The ego is confusing. It’s not your enemy. And you already know that very often it isn’t your friend. It can cause a lot of trouble.

If you have too much of it, you may be blind to it—while it’s obvious to everyone else. If you have too little, you can’t function in this world.

You can’t live without an ego; you have to have one, but it isn’t real. It is created moment to moment by a conversation you have in your head: one moment you’re wonderful, the next moment you shiver in fear.

This ego, the one that’s forever busy chasing what it desires and protecting itself from what it fears, is the ego of suffering.

The ego is baffling and mystifying, and if you don’t understand it, and educate it, it will be your master, instead of the servant it is meant to be. Then it will lead you around by the nose, through a lot of pain and loss to exactly nowhere.

You’ve heard all the stuff about transcending, or even  ‘killing the ego.’ And you’ve also heard that you need ‘ego strengths.’ So what is it? Do we need to get over it, or make it strong?

The answer is: both. You think that’s paradoxical? Definitely!

Okay, lets start with the basics.

At birth you emerge into this world from what has been called “The Ground of Being,” the womb of the universe. And at death, that’s where you go. It is the Self, the alpha and the omega, spirit, THAT which many people call God.

From there you can picture the journey of your existence as a circle that begins and ends in the Ground of Being.[1]

You can then divide this circle into two halves. The first part of life is about building the ego, coming to know who you are in this short time-span of your existence; it’s about going out into the world, about self-assertion, about being some body. The second half is about returning back home to our essence, to your origins, to spirit, to Self-realization, to eternity, oneness, and truth.

The “I” changes throughout this circular journey.

We can also divide the circle into three parts, three pie shapes. In childhood the ego begins as soon as you start to think. At the beginning of thought there is a mechanism that makes you continuously relate everything in your world to this “I.” You make up this thing called “I” as you think. You believe it’s a stable ‘thing,’ but it isn’t; it’s like an optical illusion of the mind that appears real.

This first third of the journey is the pre-personal stage. The roots of your beliefs of “I am………” are laid here, good and bad. You identify with your body, your likes and dislikes, your emotional habits and your personal history. You praise yourself and experience pride, and you condemn yourself and experience guilt. Most of this is subconscious and quite automatic. You struggle to be who you think you are meant to be, and you judge yourself as to how well you think you are doing. This, as I said, is the ego of suffering.

At this stage you are unconsciously still fused with the collective mind, and your thinking is deeply conditioned. You think in the way your family or clan, religion or nation told you to think. You are under the influence of an internalized voice that sounds like a controlling and critical parent. You have not yet developed a fully independent sense of yourself, a free way to make up your own mind.

For that you have to cut the restricting ‘umbilical cords’ that bind you to the ways of your upbringing. Until you do, you do not yet have a fully functioning ego. You’re part of the group mind. You’re also still close to spirit and that gives you comfort. But the danger here is that you may be prone to fundamentalist thinking.

Once you cut the ‘umbilical cord’, you move into the self-conscious stage, become a fully rational person and see the blossoming of your personal identity. You become an independently functioning individual, a “person” in your own right. No longer bound by the fear of being rejected by your group if you were to be fully yourself, you unfold your unique gifts and abilities.

This is the culmination of what Western psychology calls the development of ego-strengths. Rational and relatively independent in your views, you act and operate in your world.

Western culture generally assumes that this is the totality and aim of human development. Once you are a strong individual, you ‘have made it’ in the eyes of our culture; you are done. Therefore, of course, most individuals do not evolve much beyond this point. They are still in the grip of the ego of suffering, and remain far removed from the nurturing reality of the true Self.

This is now changing, as more and more of us realize that the highly developed ego is not the end of the line. And the ego itself feels it, as it matures. Where it has been fascinated with material life at first, now a sense of unease arises, an existential loneliness, disconnection and lack of fulfillment, or perhaps a deep, but indistinct yearning. These can easily turn into despair and trigger addictions and relationship problems.

Such lack of fulfillment is often mistaken for regular anxiety or depression—but that is not what it is, and it should not be treated that way. The ego has to suffer this basic lack of fulfillment, because it knows deep down that it, along with the body and all its worldly achievements, is going to die—although it tries hard to ignore that fact.

But rather than despair, this is the time when the individual needs to evolve further, and only entry into the next stage, the spiritual stage of development can resolve these problems.

This brings us to the third pie shape, the trans-personal stage. This part of the journey has been deeply studied by the world’s mystical traditions. Particularly Indian Vedanta and Tibetan Buddhism have elevated this inquiry to a profound and fascinating science.

As long as you operate exclusively through your rational mind, you will remain unaware of the reality of this higher development, because it goes beyond the ego, beyond the rational mind. But it does not deny rationality; it includes and transcends it. Here the mind can evolve into intuitive intellect and into divine intelligence.

It begins with experiences that lead you into the spiritual realm. At first these moments of peace, or deep joy, or your ability to perceive a deeper truth, are fleeting. To make them more permanent, you must develop an ability for stillness. Meditation is the best known and time-honored way to do that.

The first part of the spiritual journey is the exploration of ‘spiritual wonderland.’ You are fascinated by all kinds of exciting options, collect spiritual paraphernalia, move from teacher to teacher, read many books, and, all-in-all develop a very cool spiritual ego, which is not much different at all from the rational ego. It feels special about itself, either in a good or bad way, and in that it is absolutely commonplace.

But as you explore the spiritual realm, you build another kind of ego, the ego of aspiration. Now you feel drawn to real sadhana, to committed spiritual practice. This is how you can free yourself of the shadow elements, the habits of suffering which you have acquired earlier in life and which are the true source of your pain.

The higher reaches of spiritual realization will remain hidden to you until you do this work. But with the gradual easing of unconscious tensions, and with a greater and stable peace, comes the ability to look inward.

Now a great paradigm shift begins. You realize that who or what you thought you were was in fact a mistaken identity. Yes, the ego was useful enough for a while, just like the countless other identities you have built in past lives that are now gone and forgotten. And so will this one be gone in just a few years.

Now however this is not a source of despair, but of a great aspiration. You begin to intuit that you are in truth not this puny ego with its ongoing drama and self-importance, but the true Self, and your body and mind can serve as the perfect expression of divine presence in form.

You realize that you are not the body, but a ray of divine light that is reflected in you. And, going even further, you realize that this individual ray is one with the sun, the Self, the Source of infinite light.

In the expansion of this inner experience, the ego is transformed into the ego of the sage. Where it has formerly been opaque and confused, it now becomes transparent to the light. Where it has been a dictator, if not a tyrant at times, it now becomes your faithful and reliable servant.

Through the force of continued spiritual practice, sadhana, your being becomes the conduit of divine grace. The thinking mind with its judgments and stress dissolves and gives way to the intuitive intellect, which can run your worldly affairs perfectly.

The heart remains increasingly open and, since you are internally filled by the bliss of the Self, you can love freely. Your life becomes a life of joyful service to all beings around you, in whom you recognize the same presence of God that shines in you.

This is the way to absolute peace and to the fulfillment that does not die when the body is done. It is the realization of your true and immortal identity as the Self.

The ego evolves from being the source of much trouble to being a clear lens through which the presence of God shines into this world. How is it done? What are the mechanisms that are at work in this transformation? And what is the most crucial transformation from the ego of aspiration to the ego of the sage?  That is what we will discuss in Part 2.

We invite you to watch the video: The 3 Aspects of Ego by Ram Giri.
For more information visit our website www.Skillsforawakening.com

With love and gratitude,

Ram Giri 
and the Skills for Awakening Team

You would never do this to yourself consciously. You, like everyone else, do not like to suffer. And yet, you, like everybody else, are sometimes subjected to the hidden force of self-sabotage.

Committing yourself to a practice to awaken to your higher potential and to end the pain in your life is a sure way to activate this unconscious process. If you don’t want to fall prey to it, it is necessary to take a close look at the forces that will fight to maintain the status quo, that want to make sure your old level of pain is maintained. These are two-fold, the fear of change and the pain body.

Fear of Change

The unknown scares us, even when what is unknown is happiness or peace. Imagine living permanently in true freedom and joy. It would be like living in a different world, wouldn’t it? And stepping out of the zone of our habitual way of life can be very scary. When that fear arises we are likely to do something to prevent us from changing.

The Pain Body

The pain body is our unconscious tendency to cling to that part of our identity that is used to pain. “Who would I be without my pain?” is a difficult question for many to answer. We’re just so used to our difficulties.

Who hasn’t had the thought during very happy times, “This is too good to last!” who hasn’t noticed repetitive patterns of self-inflicted suffering? This is how we unconsciously call back our discomfort and do something that brings us pain. (You can read more about it here: http://skillsforawakening.com/teachings/the-pain-body/)

We create our own reality through our thinking and our emotional patterns. Unless we change them, the same problems are likely to happen again and again, including our tendency to self-sabotage. This is how we can stay stuck for a long time.

When you make the decision to take your life onto a higher level of functioning, the unconscious force of self-sabotage rears its head. It can come in many forms, all of them appearing completely convincing: You have no money, no time for it, the effort is too much trouble, or you get yourself distracted. Although these may be untrue pain body manifestations, they appear completely compelling to you.

Even more difficult to see are self-sabotage events that appear to come from outside: external interferences, family objections, accidents, illness, a sudden increase in problems or outright chaos and more can all be the outcome of your unconscious desire to reject your impulse to improve your life.

Some interesting self-sabotage events are completely unforeseeable events that interfere with your life. Most people would not ever suspect that such events can be brought on by their own subconscious – until such events repeat themselves at similar junctions in life. There are also what I call ‘metaphysical delusions,’ the conviction that grace will take care of you, that all is really fine, or that no action on your part is necessary. The truth of course is that grace comes to us in exact proportion to self-effort.

The resolution to this challenge comes when our fear of change and self-delusion gives way to the will and courage to change. This happens when our yearning to experience the true freedom of liberation from suffering has become stronger than the old habits of interference.

How does that happen? This inner maturing can be accomplished by two forces: by suffering and by a decision to do what is necessary to reach this freedom, aided by a deep yearning or desire for it. Yes, we have a choice here: if we are able to make the decision to free ourselves proactively from the inner obstructions, we can avoid the necessity for suffering to give us this motivation.

When we are thus no longer fully subjected to our pain body and the fear of change, we arrive at a true commitment to our freedom. This gives us the ability to listen to our internal wisdom and to follow the Heart, our inborn ability for self-love. It empties us of the small self, the contraction of the fear-based aspects of ego, and opens us to the astounding presence of the Higher Self. This alone is true freedom.

Namaste,

Ram Giri

“As the pace of our lives continues to be accelerated by a host of forces seemingly beyond our control, more and more of us are finding ourselves drawn to engage in meditation, in this radical act of being., this radical act of love, astonishing as that may seem given the materialistic ‘can do’, speed-obsessed, progress-obsessed, celebrity-and-other-people’s-lives-obsessed orientation of our culture. We are moving in the direction of meditative awareness for many reasons, not the least of which may be to maintain our sanity, to recover our perspective and sense of meaning, or simply to deal with the outrageous stress and insecurity of this age. By stopping and intentionally falling awake to how things are in this moment, purposefully, without succumbing to reaction or judgment and by working wisely with such occurrences, with a healthy dose of self-compassion when we do succumb, and by our willingness to take up residency for a time in the present moment in spite of all our plans and activities aimed at getting somewhere else, completing a project or pursuing desired objects or goals, we discover that such an act is both immensely, discouragingly difficult and yet utterly simple, profound, hugely possible after all, and restorative of mind and body, soul and spirit.

It is indeed a radical act of love just to sit down and be quiet for a time by yourself. Sitting down in this way is actually a way to take a stand in your life as it is right now, however it is. We take a stand here and now, by sitting down, and by sitting up. It is the challenge of this era to stay sane in an increasingly insane world.”

– Jon Kabat-Zinn from chapter “A Radical Act of Love” in his book “Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness”

I have a big day ahead of me today, a list of to do’s longer than my arm (and I have long arms) and lots of big decisions to make. So what did I do to get ready for it?

I rolled out of bed early and went for a bike ride and walk, then a jump in the pool; nothing special you might say. But what worked for me was the inner activity: I did my mantra unceasingly. When I sat down to breakfast, Julia, my partner, asked me what was the matter.

“Nothing,” I said, “I’m just very still.” And only then I noticed just how still I had become. In fact it was delicious. I knew what was ahead, but now I was on vacation. For a good hour my mind was on vacation and I was still.

Now, as I am typing this, I am ready for the day, invigorated and focused.

Using a mantra works best when you allow it to absorb all the other activities in the mind. Don’t suppress them, notice where the mind goes, be alert to the layers of thought underneath the mantra and then watch them go. It can also help to have a more complex mantra, a longer prayer, so the mind has to concentrate to not lose the thread. When you lose it, it is obvious and you can go right back to it.

Above all such a practice is about self- love. Be kind to yourself as you do it.

You can take such a mini-vacation many times in the day. It’s much healthier than a cigarette break; breathe deeply and feel good about it.

Ram Ram

A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness inner energies wake up and work miracles without effort on your part.
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

How does it start? Some day you have an experience and your world shifts. Suddenly – or gradually – you come to realize that Spirit is true, that there is a dimension of grace you can enter. At that moment God steps out of a book and becomes a real presence for you (even though you may not relate to a God, which is fine.)

The result is: You have entered spiritual life.

This experience can be a moment of deep inner peace, of being fully alive in the here and now; it may be an experience of emotional harmony or a great opening of the Heart. These are the kinds of decisive experiences after which your life may never be quite the same.

Then we go on a journey. We lose the experience and want it again. A yearning has been awakened. What can we do?

We learn about spiritual practice. We sit still for hours, turn our bodies into pretzels, make pilgrimages to teachers or shrines and especially read lots of books. It is all good.

And where do we end up when we finally arrive where we are going?

We end up once more in deep inner peace, being fully alive in the here and now; we feel again that emotional harmony or that great opening of the Heart.

We return to where we began, in grace, in the breath-taking presence of Being or God. Inside ourselves. In the core.

We end up where it all began – wiser, much more solid, our mind peaceful, our Heart vibrant, big and alive.

The journey is a cycle from you to you, from now to now. You get lost in the middle, even while trying to find yourself. You want to shorten the time it takes to get back to what you are seeking. You are confusing yourself by your seeking.

There are 10,000 things to do while trying to get back to that place of pure grace. Most go in circles. Which are the few that take you straight back to yourself? Which ones dissolve the internal tensions that keep you in internal exile from grace? Which ones can nurture you so deeply you get the stamina to face your own demons – and not in 10 life times, but now?

This journey is not a walk in the park, you may have noticed. It is the greatest adventure bar none open to human beings.

On this road you will have to face any terror your mind can dream up and overcome every habitual pain and confusion.

And the payoff is eternal life. No cheap goal by anyone’s standards.

So again the question: what can take you there? What can give you the access to the pure essence of this highest goal?

Perhaps not surprisingly it is the pursuit of the experiences that began it all. The experiences you will be established in when you have arrived, when you have crossed the ocean of confusion and pain to the other shore of divine bliss.

The essential practices are to step directly into the Promised Land. To stop the 10,000 distractions – and yes, even those that are labeled ‘spiritual practice’ – and enter the Heart, which in its unlimited richness is always waiting for you to come home.

Always waiting. Still waiting. YOU are in there, still waiting.

And I know, so many will read these words and not understand. So let me say it again:

Your Heart is available to you this moment. It is as far from you as the Now. It is the central core of space, as the Now is the core of time. The core contains everything. Why not return to that core in you now?

Oh no, so many say, “I have to continue my sadhana, my spiritual practice” and they wind their legs around their ears and sit their bottoms flat and read the 20^th book that tells them the same thing they cannot hear: It’s inside you now!

So go there! But you can’t. Your thoughts and emotions get in the way. You follow them rather than your hidden instinct that says “Stop it all. Stop. Listen to what he is saying. Let it come in. Maybe there is something to this…”

There are 3 skills you need: Clear the mind quickly and effectively. Bring your confused emotions to harmony. And drink from your Heart the Essence of love that you are secretly aching to feel.

It is the best kept secret in the world. It is secret because we keep it secret from ourselves. We have become lost in a trance state. Somehow we can say the words and believe them; “It’s all inside.” And still we don’t look. Still we don’t become still enough to feel the ravishing Heart Essence. Still we are lost.

I sit with people and I see myself in them, the way I was: tense, the body shifting, the mind not at rest. There is no space for peace to get in. There is no rest in pure love.

Not yet.

But if you want it, stop. Stop now. Make a huge foolish decision to love yourself absolutely! It makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.

This is a question many are debating, but it’s not a question for me. I have experienced it. I know. There is no doubt in my mind and the more I speak to other cancer survivors, the more stories I hear: Yes, definitely the body has the ability to free itself of cancer. It’s abilities are amazing.

When I was 23 I was diagnosed with Hodgkins disease, a deadly cancer that was untreatable at the time. I got a second opinion, and a third, and everyone said the same. I walked around under a death sentence. If you’ve been there yourself, you know how I felt… It was a very dark moment.

And then, suddenly one day, standing in the middle of a city, I had a deep internal spiritual experience. It gave me not hope, but the unshakable certainty that I was not going to die from this cancer. A great wave of profound unconditional love flooded my heart, which had been burdened almost to breaking by this threat to my life. And my heart opened again. And at that instant all the fear and stress and terror left and never came back.

I was at ease. The mind became peaceful again, and my emotions came into balance and harmony.

And right after that moment of freedom a prayer arose in me. I prayed from the bottom of my heart that one day I would be able to share with others this love, this life-giving, exhilarating, all-embracing love. It arose from within me. It was all around me. I was bathed in it and it didn’t depend on anyone, so no one could take it away.

That is the pure divine love every single one of us carries our hearts. It is the fundamental essence of who we are, and it is available at all times in the very core of our being, the ‘Heart cave’ in the middle of our chest.

This pure universal love in us is the most healing force in creation.

I knew it, I had experienced it, and my cancer melted away. It was an experience of grace which to this day I do not understand completely, but I know it was real. I am here after all, am I not? That’s quite real to me.

I knew then that I had work to do. It was a long journey to find the answer to my prayer. After 35 years of study and practice I began to share what I had found: the best and quickest ways we can discover this gift of healing and love in us.

No, I am not promising miracles. I am promising that you can free yourself of what burdens you, what shuts down your heart and what obstructs the healing in you.

And it is clear to me now that we can do it. We can open to this love in us. It is here. It is not out there as we have always assumed. It is here in the depth of our hearts from where it can heal us. And we can remove the stressful thoughts and emotions that obstruct it! And no, you don’t have to have cancer to do this.

This amazing way of freeing yourself of stress, fear and pain and of opening to universal love, is now at your finger tips in a wonderful online course. For 6 weeks you will get daily HeartSourcing meditations that train you systematically to live more and more out of your heart. And you will learn to unburden your heart with skills, that for me are nothing less than miraculous.

I sat in a cave in the Himalayas, meditating. And I noticed I couldn’t escape from myself. I brought all my ‘stuff’ with me into that cave, my stressful thoughts and emotions, and they just kept recycling. Meditation is great, I still do it every day, but I found it is slow compared to the new skills that we are gifted with now.

So if you want to clear your mind, live happily with your emotions and create the best internal environment to heal whatever is wrong with your body, this is as good as it gets. I know my prayer was heard. And I know there is a way we can live in love, in a solid way, as a lasting state, not a momentary glimpse that vanishes again all too soon.

This, and life itself, is the blessing I received and I would love to share with you as much of it as I possibly can.

……………..

To sign up for a FREE 10 day trial of the Course: “Complete Wellness and Deep Healing”…

….please go to BecomingWhole.com -  I’ll see you there!