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I am not upset for the reason I think it is

Wisdom don’t see anger as anger. Wisdom learn to understand anger. When there is understanding there is no reason for anger to exist. When anger is understood, anger ceases. This is the path to undoing the ego.

I cannot get rid of ego except to see the nature of its veil. Each time when I try to get rid of ego, I am strengthening the grip of ego. When I learn to understand the nature of ego, ego releases me. The journey of Truth is not a journey of making things right, but to see things right in its own nature. When nature is acknowledge in its own birthplace, Truth reveals itself. Ego is not bad or wrong. Ego has its own nature and thus is part of Nature itself.

Like a dog chasing after its own tail, Ego cannot be separated from me, no matter how hard I try to push it away or try fixing it. By doing I am increasing the ego. By being I am understanding the Ego.  I can’t tell someone about the Truth except to share what I know about the Truth. For when I am not ready for the Truth, no one can force that Truth unto me. Neither can someone convert me except myself converting myself. I am the creator and also the uncreator. What I create unconsciously I have to uncreate consciously. That is my responsibility.

My jealousy has nothing to do with the person I target, though the ego thinks it is so. My upset is also not the reason I think it is. Every experience, whatever extend it may be, is pointing back to me.  Life is not what is out there for me to experience, but what is in here that arises. All the feelings and thoughts about life is Life itself. There is no separation. There is no world except experiences. The ball is always back on my court – there is no other court other than here. I can never be anywhere else except where I am. Without “I” where is Life? Where is the meaning of “you”?

I am you. Even that is untrue, except an idea, a thought. When idea appear, opposite follows. Where there is “I” there is surely “you”. If we are one, we are also two or many as one implies everything coming together. There is no oneness without “twoness”. Inside and outside are all ideas. Ideas set up conditions and in that condition stories appear. Undoing brings condition to an end, and thus the unconditioned. Ideas, views or believes are all the same.

I can’t removed ideas as there is nothing to remove. Can I remove dream or the dream is removed from me when I come into wakefulness? “A tiny mad idea” is an appropriate word used in A Course in Miracle to depict the beginning of illusion.

You are free to believe what you choose, and what you do attests to what you believe.
– A Course in Miracles

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Super-duper Copy Cat

The world is not the only place where imitation stuff is available openly. The mind too has its own share of imitation, if not more. Since the body is in the mind, the statement what is within, so is without is an eternal truth.

The ego is constantly imitating the spirit. Whenever there are aha‘s moment, inspired by the spirit, the ego instantly took up its position, imitating the experience as a new thought and feeling. Excitement and eagerness is its expression. There are times the ego fail in its pursuit of imitation but that does not stop the ego from executing its contingency plan: creating a conspiracy by dissuading me to distrust the inspiration.It can even ultimately go as far as killing the inspiration, if everything fails. The nature of ego is destructive. The nature of wisdom is constructive. Both are moving on the opposite direction.

The destructive nature of ego may not be seen directly in its true form but there are tell-tale signs of ego. There are in fact a huge retinue of relatives, each pairing the experience of spirit. Even wisdom is not spared –  ego has its pirated version too! The clear distinction of wisdom is understanding or realization. The clear distinction of ego is answers. That makes knowledge and realization different. Truth has no answers except realization. Awareness, an important criteria to wisdom, has also been pirated!

Guilt is one big time imitator. I have come across many seekers, renunciates not excluded, that buy into the idea of guilt – that it is the pathway to goodness. Guilt too has fooled me many a times until vigilant comes to my rescue. And ego never stops at guilt. It creates a duo out of it- shame in the past and fear in the future. There are the trio that is found in the mentality of victim, rescuer and persecutor. How wonderful a creation ego has.

So it was said that when one is not on the pathway of enlightenment, the ego is not on its alert as wisdom is entirely unheard off in the system. You can imagine what it is like when wisdom grows. Many a times truth seekers are faced with constant reminder of the egoic pattern, as if their own ego is increasing instead of decreasing. That is the nature of the pathway as to come closer to truth you have to faced what is not true. And what you have to face has to come into existence. So, if you find yourself terrible, remember it is not you – just remember that ego is showing its nature.Yet there is another kind of seekers, whom are not vigilant, are consumed by the ego. I coined this pathway spiritual ego. Glorifying the ego without one knowing – that is when I am unaware!

Another way to recognize ego or spirit is by their status – cause or effect. For instant, forgiveness. Are you aware you can’t do forgiveness – you can’t simply forgive someone because your faith tells you so, or someone forces you to.  Forgiveness is born out from understanding. Forgiveness is effect. You can’t do effect except to work on the causes such that when understanding arise, forgiveness naturally unfold. Whenever I am angry I can’t forgive someone who makes me angry, at least during the duration of my anger. If I were to truly understand the situation of that moment, by exploring my cause of anger and at times inviting myself to understand the underlying situation of my so-called victim, I may come to an insight that immediately ceases my anger, unfolding forgiveness. Forgiveness do me rather than I do forgiveness.

The more I understand myself the more I see the ego closer and clearer. That reminds me of the exclamation made by the Buddha upon his enlightenment:

Through the round of many births I roamed without reward, without rest, seeking the house-builder. Painful is birth again & again.

House-builder, you’re seen! You will not build a house again. All your rafters broken, the ridge pole dismantled, immersed in dismantling, the mind has attained to the end of craving.

Dhammapada (153-154)

Can you recognize ego? Patience and endurance, acceptance and tolerance, compassion and pity, forgiveness and forget? Which is which? Try practising the former of each and one ends himself in Ego!

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Stop seeking Truth, instead recognize the Ego

I can only tell you the ways you cannot arrive at the Truth, and when you have found all the ways by which you cannot arrive at the Truth, you will find the Truth: then it will be yours, and not another’s which is but an imitation.
– Beyond the Himalayas

There is no necessity to seek the Truth, what is necessary is to seek what blocks you from the Truth. (ed)
– Your Immortal Reality

My wise meditation teacher loves to hear about problems a meditator faced rather than what the meditator wanted to share to impressed him. To him, it is by understanding defilements can wisdom arise. Wisdom is hidden away due to defilements. That brought me succinctly to question why when a master finally arrive at his/her own enlightenment, he shares the Truth with the world.  Why the word “Truth”? Why not something else like Nature, Universe or what not? It came to my realization that the Truth is the opposite of False. There is a high possibility that what they thought they knew before came as a realization that they are all false, lies and fabrications and thus their need to share what is truly understood by them as Truth. Quantum physics call it optical illusion.

When we start to question the purpose of life at some point in time, we tend to incline ourselves to a specific faith or religion, to seek the Truth. Here lies the irony. When we seek the Truth by imitating what we should and should not do, we moved ourselves further away from understanding the nature of existence, from Truth, so to speak. We imitate what great masters have shared instead of learning to understand what they are trying to convey. So instead of moving closer to Truth, we are in fact moving further from Truth.

It is not the cause of the religionist, neither is it the fault of the seeker. What is more true is the nature of ego is to blind. Remember the quote mentioned by Yeshua? I stood in the world and found them all drunk, and I did not find any of them thirsty. They came into the world empty, and they seek to leave the world empty. But meanwhile they are drunk. When they shake off their wine, they will open their eyes.

And there are those, while still seeking, goes spiritual shopping. Chogyam Truangpa labels it as spiritual materialism. You can never win the ego! except to recognize them when it arise. That reminds me of what Yeshua has to said:

A wise fisherman cast his net into the sea. When he drew it up it was full of little fish. Among them, he discovered a large, fine fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and he chose the large fish. Anyone here with two good ears should listen.

If you don’t fully comprehend the verse, let me share with you a parable by the wise Rumi, adapted by Osho, another wise soul:

One day Jalaluddin Rumi took all his students, disciples and devotees  to a field. That was his way to teach them things of the beyond, through the examples of the world. He was not a theoretician, he was a very practical man. The disciples were thinking, “What could be the message, going to that faraway field… and why can’t he say it here?”

But when they reached the field, they understood that they were wrong and he was right. The farmer seemed to be almost an insane man. He was digging a well in the field – and he had already dug eight incomplete wells.

He would go a few feet and then he would find that there was no water. Then he would start digging another well… and the same story was continued. He had destroyed the whole field and he had not yet found water.

The master, Jalaluddin Rumi, told his disciples, “Can you understand something? If this man had been total and had put his whole energy into only one well, he would have reached to the deepest sources of water long ago.

But the way he is going he will destroy the whole field and he will never be able to make a single well. With so much effort he is simply destroying his own land, and getting more and more frustrated, disappointed: what kind of a desert has he purchased? It is not a desert, but one has to go deep to find the sources of water.”

He turned to his disciples and asked them, “Are you going to follow this insane farmer? Sometimes on one path, sometimes on another path, sometimes listening to one, sometimes listening to another… you will collect much knowledge, but all that knowledge is simply junk, because it is not going to give you the enlightenment you were looking for. It is not going to lead you to the waters of eternal life.”