yes. You will never meet God, you will meet human beings, animals, stones and threes. You can love God through other human beings, through threes, through stones and through animals. And when you have learnt to love God through all his forms - then only love changes into prayer.
It is not a person or situation that affects your life; it is the meaning you give to that person or situation, which influences your emotions and actions. Your choice is to change the meaning you gave it or to change your response, in order to create the outcome you want.
If you love another person, you have to become a no-self, a nothing. When you love, you have to become a nobody. When you are a nobody, love happens. If you remain somebody, love never happens.One becomes afraid of love, because love opens the inner emptiness.Love is not an effort. If love is an effort, it is not love.It is the same case with the ultimate experience, it happens when you do not make an effort. Then you can simply float with the river to the Ocean.
If you stay open to the wisdom of your Muse, you may discover you’re a playwright, a sculptor, a kitchen-table comedian, a beacon of creative kindness, or a person who chooses grace over ego and contentment over greed. And in that choice you will create an world of joy within yourself, you’ll truly be an artist of being alive.
Society. I felt as though even I were beginning at last to acquire some vague notion of what it meant. It is a struggle between one individual to another, a then-and-there struggle, in which the immediate triumph is everything. ‘Human beings never submit to human beings.’ Even slaves practice their mean retaliations. Human beings cannot conceive of any means of survival except of a single then-and-there contest. They speak of duty to one’s country and such like things, but the object of their effort is invariably the individual, and, even once the individual’s needs have been met, again the individual comes in. The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is individuals.
I can imagine no greater catastrophe than if I were mistaken, and the theory were correct that what I consider secondary instincts or drives are actually primary instincts! Because in that case the emotional plague would rest upon the support of a natural law while its archenemies, truth and sociality, would be relying upon unfounded ethics. Until now both lies and truth have taken recourse to ethics. But only lies have profited because they were able to appear under the guise of truth. Under these circumstances, egoism, theft, petty selfishness, slander, etc., would be the natural rule. (26.july.1943)
The challenge of abating one with a genuine ego problem is to not try to put him down. Any and all antagonization, in his mind, is merely compensated for by his own descriptions: his feelings of persecution by the envious and his ideals of worth. Arguably, the genuine ego is more of a circumstantial defense mechanism rather than a steady arrogance in need of starvation.
Pride has quite a bit to do with hatred. In many a case in which one hates another, one subconsciously begins patterns of cherry-picking and selective hearing: he continues to look only for things about the other person which he can use to justify his hatred, things which will then make him feel less guilty about hating someone. In this regard, hatred is not so much an emotion as it is a decision.
From a social psychological standpoint, the selfie phenomenon seems to stem from two basic human motives. The first is to attract attention from other people. Because people’s positive social outcomes in life require that others know them, people are motivated to get and maintain social attention. By posting selfies, people can keep themselves in other people’s minds. In addition, like all photographs that are posted on line, selfies are used to convey a particular impression of oneself. Through the clothes one wears, one’s expression, staging of the physical setting, and the style of the photo, people can convey a particular public image of themselves, presumably one that they think will garner social rewards.
According to Hugh Thomas, author of 'A History of the World', the greatest medical advance in history has been garbage collection. The greatest psychological advance in history is just around the corner and will also have to do with cleaning up. Cleaning up lies and "coming out of the closet" is getting more attention these days. Some day we will look back on these years of suffocation in bullsh*t in the same way we look back on all the years people lived in, and died from, their garbage.
Emptiness and the not-“I” is the quality that arises when the therapist consciously moves out of his own way without hindering the therapeutic process through his own ideas, attitudes, expectations and concepts. He is present, available and responds with the truth in the moment.
Somebody becomes an enemy if you personalize the unconsciousness that is the ego. Non-reaction is not weakness but strength. Another word for non-reaction is forgiveness. To forgive is to overlook, or rather to look through. You look through the ego to the sanity that is in every human being as his or her essence.
We are all a little schizophrenic. Each of us has three different people living inside us every day—who you were, who you are and who you will become. The road to sanity is to recognize those identities, in order to know who you are today.
The consequence model, the logical one, the amoral one, the one which refuses any divine intervention, is a problem really for just the (hypothetical) logician. You see, towards God I would rather be grateful for Heaven (which I do not deserve) than angry about Hell (which I do deserve). By this the logician within must choose either atheism or theism, but he cannot possibly through good reason choose anti-theism. For his friend in this case is not at all mathematical law: the law in that 'this equation, this path will consequently direct me to a specific point'; over the alternative and the one he denies, 'God will send me wherever and do it strictly for his own sovereign amusement.' The consequence model, the former, seeks the absence of God, which orders he cannot save one from one's inevitable consequences; hence the angry anti-theist within, 'the logical one', the one who wants to be master of his own fate, can only contradict himself - I do not think it wise to be angry at math.
The clearest version of vision, backed by the purest grade of greed is a ripen file of failure.
Patience is the antidote to the restless poison of the Ego. Without it we all become ego-maniacal bulls in china shops, destroying our future happiness as we blindly rush in where angels fear to tread. In these out-of-control moments, we bulldoze through the best possible outcomes for our lives, only to return to the scene of the crime later to cry over spilt milk.
One who enjoys finding errors will then start creating errors to find.
Becoming aware of our inner man and woman means to discover the roots and creative potential of both the male and female aspect within ourselves. Becoming aware of the inner man and woman means to understand that they have different visions of life. It means to understand that they have different perspectives and views of life. The inner man and woman are our two wings of love and freedom. Through awareness, acceptance and understanding, we can allow our two wings to develop in a deep and natural harmony. In the world today, a one-sided development of the male side leads to destructivity. A one-sided development of the male side leads to ego, struggle, exhaustion and a separation from life. A one-sided development of the female side leads to passivity and dependence.
It is not many things that modern psychology agress upon, but all the different approaches of psychology agrees on one thing: that people in groups become more stupid. Individually people are more intelligent, because they have to take their own responsibility, but in a group they do not have to take the same responsibility. The two basic power strategies to try to manipulate and gain control over another person are: silencing and attacking. Silencing means to not listen to, to exclude or ignore and not respect a person. Attack can both mean to attack a person directly or to try to discredit a person through lies, to ridicule a person or by spreading malicious rumours. All organizations are more or less dysfunctional. In a dysfunctional group, the members of the group play three different roles: agressor, denier and victim. The agressor is the role that attack and ridicule people, the denier never knows what is going on, there is “no body at home”, and the victim is the resultat of these two roles. It is always easier to follow a group without awareness, than to follow your own heart, to trust your own intelligence, love, truth, silence and creativity.
I believe God himself will someday debate with and answer every objection arrogant men can come up with against him; I believe he will humble us and humor himself. Know-it-alls, pseudo-intellectuals, militant anti-theists, for Christ's sake, or rather their own sake, best beware of getting roasted by their own medicine. Ah! Our delusions of trying to argue against an omniscient Creator.
To be read. To be heard. To be seen. I want to be read, I want to be heard. I don't need to be seen. To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones. Words have a weight to them. How you choose to present them and to whom is a matter of style and choice.
If outer events bring him to a position where he can bear them no longer and force him to cry out to the higher power in helplessness for relief, or if inner feelings bring humiliation and recognition of his dependence on that power, this crushing of the ego may open the door to grace.
O, how easy it is to do religious things if other people are watching! Preaching, praying, attending church, reading the bible, acts of kindness and charity-they all take on a certain pleasantness of the ego if we know that others will find out about them and think well of us. It is a deadly addiction for esteem that we have.
God wants us to humbly and sincerely ask him things. How often do you enjoy people talking about you without taking the time to get to know you?
If we want to live perfectly happy lives...we must drive out selfish character tendencies such as pride, ego, vanity, jealousy, lusts, envy and worry. When we learn to live selflessly, putting others before ourselves, committing to what is noble, right and good; treating others with love and compassion...that's when true happiness is experienced. A genuine focus on selflessness cures all and creates an environment for true growth. It's the secret to every great relationship. We gain...when we give up self. Sacrificing one's selfish characteristics through diligent thought, meditation, prayer and action gives life to true love and abounding joy.~Jason Versey
Nobody can say anything about you. Whatsoever people say is about themselves. But you become very shaky, because you are still clinging to a false center. That false center depends on others, so you are always looking to what people are saying about you. And you are always following other people, you are always trying to satisfy them. You are always trying to be respectable, you are always trying to decorate your ego. This is suicidal. Rather than being disturbed by what others say, you should start looking inside yourself…Whenever you are self-conscious you are simply showing that you are not conscious of the self at all. You don’t know who you are. If you had known, then there would have been no problem— then you are not seeking opinions. Then you are not worried what others say about you— it is irrelevant!When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don’t know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.
Sermon of the MountsMatthew 5AND SEEING THE MULTITUDES, HE WENT UP INTO THE MOUNTAINS, AND WHEN HE WAS SET, HIS DISCIPLES CAME UNTO HIM. The multitudes, the masses, the crowd, is the lowest state of consciousness. It is a deep ignorance and sleep. If you want to relate and communicate with the masses, you have to come down to their level. That is why whenever you go into the masses, the crowd, you start to feel suffocated. This suffocation is physical and psychological, beacuse you relate to people, who functions from a very low state of consciousness. They pull you down and you become physically and psychologically tired and drained. That is why a need for meditation and aloneness arises. There is a practice in the life of Jesus that he noves into the crowds of people, but after a few months he goes to the mountains. He goes away from the crowd, to be with God. When you are alone, you are with God. To relate to the masses brings you down to their level of consciousness, but only in the presence of God, you can fly.With the crowd, you can not fly, you become crippled, and the masses will not tolerate if you do not live according to them, according to their level of consciousness.To be able to work with the masses, to be able to help them, you have to relate to them according to their level fo consciousness - and this is tiring and draining.Both Jesus and Buddha moved to the mounatins, to a lonely place, just to be themselves, and to be with God to regain their vitality to be able to come back to the masses where people are thristy. The montain is where Jesus do not need to think about the masses, where he can forget the mind and the body. In that moment of aloneness and meditation, one simply is. This is the inner being, the source of life. And when you are full again, you can share again. AND WHEN HE WAS SET, HIS DISCIPLES CAME UNTO HIM. To talk to the masses and to talk to disciples is two very different things. To talk to the crowd is to talk to people, who are indifferent. The crowd is resisting, defensive and argumentative. To talk to disciples means to talk to people, who have a basic thirst. It means that they are not defensive, they are open to listen to the heart of truth. AND HE OPENED HIS MOUTH, AND TAUGHT THEM, SAYING.Jesus escaped into the mountains from the crowd, but he did not escape from the disciples.He was available to the disciples.In his aloneness, Jesus is with God. And through Jesus, the disciples can feel God. The closer the disciple come to Jesus, the more they will see that Jesus is a silence and emptiness through which God can sing. And the more the disciple himself will become an emptiness, he will also be able to help other people. AND HE OPENED HIS MOUTH, AND TAUGHT THEM, SAYING. BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT, FOR THEIRS IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD. This is the most fundamental statement of Jesus.With this statement, Jesus has said everything. The "poor in spirit" is exactly what Buddha means with the term Shunyatta - "emptiness", no-self, nothingness.It is when the ego disappears, and you are a nobody, a silence. If you are a nobody, if you are nothing, you are God.
I do not belong to any spiritual group or tradition. I am just interested in exploring what it means to live with open eyes. People in spiritual organizations also tend to get caught in ideas of how it should be, and in the need of the ego to create hierachies of power, status, roles, ambition and obidience.Spiritual Masters teach on many different levels at the same time. Some people take what they can, and some take something deeper.
I have always had the capacity to go within myself and to discover the silence within, the inner meditative quality, the inner source of love and truth – the inner language of silence.Now I also notice that this silence is going deeper, and that I go beyond the ego and disappear into the silence.First this brought up fear, but now I am enjoying this meditation of disappering into the silence and to be nobody. I have started experimenting with this phenomenon to understand how to consciously go beyond the ego: yesterday when I took a cofee at a restaurant, I consciously turned my attention within and disappeared into the silence, which was like finding an inner source of bliss. In aloneness, I experiment with being consciously alone as a door to be egoless. In conscious aloneness, the ego can not function. In aloneness, your are not. When I am walking, I consciously experiment with being with Existence without having the mind constantly commenting. I try to just be wordlessly with the people and situations that I meet on my walk. When I can just be with Existence, it opens the door to be one with the Whole.
Gnani Purush’ (the enlightened one) is considered to be the owner of the whole universe. And yet, there is not the slightest egoism in Him. Where there is no authority, there is egoism and where there is authority, there is no egoism. This is the wonder of ‘Gnani Purush!’ ‘Gnani Purush’ is the manifest light.
To run the worldly life, Egoism is not required. To bind [karma] for the next life, Egoism is required. If one doesn’t want the bondage for the next life, then also it is possible to conduct the worldly life without egoism. Entire worldly life is in the ‘discharge’ form. So it will continue to ‘discharge’ by itself.
Experiential versus the God eye! Possessing ‘ego vision’, a person’s view through her/his physical eyes is quite versatile; able to discern wide and varied vistas over huge distances or scrutinizing the minutest of details.Ego’s very nature: capable of relatively expansive, detailed, and yet individualistic perspective is crucial. Separating itself out from the God Force, ego extracts infinite unique experiences, integral to humanity’s process of spiritualizing matter. Incarnating on the earth, achieving individualism is therefore critical for attainment of divinity.Individualism may cause momentary estrangement from the God Self. However, this person has forgotten that they are everything in the mirror, the ‘sliver’ and the ‘ball of light’,” continues Kuan Yin.During this complex passage Lena was inundated by infinite rapid-fire visuals: emanations from the God Mind.“Further and unfortunately, wrong assumptions are made about suffering. Some individuals even believe that it is required, that suffering brings one closer to salvation. Quite the contrary,” disputes Kuan Yin, “the God Force likes to play. Therefore, if all individuals could unite creating a real sense of community many problems could be healed.The God Force is separate and not separate, whole and not whole at the same time. Really, it is not ‘sliceable’, not reducible. Even when it is sliced into individual energies, it does not diminish the total God Force or the power of the individual.Each of you has the potential for the God Force potency. However, no individual can overcome the God Force. There is a misinterpretation, (by some) that Satan is as powerful as God. Limited energy cannot live on its own. Every experience must exist and yet they (the limiting forces) can never exist on their own. Limited energy, then, is the experience of the absence of the God Force. Therefore, there is no need to fear it.Those choosing such experiences have a need to understand how it feels to believe evil powers exist. Again, I say those who pursue this route are taking it too personally. They believe the story they’ve made up about themselves.It is similar to a person going into an ice cream store and only choosing one flavor from many. Preoccupied with tasting that flavor for a very long time, they are probably quite sick and tired of it. Still, they don’t want to believe there are any other flavors available. The ‘agreement’, then, is to continue to believe in that particular flavor. Here’s where reincarnation and its opportunity for experiencing a vast array of perspectives, “agreements”, enters in. Another life offers another opportunity, a chance to ‘switch flavors’ so to speak.Taking oneself too personally, however, can cause a soul to get caught up, stuck in redundancy: in a particular (and perhaps unfortunate) flavor. In such instances, the individual is forgetting one has the ability to choose his or her flavors, lives,” contends Kuan Yin.
People that hold onto hate for so long do so because they want to avoid dealing with their pain. They falsely believe if they forgive they are letting their enemy believe they are a doormat. What they don’t understand is hatred can’t be isolated or turned off. It manifests in their health, choices and belief systems. Their values and religious beliefs make adjustments to justify their negative emotions. Not unlike malware infesting a hard drive, their spirit slowly becomes corrupted and they make choices that don’t make logical sense to others. Hatred left unaddressed will crash a person’s spirit. The only thing he or she can do is to reboot, by fixing him or herself, not others. This might require installing a firewall of boundaries or parental controls on their emotions. Regardless of the approach, we are all connected on this "network of life" and each of us is responsible for cleaning up our spiritual registry.
There is, inside all our heads, the ego’s rabid attack dog. It is purely vicious toward others and toward ourselves as well. Learning to control that dog, and ultimately to end its life, is the process and purpose of enlightened relationships.
The real power of effective leadership is maximizing other people’s potential which inevitably demands also ensuring that they get the credit. When our ego won’t let us build another person up, when everything has to build us up, then the effectiveness of the organization reverts to depending instead on how good we are in the technical aspects of what we do. And we have stopped leading and inspiring others to great heights.
When you lose your ego, you win. It really is that simple.
Chasing a man is not winning. The only thing you win is the loss of your dignity. Confidence is knowing your value, instead of expecting a man’s love to provide you with value.
God doesn’t give us pain to make us strong. He gives us strength to look inside ourselves and realize we are not innocent victims. When you learn humility, you are no longer a victim because a humble man is not self-absorbed. He seeks to understand why people are hurting him and takes responsibility for his part in their grief. Humility doesn’t dwell with anger or pride, and neither does God.
Rosy ferried the drinks back to the table, slid the Guinness his way. “You said you have a show. Is it a comedy?”“No, but you will laugh, I hope, after hearing my qualifications.” His eyes glittered. “I do magic, with a twist. The twist is, my clothes are the first thing to disappear.”Rosy gaped.“Yes. I do magic… naked. I not only have a big ego.” Marek wiggled his middle finger. “I have a big wand.
When you know someone close to you who are quiet or smaller or missing, seek them out, they may need to be found again. It is most beautiful to turn off our ego and feel true empathy for others. Compassion, sympathy, kindness, empathy, selflessness, etc. are the biggest signs of a person with a good soul and a big heart!
If it were true love, he would never make you sacrifice your dignity to be with him. He would respect you and treat you as if you were sacred to his heart. If he loved you as dearly as he professes to love Christ, then he would never let anyone that loved him suffer or lower their self worth to be with him. True love is compassion, respect and honorable acts that prove love.
Despite our instinct to polarize ourselves in the name of survival, an indescribable connection - call it love or compassion - pervades and dissolves our apparent separation. This oneness transcends physical and emotional relationships; it's a deep connection that surfaces only when the ego-laden barriers are lifted.
Your body is made of two things: your will to do, your ego, and the physical form you have received from the prakriti, the nature. If the will to do is present within you, then the nature will go on providing you with an appropriate body. This is how you have been born again and again. Sometimes you were an animal, sometimes a bird, a tree some other time, and sometimes a man. Whatsoever you wished to achieve, it has happened. Your desire to achieve becomes the actuality; thoughts become real things. So beware when you desire, because all desires are fulfilled – sooner or later.If you are of the habit of watching the birds fly in the sky and wonder, ”How free the birds are, I wish I were a bird.” it will not be long before you become a bird. You see dogs mating, and if that moment a thought arises in you, ”What freedom! What happiness!” – soon you will become a dog. Whatever desire you keep within you, it becomes a seed.
In the Blue Room, Cora Cash was trying to concentrate on her book. Cora found most novels hard to sympathise with -- all those plain governesses -- but this one had much to recommend it. The heroine was 'handsome, clever, and rich', rather like Cora herself. Cora knew she was handsome -- wasn't she always referred to in the papers as 'the divine Miss Cash'? She was clever -- she could speak three languages and could handle calculus. And as to rich, well, she was undoubtedly that. Emma Woodhouse was not rich in the way that she, Cora Cash, was rich. Emma Woodhouse did not lie on a lit à la polonaise once owned by Madame du Barry in a room which was, but for the lingering smell of paint, an exact replica of Marie Antoinette's bedchamber at le petit Trianon. Emma Woodhouse went to dances at the Assembly Rooms, not fancy dress spectaculars in specially built ballrooms. But Emma Woodhouse was motherless which meant, thought Cora, that she was handsome, clever, rich and free.
It is not your beauty, success or money that should define you; neither should your church calling, your charitable contributions or talents. Humility is the cornerstone of character, by which God judges our truth worth, and wisdom is the door he opens when we use it.
The memory of having sat at someone’s feet will later make you want to trample him underfoot. I’m trying to fend off your admiration for me, you see, in order to save myself from your future contempt. I prefer to put up with my present state of loneliness rather than suffer more loneliness later. We who are born into this age of freedom and independence and the self must undergo this loneliness. It’s the price we pay for these times of ours.
We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that "I myself" is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body—a center which "confronts" an "external" world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange. Everyday figures of speech reflect this illusion. "I came into this world." "You must face reality." "The conquest of nature." This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated "egos" inside bags of skin.
The act of writing is a contemplative vision quest, a somber expedition of discovery that requires the writer to subordinate their ego in order to travel in soulful solitude towards a desirable personal haven of rejuvenating enlightenment. Writing for personal growth entails unconditionally surrendering oneself to the struggle of tearing their sense of self apart. It demands the solemn willpower to dissect and analyze the fissures of a self-absorbent soul one layer at a time.
Ego is this this higher conscious concept that we have of ourselves and we feel that we must live by it with a closed mind. We can be Self Aware of this concept or purely just blinded. I think the answer to this problem is being Self Aware and changing our current perception for the better.
I thought myself sufficiently shrewd to make whatever decisions I wanted to make, and then to be able to sufficiently steer those decisions away from the rather dark and nasty places they would naturally take me. And I stand oddly perplexed that suddenly everything around me is dark and nasty.
The Self says ‘I AM’–as in the very grand sayings of Christ, especially in the Gospel of John, in which he says in the state of onenenss with Yahweh (which in Hebrew means ‘I AM’), I AM is the way and the truth and the life–but the ego says ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that,’ thus attaching itself only to a small portion of the Vastness. (62)
We must realize that we are all, like Dr. Faust, ready to accept the devil's inducements. The devil is in each one of us in the form of an ego that promises the fulfillment of desire on condition that we become subservient to its striving to dominate. The domination of the personality by the ego is a diabolical perversion of the nature of man. The ego was never intended to be the master of the body, but its loyal and obedient servant. The body, as opposed to the ego, desires pleasure, not power. Bodily pleasure is the source from which all our good feelings and good thinking stems. If the bodily pleasure of an individual is destroyed, he becomes an angry, frustrated, and hateful person. His thinking becomes distorted, and his creative potential is lost. He develops self-destructive attitudes.
Hypocrisy—in other words, the practice of lying about lying—shields us from seeing ourselves as we are: a collocation of fragments that fit together as a biological unit but not as anything else, not as that ghost which has been called a self, a phantasm whose ecotoplasmic unreality we can never see through. By staying true to the lie of the self, the ego, we can hold onto the illusion that we will be who we are all our lives and not see our selves die a thousand times before our death. While some have dedicated themselves to getting to the bottom of how these parts create the illusion of a whole, this is not how pyramids are built. To get a pyramid off the ground takes a lot of ego—the base material of those stacks of stones that tourists visit while on vacation. Of course, a pyramid is actually a polyhedron, that is, a mathematical conception which pyramids in the physical world resemble . . . at least from a distance. The nearer one gets to a pyramid, the more it reveals itself to be what it is: a roughly pyramidal conglomeration of bricks, a composition of fragments that is not what it seems to be. This is also how it works with humans. The world around us encourages the build up of our egos—those pyramids of self-esteem—as if we needed such encouragement. Although everyone is affected by this pyramid scheme, some participate in it more than others: they are observably more full of themselves and tend to their egos as they would exotic plants in a hothouse. It helps if they can wear down the self-esteem of others, or simply witness this erosion. As the American novelist and essayist Gore Vidal said famously and often: “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.” None of this could work without the distance we put between what we are and what we think we are. Then we may appear to exist apart from our constituent elements. Self-esteem would evaporate without a self to esteem. As with pyramids, it is only at a distance that this illusion can be pulled off. Hypocrisy is that distance.
But who is this self that is to be renounced and to have no benefit? It seems that *you* yourself are supposed to be it. And for whose benefit is unselfish self-renunciation recommended to you? Again, for *your* benefit and behoof, only through that unselfishness you are procuring your "true benefit." You are to benefit *yourself*, and yet you are not to seek *your* benefit
By identifying with a particular name that belongs to a particular body and mind, the self begins the process of creating a separate identity. Add in a complex jumble of ideas, beliefs, and opinions, along with some selective and often painful memories with which to create a past to identify with, as well as the raw emotional energy to hold it all together, and before you know it, you've got a very convincing - though divided - self.
What you usually refer to when you say “I” is not who you are. By a monstrous act of reductionism, the infinite depth of who you are is confused with a sound produced by the vocal cords or the thought of “I” in your mind and whatever the “I” has identified with.
For I have nothing to lean on, nowhere to call my home and there is nowhere I will go for Christmas to rest my head and touch familiar walls. I have no degree to show on paper or employment to take care of my health or the reassurance that I can pay my rent. And I have no right to complain because this is the road I choose and I built it myself, not really knowing where I wanted it to lead, but I have hope in all things ahead and behind and I am learning to let myself go. Forget my own ego and believe that what I am doing is grander than my very own self.
The ego is as you think of yourself. You in relation to all the commitments of your life, as you understand them. The self is the whole range of possibilities that you've never even thought of. And you're stuck with you're past when you're stuck with the ego. Because if all you know about yourself is what you found out about yourself, well, that already happened. The self is a whole field of potentialities to come through.
I am not my opinion of myself, I am not anything I can describe to me. I am only a part of a large system that cannot describe itself fully; therefore, I relax and I am in the point source of consciousness, of delight, of mobility, in the inner spaces. My tasks do not include describing me nor having an opinion about the system in which I live, biological or social or dyadic. I hereby drop that "responsibility".I am much more than I can conceive or judge me to be. Any negative or positive opinions I have of me are false fronts, headlines, limited and unnecessary programmes written on a thin paper blowing about and floating around in the vastness of inner spaces.
Ego, Identity and Self - the 3 concepts of one's creation that defines them entirely. Have an Ego, for without one, there is nothing but self-doubt. Have an Identity, for without one, there is nothing but an empty shell. Understand your 'Self,' for if you don't, then who or what are you?
Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life’s secrets. It’s the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divided, dualistic, cramped view of things. ‘We are too ego-centered,’ Suzuki tells Cage.’ The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away.
In conscious life, we achieve some sense of ourselves as reasonably unified, coherent selves, and without this action would be impossible. But all this is merely at the ‘imaginary’ level of the ego, which is no more than the tip of the iceberg of the human subject known to psychoanalysis. The ego is function or effect of a subject which is always dispersed, never identical with itself, strung out along the chains of the discourses which constitute it. There is a radical split between these two levels of being — a gap most dramatically exemplified by the act of referring to myself in a sentence. When I say ‘Tomorrow I will mow the lawn,’ the ‘I’ which I pronounce is an immediately intelligible, fairly stable point of reference which belies the murky depths of the ‘I’ which does the pronouncing. The former ‘I’ is known to linguistic theory as the ‘subject of the enunciation’, the topic designated by my sentence; the latter ‘I’, the one who speaks the sentence, is the ‘subject of the enunciating’, the subject of the actual act of speaking. In the process of speaking and writing, these two ‘I’s’ seem to achieve a rough sort of unity; but this unity is of an imaginary kind. The ‘subject of the enunciating’, the actual speaking, writing human person, can never represent himself or herself fully in what is said: there is no sign which will, so to speak, sum up my entire being. I can only designate myself in language by a convenient pronoun. The pronoun ‘I’ stands in for the ever-elusive subject, which will always slip through the nets of any particular piece of language; and this is equivalent to saying that I cannot ‘mean’ and ‘be’ simultaneously. To make this point, Lacan boldly rewrites Descartes’s ‘I think, therefore I am’ as: ‘I am not where I think, and I think where I am not.
If you're working out in front of a mirror and watching your muscles grow, your ego has reached a point where it is now eating itself. That's why I believe there should be a psychiatrist at every health club, so that when they see you doing this, they will take you away for a little chat.
A person experiments in life and reflects upon those events in order to discover how to lead a meaningful life. We conduct a quest searching for the source our essential being. What we seek is inside us waiting for us to discover. Until we realize the vital inner source that provides direction for our life, all our efforts are in vain. The ego with its craving and fearful protection strategies is what prevents us from perceiving the transparency of the world in which we belong. When we cease clinging to the past and no longer daydream of the future and unreservedly accept whatever is occurring while sacrificing ourselves in service of other people our sense of self vanishes and we exist only as conscious and nonjudgmental witnesses of reality.
If the ego is not regularly and repeatedly dissolved in the unbounded hyperspace of the Transcendent Other, there will always be slow drift away from the sense of self as part of nature’s larger whole. The ultimate consequence of this drift is the fatal ennui that now permeates Western Civilization.
Often in the morning he drove a long hour or more to the markets in the city, there to behold what would determine the day’s special. With the crates of fresh selesctions snuggled into his station wagon, his thoughts on the ride back confronted the culinary equivalent of the writer’s blank page. Sometimes his head swirled with exciting ideas; other mornings he was in a panic upon returning with the same old eggplant and squash and zucchini and nothing but the dullness of the word ratatouille standing by to mock him.
Often in the morning he drove a long hour or more to the markets in the city, there to behold what would determine the day’s special. With the crates of fresh selections snuggled into his station wagon, his thoughts on the ride back confronted the culinary equivalent of the writer’s blank page. Sometimes his head swirled with exciting ideas; other mornings he was in a panic upon returning with the same old eggplant and squash and zucchini and nothing but the dullness of the word ratatouille standing by to mock him.
Attachment strangles freedom and clarity and makes us a puppet to our desires and cravings; attachment is the root of suffering, a root that if left unattended grows into a tree which drops the fruits of anger, greed, envy, dispersion, competitiveness, ego and pain
He remembered a version of himself untrammeled by expectation, unimpeded by Ego. He had suffered in the many years since then, seeking to return to that original self, if, in fact, it ever existed. And yet, he was helpless but to regard that unmistakable fear that gripped him in his dream as a sign that his unevenness lent him now to utter incongruity with this specter of past.
It is common knowledge among psychologists that most of us underrate ourselves, short-change ourselves, sell ourselves short. Actually, there is no such thing as a superiority complex. People who seem to have one are actually suffering from feelings of inferiority; their "superior" self is a fiction, a coverup, to hide from themselves and others their deep-down feelings of inferiority and insecurity.
My confidence is in the idea that I may be wrong on this or that. No man in this life should ever have to bear the burden of perfection.
Ego likes comfort zones, safety, familiarity, boundaries, limits, a god who stays put in a box, and the known vs. the unknown. Ego can be a wimp. Unlike what most people believe, ego is not about too much confidence. Ego is about not enough confidence—confidence in the divine part of ourselves.
She was asked, “What do you see in him?”Taken aback, she replied, “What does he see in me?”Others too wondered why she chose him – not as handsome as the others, not one with a lot of possessions or even status, but little did they know, as little minds go, that she chose the one who wanted her most.
When I was a young philosopher, I asked a senior colleague, Pat Suppes (then and now a famous philosopher of science and an astute student of human nature), what the secret of happiness was. Instead of giving me advice, he made a rather droll observation about what a lot of people who were happy with themselves seem to have done, namely:1. Take a careful inventory of their shortcomings and flaws2. Adopt a code of values that treats these things as virtues3. Admire themselves for living up to itBrutal people admire themselves for being manly; compulsive pedants admire themselves for their attention to detail; naturally selfish and mean people admire themselves for their dedication to helping the market reward talent and punish failure, and so on.
Zafar argues that the greatest influence on a writer may be on her psychic dispositions as a writer. Reading Philip Roth, writes Zafar, might clear the way of inhibitions that held you back from writing about reckless desire, the temptations of power, and the immanence of rage, or reading Naipaul might convince you to seize the ego that so wants to be loved, drag it outside, put it up against a wall, and shoot it.
Many writers make the mistake of making their readers appear like Lazarus, without any iota of care, throwing down books to readers to crunch as if they are dogs.
In normal everyday usage, "I" embodies the primordial error, a misperception of who you are, an illusory sense of identity. This is the ego. The illusory sense of self is what Albert Einstein, who had deep insights not only into the reality of space an time, but also into human nature, referred to as "an optical illusion of consciousness.
Our culture, self-toxified by the poisonous by-products of technology and egocentric ideology, is the unhappy inheritor of the dominator attitude that alteration of consciousness by the use of plants or substances is somehow wrong, onanistic, and perversely antisocial. I will argue that suppression of shamanic gnosis, with its reliance and insistence on ecstatic dissolution of the ego, has robbed us of life’s meaning and made us enemies of the planet, of ourselves, and our grandchildren. We are killing the planet in order to keep intact the wrongheaded assumptions of the ego-dominator cultural style.
Ego said, 'I will not apologize for who I am'. Experience replied, 'unless your self-realization comes to light, your apology is worthless. And, when your self-realization does come to light, which it will, your apology will be of little or no value at all'. - Sandeep N. Tripathi
The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.
When your focus is on how you feel about things in the world then the things of the world slip from view, your little boat of learning things for what they are are swamped by the swells of how you feel about them. With hard work and with learning, the things of the world are still somehow out there, waiting for you to know about them, no matter how you feel. They survive how you feel about them and they are there before and after the storms of your feelings roar through and abate. Feelings aren't much of a compass to go by.
It's fallacious reasoning for the atheist to hate all religion due to men who manipulate religion to fit their own agendas. They are counterparts, therefore, if Truth is true, partners in crime. To believers, the atheist and the religiously corrupt boil down to the same person, the self-righteous: one denies Truth to fit his own agenda; the other manipulates Truth to fit his own agenda.
I hid my wound under my clothes. Nobody could see it, including myself, and I completely forgot about it. Then I met someone who, filled with love, held me tight in that point. The pain was devastating, and I hated him, o how much I hated him, the cause of all my suffering. Then I met someone, beautifully dressed, and I loved him so much, holding him tight with all my passion. And he suffered badly, and he hated me, o how much he hated me, the cause of all his pain. So the story went on till I met someone who undressed himself, standing completely naked, with all his horrible wounds. Hence I also undressed, and I saw my horrible wounds, which he could also see. Then...
Whatever they may think and say about their "egoism", the great majority nonetheless do nothing for their ego their whole life long: what they do is done for the phantom of their ego which has formed itself in the heads of those around them and has been communicated to them.
You were born, your life was to serve other souls,Love and serve or you'll be left alone,You worship not GOD but listen to Satan,That's why try not to think of going to Heaven,Being selfish will for sure lead you to pain,You will burn in fire and the GOD loving people will dance in the rain,The ego you have doesn't make any sense,One day you'll die and you won't have a second chance... It's 2:41 Am ~Me” ― Mr.Khan
I am smiling a big adopted-orphan smile as I write this ... I still love scribbling the word - WRITER - any time on a form, questionnaire, document asks for my occupation. Fine, I write personality quizzes, I don't write about the Great Issues of the Day, but I think it's fair to say I am a writer ... ('Adopted-orphan smile', I mean, that's not bad, come on.)
Our own egos are so fragile we cannot bear to give our lives to the raising of children only to have them become ordinary people. There, I said it. The worst thing a 21st-century child of interesting parents could be: ordinary. Like us.
Enlightenment is a paradoxical phenomenon. You need to be commited to become enlightenment, and to do whatever is necessary to make it happen. But at the same time you can not force enlightenment to happen by sheer will. It is like the situation with happiness: you can not force happiness to happen, but you can create the right circumstances for happiness tohappen. You need to be willing to die, to let go of your limited sense of “I”, to achieve enlightenment. I can feel a deepening thirst to die, to dissolve into the silence, in my heart and being.
Don't the overwhelming majority believe that mankind is the crowning achievement of Creation, that man is better than everything, even things we haven't yet investigated? And don't those people who aren't able to escape the bonds of their own ego think that the entire Universe, even the countless worlds of outer space, is just a backdrop for this ego? And yet it might be quite different.
I don't want it to end, and so, as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end to its “problems” because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my self-image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego.
When you let go of the belief that you should or need to know who you are, what happens to confusion? Suddenly it is gone. When you fully accept that you don't know, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be. Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.
Eventually it will become quiet enough so that you can simply watch the heart begin to react, and let go before the mind starts. At some point in the journey it all becomes heart, not mind. ... The mind doesn’t even get achance to start up because you let go atthe heart level.
A misleading perception or false belief is increasingly being perpetuated that the unconscious or the intuitive is all that really matters in any spiritual endeavor, and that the conscious, rational, logical, analytical mind is the mortal enemy of spiritual awareness and soul growth.
When Ego is in control it judges and punishes. But love forgives and heals. Surrendering, is one of the most powerful choices one can make.The doors of love only open for the person who is prepared to let his ego go. To surrender one's ego for someone else is love; to surrender one's ego for all is divine love.
Your body is a temple, not a daily dumping ground for another person’s pain, anger, betrayal, judgment, hypocrisy, denial, games, jealousy or blame. When you are being psychologically, spiritually or emotionally abused by a person, and they don’t care how it hurts you, then it is time to leave what is polluting your relationship with God.
If i cherish you because I hold you dear, because in you my heart finds nourishment, my need satisfaction, then it is not done for the sake of a higher essence whose hallowed body you are, not on account of my beholding in you a ghost, an appearing spirit, but from egoistic pleasure; you yourself with *your* essence are valuable to me.
A woman who holds her head up too high, is trying to breathe from her own pollution.
The question to ask, when you feel pride, then, is this: What am I missing right now that a more humble person might see? What am I avoiding, or running from, with my bluster, franticness, and embellishments? It is far better to ask and answer these questions now, with the stakes still low, than it will be later.
It doesn't make you a bad person to want to be remembered. To want to make it to the top. To provide for yourself and your family. After all, that's all part of the allure. There is a balance. Soccer coach Tony Adams expresses it well. Play for the name on the front of the jersey, he says, and they'll remember the name on the back.
At some time during the process, [of writing] I came up with a therapeutic device. After each draft I would tear up the pages and feed the paper to a worm compost I keep in my garage. A few months later, those painful pages were dirt that nourished my yard, which I could walk with bare feet. It was a real and tangible connection to that larger immensity. I liked to remind myself that the same process is going to happen to me when I'm done, when I die and nature tears me up...
Being big enough to know when you are small, makes you gigantic. Lack of humility is not necessarily the down fall of great relationships, it is the slippery slide ego and pride take you down that block communication, cause mis-communication and dissolution of trust, that kill a bond.--TAMMY WOOSTER 1/15
The Lord has put more hardships atop the shoulders of my neighbors — more than I can even fathom coping with. I will strive to find a way to turn pity into admiration, for what use is it to send pity back at the world. Admiration and awe are much more helpful, especially when I find myself feeling like a victim for being stuck in traffic or losing my favorite sweater. Perspective is a blessing.
If you lack the humility to go back and tie up the loose ends in your past, then be prepared to forever be haunted by her ghosts, all of whom will come into your present and your future— staining everything and everyone with their leftover emotional and mental garbage. Humility is the master key that can get you out of all your cages; why do you choose your ego and stay in your prisons?
There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position - a perspective, an opinion, a judgement, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, as so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right.
We become more devoted to pleasing other people than establishing a relationship with ourselves. We believe we are what we have and what we do and we believe we are what other people think we are. Ego is in many ways the primary cause of most of our misconception and woe.
The painter does not conceive himself as existing in himself, he conceives himself as a reflection of the objects he has put into his pictures and he lives in the reflections of his pictures, a writer, a serious writer, conceives himself as existing by and in himself, he does not at all live in the reflection of his books, to write he must first of all exist in himself, but for a painter to be able to paint, the painting must first of all be done.
[Dona Maria] saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.
Huxley: "Tell me something Bryce, do you know the difference between a Jersey, a Guernsey, a Holstein, and an Ayershire?"Bryce: "No."Huxley: "Seabags Brown does."Bryce: "I don't see what that has to do..."Huxley: "What do you know about Gaelic history?"Bryce: "Not much."Huxley: "Then why don't you sit down one day with Gunner McQuade. He is an expert. Speaks the language, too."Bryce: "I don't..."Huxley: " What do you know about astronomy?"Bryce: "A little."Huxley: "Discuss it with Wellman, he held a fellowship." Bryce: "This is most puzzling."Huxley: "What about Homer, ever read Homer?"Bryce: "Of course I've read Homer."Huxley: "In the original Greek?"Bryce: "No"Huxley: "Then chat with Pfc. Hodgkiss. Loves to read the ancient Greek."Bryce: "Would you kindly get to the point?"Huxley: "The point is this, Bryce. What makes you think you are so goddam superior? Who gave you the bright idea that you had a corner on the world's knowledge? There are privates in this battalion who can piss more brains down a slit trench then you'll ever have. You're the most pretentious, egotistical individual I've ever encountered. Your superiority complex reeks. I've seen the way you treat men, like a big strutting peacock. Why, you've had them do everything but wipe your ass.
But if it is true that human minds are themselves to a very great degree the creations of memes, then we cannot sustain the polarity of vision we considered earlier; it cannot be "memes versus us," because earlier infestations of memes have already played a major role in determining who or what we are. The "independent" mind struggling to protect itself from alien and dangerous memes is a myth. There is a persisting tension between the biological imperative of our genes on the one hand and the cultural imperatives of our memes on the other, but we would be foolish to "side with" our genes; that would be to commit the most egregious error of pop sociobiology. Besides, as we have already noted, what makes us special is that we, alone among species, can rise above the imperatives of our genes— thanks to the lifting cranes of our memes.
You're thinking that people don't keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That sticks. Humiliation. And we've all got a sore spot we don't like to have touched.
She tapped out a beat on the edge of the piano as I tripped and plummeted through the refrain of “Spacebar,” trying to translate the synth chords into a piano bit on the fly. It had been a million years since I’d played it.But it was still catchy.Whoever had written this song had known what they were doing.
You need nothing more than the experience you are having right now. It is enough. It is plenty. It is perfect just as it is. It was designed for you, given to you for your experience. All you have to do, and all you have ever had to do is accept this gift. Take it and let it in. Let yourself experience the present moment just as it is. It doesn't get any better than this. This is the simple truth the ego refuses to accept, and it will suffer as long as that is the case.
The poor girl ws keeping that student's letter as a precious treasure, and had run to fetch it, her only treasure, because she did not want me to go away without knowing that she, too, was honestly and genuinely loved; that she, too, was addressed respectfully. No doubt that letter was destined to lie in her box and lead to nothing. But none the less, I am certain that she would keep it all her life as a precious treasure, as her pride and justification, and now at such a minute she had thought of that letter and brought it with naive pride to raise herself in my eyes that I might see, that I, too, might think well of her.
Amazing, life-altering anonymous picture quotes on FaceBook: Are they created by graphic designers who steal quotes or don't bother to research the author, or are they original and just have exceptionally less ego than I do? Cos if I ever write something that brilliant it's gonna have flashing headlights.
The Bear had once confided to me that Durrell's ego could fit snugly in the basilica of St. Peter's in Rome but in very few other public places. This runaway megalomania marked him as a blood member of the fraternity of generals. If looks alone could make generals, Durrell would have been a cinch. He was built lean and slim and dark, like a Doberman. A man of breeding and refrigerated intelligence, he ordered his life like a table of logarithms.
In life,” he said, “there are no essentially major or minor characters. To that extent, all fiction and biography, and most historiography, are a lie. Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. Hamlet could be told from Polonius’s point of view and called The Tragedy of Polonius, Lord Chamberlain of Denmark. He didn’t think he was a minor character in anything, I daresay. Or suppose you’re an usher in a wedding. From the groom’s viewpoint he’s the major character; the others play supporting parts, even the bride. From your viewpoint, though, the wedding is a minor episode in the very interesting history of your life, and the bridge and groom both are minor figures. What you’ve done is choose to play the part of a minor character: it can be pleasant for you to pretend to be less important you know you are, as Odysseus does when he disguises as a swineherd. And every member of the congregation at the wedding sees himself as the major character, condescending to witness the spectacle. So in this sense fiction isn’t a lie at all, but a true representation of the distortion that everyone makes of life. “Now, not only are we the heroes of our own life stories–we’re the ones who conceive the story, and give other people the essences of minor characters. But since no man’s life story as a rule is ever one story with a coherent plot, we’re always reconceiving just the sort of hero we are, and consequently just the sort of minor roles that other people are supposed to play. This is generally true. If any man displays almost the same character day in and day out, all day long, it’s either because he has no imagination, like an actor who can play only one role, or because he has an imagination so comprehensive that he sees each particular situation of his life as an episode in some grand over-all plot, and can so distort the situations that the same type of hero can deal with them all. But this is most unusual. “This kind of role-assigning is myth-making, and when it’s done consciously or unconsciously for the purpose of aggrandizing or protecting your ego–and it’s probably done for this purpose all the time–it becomes Mythotherapy. Here’s the point: an immobility such as you experienced that time in Penn Station is possible only to a person who for some reason or other has ceased to participate in Mythotherapy. At that time on the bench you were neither a major nor a minor character: you were no character at all. It’s because this has happened once that it’s necessary for me to explain to you something that comes quite naturally to everyone else. It’s like teaching a paralytic how to walk again.
Now many crises in people’s lives occur because the hero role that they’ve assumed for one situation or set of situations no longer applies to some new situation that comes up, or–the same thing in effect–because they haven’t the imagination to distort the new situation to fit their old role. This happens to parents, for instance, when their children grow older, and to lovers when one of them begins to dislike the other. If the new situation is too overpowering to ignore, and they can’t find a mask to meet it with, they may become schizophrenic–a last-resort mask–or simply shattered. All questions of integrity involve this consideration, because a man’s integrity consists in being faithful to the script he’s written for himself. “I’ve said you’re too unstable to play any one part all the time–you’re also too unimaginative–so for you these crises had better be met by changing scripts as often as necessary. This should come naturally to you; the important thing for you is to realize what you’re doing so you won’t get caught without a script, or with the wrong script in a given situation. You did quite well, for example, for a beginner, to walk in here so confidently and almost arrogantly a while ago, and assign me the role of a quack. But you must be able to change masks at once if by some means or other I’m able to make the one
Now many crises in people’s lives occur because the hero role that they’ve assumed for one situation or set of situations no longer applies to some new situation that comes up, or–the same thing in effect–because they haven’t the imagination to distort the new situation to fit their old role. This happens to parents, for instance, when their children grow older, and to lovers when one of them begins to dislike the other. If the new situation is too overpowering to ignore, and they can’t find a mask to meet it with, they may become schizophrenic–a last-resort mask–or simply shattered. All questions of integrity involve this consideration, because a man’s integrity consists in being faithful to the script he’s written for himself. “I’ve said you’re too unstable to play any one part all the time–you’re also too unimaginative–so for you these crises had better be met by changing scripts as often as necessary. This should come naturally to you; the important thing for you is to realize what you’re doing so you won’t get caught without a script, or with the wrong script in a given situation. You did quite well, for example, for a beginner, to walk in here so confidently and almost arrogantly a while ago, and assign me the role of a quack. But you must be able to change masks at once if by some means or other I’m able to make the one you walked in with untenable. Perhaps–I’m just suggesting an offhand possibility–you could change to thinking of me as The Sagacious Old Mentor, a kind of Machiavellian Nestor, say, and yourself as The Ingenuous But Promising Young Protégé, a young Alexander, who someday will put all these teachings into practice and far outshine the master. Do you get the idea? Or–this is repugnant, but it could be used as a last resort–The Silently Indignant Young Man, who tolerates the ravings of a Senile Crank but who will leave this house unsullied by them. I call this repugnant because if you ever used it you’d cut yourself off from much that you haven’t learned yet. “It’s extremely important that you learn to assume these masks wholeheartedly. Don’t think there’s anything behind them: ego means I, and I means ego, and the ego by definition is a mask. Where there’s no ego–this is you on the bench–there’s no I. If you sometimes have the feeling that your mask is insincere–impossible word!–it’s only because one of your masks is incompatible with another. You mustn’t put on two at a time. There’s a source of conflict, and conflict between masks, like absence of masks, is a source of immobility. The more sharply you can dramatize your situation, and define your own role and everybody else’s role, the safer you’ll be. It doesn’t matter in Mythotherapy for paralytics whether your role is major or minor, as long as it’s clearly conceived, but in the nature of things it’ll normally be major. Now say something.
Being real doesn't mean being reckless, it means allowing La Voz Mitologica, The Mythological Voice, to speak. One does that by shutting off the ego for a while and letting that which wishes to speak, speak.
If you live, ego disappears. Life knows no ego, it knows only living and living and living. Life knows no self, no center; life knows no separation. You breathe - life enters into you; you exhale you enter into life. There is no separation. You eat, and trees enter into you through the fruit. Then one day you die, you are buried in the earth, and the trees suck you up and you become fruits. Your children will eat you again. You have been eating your ancestors - the trees have converted them into fruits. You think you are a vegetarian? Don't be deceived by appearances. We are all cannibals.
A person lives a false life whenever they are afraid to make contact with his or her authentic self. A sensitive ego – one that protects a person from pain – can also prevent a person from maturing mentally and emotionally by causing a person to distort truths and refuse to admit unpleasant facts.
You should be working on your speech instead of staring,” Rider said, never taking his eyes off his notebook.Paige’s dark eyes flew to me and then narrowed.Heat exploded across my cheeks.“And you should actually be working on, I don’t know, your speech?” Hector grinned as he gestured to his paper, which appeared to have actual words on it. “And please don’t stare at him, Mallory. Because of Paige, his ego is already big enough. He doesn’t need any help.
Ruthless destruction of an ego is a rather simple matter. Preserving the host deprived of an ego is a more delicate affair. How does a person engage in momentous battle with the self while simultaneously struggling to maintain their cerebral, emotive, and spiritual equilibrium in the thin air of consciousness? How assiduously does an agitated mind need to work in order to achieve the elusive degree of emotional and mental quietness that I seek?
One of more cruel punishment methods, if not the most cruel one, to any woman is to completely keep her out of attention, to constantly disconnect her eye connection, or simply not to listen to her. It could automatically destroy her Ego so badly that she could even prefer, from the bottom of her heart, any severe physical punishment to that ‘mild’ punishment, which would mean to be killed by inches for female brain.
Still, Antwerp, the parties, my husband's talks--all of it fed my mind. I'd hardly set down my quill before I took it up again, writing stories unconnected--of a pimp, a virgin, a rogue--strung up like pearls on a thread. ... 'I am very ambitious, yet 'tis neither for Beauty, Wit, Titles, Wealth, or Power, but as they are steps to raise me to Fames Tower.'O minor victory! O small delight! My star began to rise.
So, Freckles,” he said when I sat down. “Freckles?” I interrupted. “You said I couldn’t call ya, Katie-cat.” I shuddered. “I do have a given name, you know.” “I don’t want to call you what everyone else calls you.” “You don’t?” “Nope.” “Why?” I asked suspiciously. “Because I’m special.” “There goes that ego of yours again.” I held out my arms wide. “Big,” I mouthed.
What’s the matter, Freckles?” he said, pressing a light kiss to the tip of my nose. “What changed?” I blurted out. He drew back. “Changed?” “You seemed like you were trying to keep distance between us before, but after last night…” “I should get a medal for managing to keep my hands off you that long.” “It was only a few days,” I reminded him dryly. “Felt like a lifetime.” “So those first kisses… you liked them?” His eyes widened. “You thought that I didn’t?” “Well, after that you didn’t touch m
Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life’s secrets. It’s the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divided, dualistic, cramped view of things. “We are too ego-centered,” Suzuki tells Cage. “The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away.”Adolescent love gives us the first chance to break the shell. Sexual love makes the ego lose itself in the object it loves. “When the ego-shell is broken and the ‘other’ is taken into its own body, we can say that the ego has denied itself or that the ego has taken its first steps towards the infinite.…The religious consciousness is now fully awakened, and all the possible ways of escaping from the struggle or bringing it to an end are most earnestly sought in every direction. Books are read, lectures are attended, sermons are greedily taken in, and various religious exercises or disciplines are tried.”Suzuki says that sexual love is a vehicle of liberation? A crack in the ego shell? A path to the infinite?At this point, if I were Cage, I would buy the book and take it home.
Don't cling to your self-concept purely because your will demands it. Demand that your environment aligns as much as possible and change what you must about yourself when the outer world can’t be changed. Mental health is about mental fluidity, mental illness stems in rigidity.
Educated people, of course, know that perception, cognition, language, and emotion are rooted in the brain. But it is still tempting to think of the brain as it was shown in old educational cartoons, as a control panel with gauges and levers operated by a user — the self, the soul, the ghost, the person, the “me.” But cognitive neuroscience is showing that the self, too, is just another network of brain systems. [C]ognitive neuroscientists have not only exorcised the ghost but have shown that the brain does not even have a part that does exactly what the ghost is supposed to do: review all the facts and make a decision for the rest of the brain to carry out. Each of us feels that there is a single “I” in control. But that is an illusion that the brain works hard to produce, like the impression that our visual fields are rich in detail from edge to edge. The brain does have supervisory systems in the prefrontal lobes and anterior cingulate cortex, which can push the buttons of behavior and override habits and urges. But those systems are gadgets with specific quirks and limitations; they are not implementations of the rational free agent traditionally identified with the soul or the self.
There are a great number of ego defenses, and the combinations and circumstances in which we use them reflect on our personality. Indeed, one could go so far as to argue that the self is nothing but the sum of its ego defenses, which are constantly shaping, upholding, protecting, and repairing it.The self is like a cracked mask that is in constant need of being pieced together. But behind the mask there is nobody at home.
Ego is not an enemy to be broken or demolished, as is often portrayed in spiritual literature. We don't want to get rid of the ego, we want to soften it, make it porous and receptive, so information, thoughts, and compassion flow in and out. A healthy ego allows us to have the strength of our convictions yet be open to others. Psychological literature often refers to ego strength - a sureness about ourselves that rests calmly inside, the will to actualize our dreams, or stand fast to our beliefs without worrying about the consequences.By contrast, the rigid or inflated ego is concrete and dualistic - right-wrong, good-bad, friend-foe...It believes the stories we've made up are reality and doesn't realize that they are only the cover over our essence...To deflect fear, the inflated ego dons a mask and becomes artificial in relationships...This leaves us a stranger to ourself and the person we are meeting. In fact, there has been no authentic connection; it's only our personas that have met.
The egotist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter. Not in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thinking, not in his desires, not in the source of his energy. He does not exist for any other man—and he asks no other man to exist for him.
I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men. I’ve always demanded a certain quality in the people I liked. I’ve always recognized it at once—and it’s the only quality I respect in men. I chose my friends by that...A self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters.
You said just now, "Don't be so ashamed of yourself, because that's the root of your trouble"––with those words, you seem to have reached right into my innermost soul. What I mean is, when I visit people, I always feel that I'm really the lowest of the low, that everybody takes me for a buffoon, so I say to myself, why shouldn't I act the fool, I'm not afraid of what any of you might think, because every single one of you is even worse than me. That's why I'm a buffoon, I'm a buffoon born of shame, great starets, of shame. It's anxiety pure and simple that makes me so unruly.
To base your self worth relative to others is to play a losing game. If you are at the bottom, you will be filled with self-loathing. If you are at the top, you will be filled with self-aggrandizement and ego. This will most certainly be one of your greatest obstacles to achieving whatever degree of mastery you are capable.
Mr. Alexander Graham Bell claims to have invented [photophone transmitter], though really it was created through a collaborative effort with Mr. Charles Sumner Tainter. In all honesty,” she said, “a great inventor needs a healthy amount of conceit. Mr. Bell and, fellow inventor, Mr. Edison would declare they’d created the moon and the tides between them if they could get away with the claim.
Such an incredible, stupefying realization: I am not, indeed, the center of the universe.Not! Not! Not!And the overwhelming gratitude, the flooding relief that comes from finally being able to give myself the permission to lay down that excruciating, exhausting burden of needing to prove to the world, every waking moment, that I am, indeed, undeniably, irrefutably The Center of the Universe.
In life there are often moments when the battle is between a relationship that means a lot and a small yet dangerous three letter word 'EGO'. Don't let this devil win and make you a loser. If there are certain things you would rather not loose then you mighty well not loose them. Remember there is always that thin line between ego and self respect. While you are busy nurturing your ego the relations that matter may feel the need for self respect and break away. It's always your decision on who wins. Your Ego or You.
You can only be in a state of non-reaction if you can recognize someone's behavior as coming from the ego, as being an expression of the collective human dysfunction. When you realize it's not personal, there is no longer a compulsion to react as if it were.
When we recognize that our personal good coincides with the Good of everyone, our inner light is turned on: at this point, when a human being becomes a Human Angel, their light, like a beacon, shines all around.The more lights are lit, the more humanity will be enlightened in these dark times, when the world of the ego, driven to its extreme, has begun its dramatic collapse.
It is the ego's purpose that makes everything seem dis-united and like separate events. The constant purpose is the thread that ties all events together. The script is really a continuous thing, rather than discreet events. I did this next and this happened, then I went there. That is the way it is talked about when the mind believes in sequential time and events. But once we get a sense that there is purpose that ties them all together, that is when the fusion between all the events takes place.
Religion does not mean to worship cows. Religion is within the body of a human being. There is infinite power within this human body and manifestation of that power is Religion. In one sense it is the transformed state of ‘Ego’. Even if you don’t understand it, let me say that by evolution of self a man becomes God ….
It’s natural to think of one’s own life as a novel (or a movie or a play), and within that narrative we are always the central character. Thoughtful people try to overcome this compulsion, but they usually fail (in fact, trying makes it worse). In a commencement speech at Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace argued that conquering the preoccupation with self is pretty much the whole objective of being alive — but if we are to believe Wallace succeeded at this goal, it must be the darkest success imaginable.
Religion is about integration, about successfully bringing the selfish ego into line with the centre of the personality where God exists, as a divine spark, in every human being. Religion is about helping man to live in harmony with his true self and to become the person God’s designed him to be.
Thinking he knows can be a trap. An ex-professor once told him he had a diamond-hard intellect and he’d been flattered at the time. Now he considers the nature of diamonds. Although sharp and glittering and useful for cutting glass, they shine with reflected light only. They’re no use at all in the dark
Remember, Reilly, gossip is just people's insecurity and fear of what they don't really understand," Eilam said. "It is unconsciously propagated to feed their egos." "Doesn't it ever bother you?", Reilly asked as he pulled the top off his yogurt. "I've lived too long to put any stock in the external judgments of others,or to take anything personally.
I just didn’t get it—even with the teacher holding an orange (the earth) in one handand a lemon (the moon) in the other,her favorite student (the sun) standing behind her with a flashlight.I just couldn’t grasp it—this whole citrus universe, these bumpy planets revolving so slowlyno one could even see themselves moving.I used to think if I could only concentrate hard enoughI could be the one person to feel what no one else could,sense a small tug from the ground, a sky shift, the earth changing gears.Even though I was only one mini-speck on a speck,even though I was merely a pinprick in one goosebump on the orange,I was sure then I was the most specially perceptive, perceptively sensitive.I was sure then my mother was the only mother to snap,“The world doesn’t revolve around you!”The earth was fragile and mostly water,just the way the orange was mostly water if you peeled it,just the way I was mostly water if you peeled me.Looking back on that third grade science demonstration,I can understand why some people gave up on fame or religion or cures—especially people who have an understandingof the excruciating crawl of the world,who have a well-developed sense of spatial reasoningand the tininess that it is to be one of us.But not me—even now I wouldn’t mind being god, the forcewho spins the planets the way I spin a globe, a basketball, a yoyo.I wouldn’t mind being that teacher who chooses the fruit,or that favorite kid who gives the moon its glow.
Even when we have realized oneness and nothingness, we still have our personal lives to manage, bodies to take care of, and mouths to feed, and you will know which one is yours and which ones are others', so you won't put food into another person's mouth when you are hungry. Also you won't kiss a rattlesnake or hug a cactus no matter how strong an affinity you feel toward them. But at the same time, we know these apparent separations are functional, not fundamental, and should be recognized as such without mistaking one for the other. I would call this apparent separation "functional ego," or you can call it your "character," which is the collection of your beliefs, habits, and other people's expectations.
I always feel when I meet people that I am lower than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon; so I say let me play the buffoon, for you are, every one of you, stupider and lower than I." He longed to revenge himself on every one for his own unseemliness. He suddenly recalled how he had once in the past been asked, "Why do you hate so and so, so much?" And he had answered them, with his shameless impudence, "I'll tell you. He has done me no harm. But I played him a dirty trick, and ever since I have hated him.
Few approach Nick the rest of the night, I am the only one brave enough to take him his specially made tea. "Thank you", he said barely glancing up at me."You're welcome", I said waiting for him to look up at me but he won't. I have to force myself to say something before the doubt takes me over. " That guy was wrong, but you should have ignored her to begin with. She would have been humiliated enough by that alone. Your ego got in the way of your judgment." I said before walking away proudly.
She is a mess, her dress once pulled together long and fresh, now drooping and awkwardly weighted to one side of her head. "What happened? Are you okay?" The women clamor around her.Nick walks out in perfect order and perfect swagger, passing her with a downward glance. "You forgot your panties". He said tossing her underwear onto the table in front of her. After being embarrassingly ignored by the group of debutants, the nearby college boys feel justified by the turn of events and break into hysterics. Slinking out the side door, the mortified women exit without another word.
Because it's indeed difficult to portray, in any meaningful depth, another being, his appearance, speech, mentality, without to some degree, and often for quite trifling cause, offending him. The truth seems to be the nobody likes to see himself described as he is, or cares to see exactly set down what he said and did. Well, even i can understand that - because i don't like it myself when I am the sitter not the portraitist: the frailty of egos- and the more accurate the strokes, the greater the resentment.
Ego-identification with things creates attachment to things, which in turn creates our consumer 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 that it is bringing about its own destruction by destroying the organism of which it is a part. Some economists are so attached to the notion of growth that they can't let go of that word, so they refer to recession as a time of "negative growth".
The ego exists as a powerful force in Western man that cannot be dismissed or denied. The therapeutic goal is to integrate the ego with the body and its striving for pleasure and sexual fulfilment.
Just last year, I had to read the old Indian epic, the Mahabharata. Inspired by it, I wished I had been named Draupadi. After all, she, too, had been born differently, even abnormally. She had stepped out of fire, a gift from the old gods to her father the king. There had been no Hindu gods involved in my birth, but the loose parallels gave me a delightful sense of grandeur.
I used to believe authenticity could be achieved solely by describing, in our own words, one's own fragment of experience. This was of course predicated on the complete intellectual and aesthetic independence of the "I". One eventually realizes such intellectual isolationism promotes style, ego, awards. But not change.
The need has to be defined by an Individual. If the basic need of quenching thirst can be met by a glass of water, everything beyond that is indulgence. Ego makes organizations sell products and services that deviate from servicing the needs to making higher profits. The further away you get from fulfilling a need and into making people believe that they need to buy a certain product or services as a necessity, the more tension builds into the system.
You see, the truth is no one ever really falls in love with anyone but themselves. Love is a mirror; a reflective surface projecting who we wish we were. What we've all waiting for is someone to come along who will show us something new about ourselves that we can adore. And then, because someone loves us, in turn, we love ourselves. Does that make sense?
One of the most distinctive features of psychosis is its dynamic of externalization. Madness is experienced as being enacted on the subject from without; a person perceives his own unintegrated psychological contents as outer-world creatures and demons who threaten to engulf and physically destroy him. The barriers between inner and outer, subject and object, dissolve so entirely that no boundary remains to protect the ego from the onslaught of this projected unconscious material.
All true love and all sacrifice arein their essence Nature’s contradiction of the primary egoism andits separative error; it is her attempt to turn from a necessary firstfragmentation towards a recovered oneness. All unity betweencreatures is in its essence a self-finding, a fusion with that fromwhich we have separated, a discovery of one’s self in others.But it is only a divine love and unity that can possess in the light what the human forms of these things seek for inthe darkness.
white middle-upper class guys in highly educated families have a unique burden placed on us to be the hero of every story that we tell. I don’t think it’s merely that we’re self-centered and arrogant, but that we feel like we’re supposed to be in charge, and if we’re not the hero of the story, we’ve somehow failed in our life duty.group
Men wanted to be strong. One way to be strong was to be knowledgeable. In so many areas, it was not possible to be knowledgeable without getting a Ph.D. and doing a postdoc. Guns and hunting provided an out for men who wanted to be know-it-alls but who couldn't afford to spend the first three decades of their lives getting up to speed on quantum mechanics or oncology.
there is a fine line between self-confidence and EgoIf you have self-confidence you will know that you are good ,, excellent if you want ,, but you will also know that there is other people as good as you , or not , but some one is good somewhere , and Respect thatbut If you have Ego , you will only see your self as the best , and only you , no one else is good or as good as you , you won't even stand the idea
Self-inflicted pain has a calming effect; it clears the head, diminishes one's fascination with the ego, and most important, gives one the sense of having taken some real action against the everyday foolishness of the body and of the vagrant, willful, heedless imagination.
He [Eugène Rougon] believed exclusively in himself; where another saw reasons, Rougon possessed convictions; he subordinated everything to the incessant aggrandisement of his own ego. Despite being utterly devoid of real self-indulgence, he nevertheless indulged in secret orgies of supreme power.
Beauty could be defined simply as 'that which pleases.' But there is another aspect to art, and that... is the sublime. Like the mushroom cloud of the atom bomb, or the vastness of space as projected to us by satellite... the greatness of the experience goes beyond your ethical and aesthetic judgment, cutting you free from the binding ego of yourself. With the diminishment of your ego, the less there is of you, the more you see the sublime.
Contrary to what you may have heard or been taught, your ego isn't a bad thing. It means well. The ego wants to keep you safe, secure, protected and accepted. The problem comes in because it usually attempts to do this by keeping you in the same small, reclusive orbit that you've always gravitated toward. Life, on the other hand, is about change, growth and unfolding ever-greater aspects of the self. We all know the pain that is experienced when life decides to change even though you don't want it to. The harder you try to hold on to the comfort and safety of "what was" or "how it's always been done," the more pain you feel.
Meditation is the best tool for neutralizing the voice in the head. It's a muzzle for the ego. Being mindful is an innate but underused ability we all have, the act of being aware without judging. When you repeatedly go through the cycle of trying to focus on your breath, losing that focus, and noticing and returning to the practice, you are literally building your mindfulness muscle the same way dumbbell curls build your biceps. As this mind-muscle develops, you start being way more aware of thoughts, emotions, and sensations as what they really are: squirts of chemicals & hormones that enter, peak and then fade completely back to the nothingness of which they arose. In other words, mindfulness provides space between impulse and action, so you're not a slave to whatever pops into your head. You are not your thoughts. You are the awareness of them.
We have only minimal control over the rewards for our work and effort - other people’s validation, recognition, rewards. It’s far better when doing the work itself is sufficient. When fulfilling our own internal standards is what fills us with pride and self-respect. The less attached we are to the outcomes, the better. Our ego wants recognition & compensation. We have expectations. Let the effort, not the results be enough. Maybe your parents/kids/partner/etc won’t be impressed. We can’t let THAT be what motivates us. We can change the definition of success to: ‘peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.’ With this definition we decide not to let externals determine if something is worth doing. It’s on us.