Seeing Through the Ego
Recently we had a Zen teacher visit our local sangha to give a talk, and she mentioned that when we all meditate together, we can experience the oneness of our existence. As I listened to her, I felt a ring of familiarity in me, but not in the same context.
I explained to her that while I know that feeling well, as I experience it with the ocean, the denizens of the sea, the forest and its trees and inhabitants, I have never felt that with fellow human beings, that feeling of non-separation, of all being one, of just experiencing. “How come I can connect with nature in this way and not with people?” I asked.
She smiled, and asked me, “Why do you think?” Zen teachers are good at responding with questions to force you to answer yourself. And as she asked, I knew. “Because of ego, because of the insecurities that arise when I’m around people, because of the judgments, the concerns, the ideas that fortify a sense of self.”
She nodded. “And where does ego go when you’re in the forest or the sea?”
“It dissolves. It does not arise. I have no judgments. I’m not concerned about what nature thinks of me. There are no opinions. Just open acceptance of what is there, what I find myself folded within, and thoughts of me are not to be found. There is no separation between me and the water, or the trees. We are all energy, merged in experience.”
And that apparently is also how we should be experiencing people, but because ego arises, that sense of this is me and that is you, our ideas and opinions about others, all of which are nothing but ideas, we disillusion ourselves.
Buddhism is not the only philosophy that focuses on not-self, or the need to see through the ego. On the contrary, this was understood before Buddha’s time.
I’ve been reading about various Eastern religions, and I’ve returned to reading about shaman and the witches of the old forest in Europe. In particular, a passage in the book Sorgitzak: Old Forest Craft jumped out at me recently as the author Veronica Cummer spoke about reclaiming the Blood, and what and who we truly are:
“You need to take yourself apart and put yourself back together again . . . leaving behind the parts that were never really you in the first place.” She then goes on to say, “No earthly thing can do it for you either, not money, not possessions, not sex nor drugs nor riches and success in the world. These are often, in fact, distractions from real fulfillment.”
That is to say, we must see through all the ways we construct this false self, so that we can be authentic and live within that oneness that our ego wants to cover up.
The Advaita is a spiritual path that focuses solely on dismantling the ego and the delusions we build in our minds that separate us from experience, nonduality. This is similar to the concept of not-self, or emptiness in Buddhism.
“There is no such thing as a healthy ego any more than there is a thing called healthy disease,” Sri Poonja
Furthermore, ego is not a thing that we must all have. Ego is a really a reaction. It’s the process of building this “I” “Me” and “Mine” through thoughts, ideas, emotions, etc. And the more fortified the ego ideas become in it’s vehemence to claim the I, the more separated we feel, the more insecure, and the more unhappy we are.
As I sit in meditation, it has become obvious to me that I am not my thoughts. They are transient, often at odds with each other, and often go against my best intentions. Ditto for emotions. They arise in response to stimuli to the body, or to events, but they are often contradictory, and very fleeting in nature. Thoughts often arise in response to emotions, and emotions arise in response to thoughts. All of these need not be followed. I can sit and watch the swarm of thoughts without taking interest any any individual thought or feeling. So, it’s easy for me to see that thoughts, feeling, and intellect are not me as long as I don’t identify with them or through them.
But I’m finding these days, it’s more of a struggle where the body is concerned. Pain can swoop us off our feed, so to speak. We awaken to what appears to be the same body every morning. Others respond to our looks in various ways. It’s hard not to identify through the body with body image issues, obsessions about health or lack there of, and the biggie for me, aging.
Of course, I plan on working at this more through my practice, continuing to read about the sages who have seen through their own persona to reality, and I’ll chisel away at what the ego process wants to latch onto.
It’s not hard to see through the BS of others. But seeing through our own, especially when ego is in full glory is even harder. It always come back to letting go, letting go, letting go, and observing what happens as we do so.
