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CHAPTER 1
Ego and the Illusion of Separateness
We live in a world of duality, of good and bad, of right and wrong, of hot and cold. Also, we inhabit a reality where we seem to be separate from each other, from Nature and from God. In his book, Richard Heinberg reveals a pattern of myth around the planet that there once was, on Earth, a literal Paradise. This was a time, according to Heinberg and the mythology, that men lived in harmony with the entire natural world, ate fruits from trees and bushes, killed no animals for food, had no illnesses, had semi-luminous bodies that could literally fly, etc.
In other words, it was a paradise on earth. Then, through a series of decisions that humans apparently made long ago, we chose to leave the state of Oneness and began our journey with a separate, individualized sense of self. We literally began to see ourselves as separate from Nature, from each other and from God. This journey has brought us to where we are today; estranged from each other, from Nature and from God. This state of separateness has been referred to as our "collective madness" It has also been called the ego, a false self that is separate from the larger whole of life.
How did we fall out of the state of perfection? At least two theories have been advanced. One school of thought argues that we just wanted to experiment with being separate to see what it was like — and then, in so doing, we forgot that we really are God-beings in human form. We literally sank into our creation, the so-called objective world and forgot that we were actually creating it with our individual paradigms, i.e., Beliefs, Attitudes and Values (what I will refer to from now on as BAV). Rather than being the cause of our experience, we saw ourselves at the effect of our personal world. Another theory suggests that we chose to separate from God as an act of rebellion, the idea that we can be God; we don't need God to run things. However it occurred, we now live in a collective reality that assumes our separate nature is real and that our job is to struggle and survive in an essentially hostile universe. This separate identity is what is called the ego. It is a false identity and we have literally made it up to confirm our belief in separateness from the wholeness intrinsic to life itself.
If the True Reality is actually an expression of the God force in its Omniscience and Omnipotence, what is called oneness in most spiritual traditions, then the reality we experience from the ego identity must literally be a waking dream or, one could say, nightmare. Many ancient spiritual traditions point to this. If this is true, then the only difference between our dream state at night and the daily dream we experience as reality is the laws governing each state. In the nightly dream, we can fly, travel to other worlds, and so forth, and we wake up in the morning effectively unchanged. In the daily reality, we have three dimensional laws, i.e., you walk off a cliff, you die.
Eckhart Tolle says that he suddenly thought, in a suicidal moment:
I can't live with myself any longer! This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly, I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. 'Am I one or two?' If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me; the 'I' and the 'self' I cannot live with. Maybe, I thought, only one of them is real.
He was right; the Observer — the one who watches the fear-based ego response — is the True Identity; and the small self- the false, ego identity- is the self one cannot live with. And only one of them is real. The problem is that we, in the egoic state, think that the reality we experience is real. It is only real in our dream state.
Primer on the Ego
So, we can see that our ego-based sense of self and its dream state has cost us dearly in terms of happiness and personal security. If it is true, as psychologists tell us, that we create our own realities from the software in our minds, i.e., the beliefs, attitudes and values that we hold to be true, then we can see that our reality is merely an out-picturing of deeply held beliefs, the most central of which is the aforementioned belief in separateness. We literally project on to the screen of our consciousness a reality that conforms to what we believe, what we expect to happen and what we assume to be true. One of the common denominators of the ego experience is a sense of personal insecurity. And this makes sense. If we pretend to be gods, without any connection to the larger cosmic reality, then that is a recipe for insecurity. We are not connected by choice to the energy that literally runs the cosmos and determines the rhythms that govern life's movements in its creative cycles, e.g., the seasons, day and night, etc. Acting from the ego reality can create havoc because our actions conflict with the design of life as it is unfolding. We cannot see, from the ego frame, the impact of our actions and thoughts on the larger whole. No wonder we see a dangerous world out there!
So, with this small sense of self, the ego identity, we naturally are afraid and then project the fear out to the so-called real world. Tara Singh, a scholar of the Course In Miracles, has this to say: Do you not want to be free of illusions? The worst of all illusions-and probably the hardest to undo-is that of separation. Where there is separation, there has to be the opinion to keep it alive. The ego arose from the separation and its continued existence depends on your continuing belief in the separation. The ego must offer you some sort of reward for maintaining this belief. All it can offer is a sense of temporary existence, which begins with its own beginning and ends with its own ending. It tells you that this life is your existence because it is its own.
Against this sense of temporary existence Spirit offers you the knowledge of permanence and unshakable Being. No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever believe in the ego again.
Let us look deeper into this phenomenon we call the ego. It is accurate to say that what we experience is a mind-made world; we are so dominated by our minds that what we experience is largely a conceptual world. What this means is that our minds, almost instantaneously, label everything that we see, hear, taste, touch or smell with concepts based on our past.
One way to have an experience of this is to pick up any material object, say a pen. Then ask yourself, "What is this?" You will respond, "Of course, it is a pen." But what is it really? Quantum physicists will tell you that it is an energy pattern or vibration, a quantum soup. We call it a pen because we have learned to label things; in so doing, what we are actually seeing is the past. We are seeing a projection of an experience from the past where we learned to call things that look like this a pen. If we were truly in the present moment, we would see an energy pattern or vibratory reality; however, since we are conditioned to label things and then think we know what they are, we see the dead past.
One place this really hurts us is in the area of human relationships; when we see a friend or partner, we look at them and think we know them. What we know are our concepts about them based on experiences from the past. So, we can't effectively see who they are now. We therefore don't really experience what is there to be experienced; our minds quickly label everything and this effectively takes us out of the present moment and into past concepts. We are effectively dominated by our minds; Tolle said, "We don't use our minds, our minds use us!" Our unconscious patterns of thought and belief take over our perceptions almost instantaneously. When we look at a beautiful sunset, we almost immediately say "What a beautiful sunset!" which is a concept. This takes the aliveness out of the experience so what we are left with is a pale imitation. Now, we have all had the experience of having our breath taken away by natural beauty. This is what we experience in the moments before the mind takes over and makes the experience a concept.
I had a FrameShifting experience with this a while back. One morning, bright and sunny, I was in my kitchen, looking into the back yard. Suddenly, I was literally dumb-struck with the awe I felt for the beauty of the natural world. It was literally breathtaking. Then I said to myself, "This is absolutely beautiful!" Suddenly, the brilliant image faded to just beautiful — a concept of the mind. The amazing feeling I had became just another concept of the mind.
We effectively all live in a mental prison. Our minds tell us what to like, what to dislike, what to love and what to hate, what to value and what to discard — it is frightening when you really consider the implications. Here is where it really gets problematic; we use this small sense of self as our identity; we think that who we are is our mind, with its beliefs, opinions, concepts, expectations, values, and attitudes. Plus, we compound the problem by depending upon the external environment to make us happy. The external environment is composed of forms, i.e., objects, people, situations, that are all transient. The nature of forms is that they change; they decay and die eventually. So, we are basing our sense of self on the most transient of things; no wonder we feel insecure all the time.
Alan Hammond has some interesting things to say about this:
This constant universal change is a bit of a problem for the human mind which likes to collect and nail down facts, because all the facts are constantly changing. For example, the world keeps changing in size. Because the earth is constantly moving through the cosmos, its context in cosmic radiation is always different. Every atom is constantly changing in its level of vibration, and so are the forms composed of these atoms. And so, no matter how carefully outer phenomena are measured, they will continue to change. There can be no fixed inventory of knowledge.
Who we really are is eternal Spirit, the animating force that governs the entire Universe and beyond. By choosing a small identity, the ego, we are basically ensuring that our lives will be full of conflict, resistance and judgment. Not a recipe for happiness, is it? But, through social conditioning, the media, our parents, and other forces, we are deeply convinced that life is just a fickle series of situations where we need to manipulate, plan, and persuade others, so that we can get our needs satisfied. But our needs are ego-based. They cannot ever fully be satisfied because the ego loves conflict and it resists what is in its quest to get what it needs from the external world. Tolle talks about the existence of a pain body which is the collective experience of a person (plus the accumulated experience of the human race) in ego identity throughout the millennia.
Egos, as a result of this accumulated pain, are hardly ever satisfied with the way things are; they want to make them better, according to some model of the mind (the frame or what we have called BAV — beliefs, attitudes and values). So, the ego identity is perpetually unsatisfied, irritated, feeling put upon. One of the main messages of this book is, that, to gain real happiness, the ego must be transcended and an identity in Spirit must be experientially realized.
One excellent tool for identifying the traps of ego for each of nine distinct personality types is called the Enneagram. It is a wonderful tool for self-observation and self-inquiry. One of the tricks of the ego is that it operates under the level of conscious awareness — in other words, when you are in the ego's grip, you are on automatic. You react to what the ego thinks is bad, you are attracted to what the ego likes, and so forth. By identifying your Enneagram type, you can begin to observe yourself acting on automatic in a certain, predictable, patterned way and then choose to change your behavior. More on this valuable tool in Chapter 2.
It is also important to point out at this juncture that the ego is not our enemy. It is not inherently bad; it is just an inaccurate picture of who we are in truth. It is a story we made up with a set of BAV to support this story of me as a separate entity. So, we don't need to kill or oppose the ego in any way; we just need to transcend it by realizing, at a deep level, that who we are is Spirit in a human form that has a mind, body and emotions to help us navigate in third-dimensional reality. Then, when we live deliberately with this awareness, the ego can do its machinations and we can just smile as we would with an infant acting up.
The Ego and Vibrational Reality
One of the principles in a new book called Perfect Love is this: You can choose to operate though your Spirit self or your ego self by raising or lowering your vibration. (Free e-class, "Perfect Love 101"). The authors explain:
'Vibration' is the term we use to describe to what extent you are feeling the presence of your Spirit self-how much love, joy, peace, compassion, bliss or any number of Spirit qualities you are feeling in the moment.. If these are not present, your vibration is 'low' and your ego self is running the roost. If your vibration is high, Spirit is present and thriving. Believe it or not, you do not need to spend any significant time in a low vibration, connected to the ego and disconnected from Spirit, no matter how strong the message or sensations might be. You truly have the ability to think and feel higher. You can choose to raise your vibration.
Principle: To have the highest vibration possible, you can develop the ability to notice what the ego is saying to you, then choose not to listen to it or act upon what it says. This is what I have called the observer self — the part of you that can detach and watch the ego do its thing. The authors go on to say:
The moment you begin to listen to the ego's broadcasts, you will feel your positive energy dwindle. The more you listen, the more your energy will plummet. The beauty of where we are now in our evolution as human beings is we have the capacity to choose our thoughts. Well, these are random thoughts, triggered by some environmental circumstance or some thought. We can literally say to ourselves:' No, I don't wish to spend time listening to this. I'm choosing to go higher.' We simply need to begin doing so on a regular basis. We are used to our thoughts choosing us instead of us choosing them. When a low vibration, ego-based thought comes to call, you can focus your attention away from it onto another, more positive one.
(NOTE: This is exactly what the Ascension attitudes do on a regular basis-see Chapter 4)
Principle: Once you are able to observe and notice what the ego is saying to you, you do not have to speak or act upon that low vibration thought or feeling. Again, here is the observer self — the witness of your behavior.
Of course, the ego will do its best to convince you that you should. It will be the source of thoughts like 'I must make my opinion known on this!' or 'I'm right and he/she is wrong!' It will want you to give voice to all your thoughts and feelings, implying that what is spoken will increase understanding. In fact, the opposite usually occurs. Once you allow the ego to take over, everything goes downhill from there, especially your intimate relationships.
The key here is to remember who you are. Once the small, fear-based ego takes over, you will be convinced that this is who you are — even with all the evidence you have of the presence of a greater, Spirit self. You need to catch the ego before it takes hold; once that happens, it is tough, though not impossible, to break its spell on you.
Here is how I had a FrameShifting experience with this. A while back, I had an experience that really got me into my ego self. I was driving north on a freeway in Chicago, rushing to meet my son for an optometrist's appointment in a northern suburb. I was speeding and a cop pulled me over. I was only going 62 in a 55 zone, so he gave me a warning. As I walked back to my car, my mind went to how late I was and I totally missed the car that was swerving into me. The car hit my right ankle, tore off the driver's door and propelled me over the hood and onto the pavement, staring into the grille of my car. I literally could have been killed!
This is one of many instances where my guardian angels helped me out. Anyway, the cop was still there and saw the whole thing. He called the ambulance and covered me up with a blanket to prevent shock. I saw my ankle, which was broken in several places; it was twisted 90 degrees. The ambulance drivers were on strike in Chicago at that time so a dogcatcher came to take me to the hospital. Boy, was I feeling like a victim! The woman who hit me had no insurance, my leg was broken, every bump of the dog catcher's van hurt me and then they set the leg at the hospital. I could have easily played this up as life doing it to me. Well, I consciously chose NOT to do this and I got myself some crutches and got on with my life. I taught classes, and lived fully. Six weeks later, I got rid of the cast and went on my way. This was a conscious choice to leave my ego-self and move into my spirit-self.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "FrameShifting"
by .
Copyright © 2010 David K. Banner, PhD..
Excerpted by permission of Loving Healing Press, Inc..
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