Making of Ego

Making of Ego

The mind lives in the past.

It can think of something only if it knows about it.

(You can never think about my grandson if I never showed you his picture).

Even when the mind encounters new objects, people, or situations, it still compares them to something similar it has stored in memory and then decides.

Even the future it projects is based on its past experiences.

(It wants to repeat the good ones and avoid the bad ones.)

So, when the mind is exposed to something, it stores it as a memory, and then calls it knowledge.

With repetitive thoughts, this knowledge becomes a firm belief and, eventually, a hard, unshakable truth.

Why does the mind not give up its beliefs?

Because knowledge is all that the mind has: no hard, real, anything, except information.

To let go of its beliefs feels like a death to the mind, and even the mind doesn’t want to die (even though it is nothing more than a dust cloud – gubbara).

And the worst belief it has been storing is: “I am this body.”

When pure consciousness in a child was exposed to the body for the first time (around age 2 1/2-3 years), it picked it up as “I” (because the child’s consciousness did not know itself as the real self).

Since then, this mistake has piled up day after day, thought after thought, and now it has become an unshakable truth for all of us.

And that is our Ego that we are dealing with right now.
So, Ego is not a thing; it is a belief only, an ignorance of the mind.

With the first step itself (believing the body as us), we started our journey of ignorance and have been traveling that path all along.

Every single step taken since that first step has been wrong, because the first step was wrong.

This shows how profound our ignorance is.

Everything that we have done so far to protect or pamper the Ego, everything that we have gathered in life, has been wrong, all because of the first mistake.

The solution to ignorance is not to remove it (because it really does not exist), but to expose it to the truth.

(Just the way the solution for darkness is throwing a light on it, not fighting with it).

And that is meditation.

The mind is an activity.
Meditating is rest.

Sinking deep within, remaining fully aware, walking away from the mind, reveals the pure existence itself (the AMness) as a solid truth.

AMness is not a thought; it is a simple realization of the truth.

Staying in AMness brings peace and tranquility – the shunya state.

You are that Shunya state, not the Ego.

Ego was a mistake; Shunyata is the truth.

Now comes the next and best phase of the spiritual path; immerse the same mind now in the calmness of the Shunya state.

Thoughts will come and go; don’t try to stop them. Remain a calm witness, and realize, “That is not me.”

Desires will still arise; ignore them, because that is not you.

Anger will still arise, but realize that’s not you either.

Little by little the Ego will loosen its grip on you, and you will start living a peaceful life.

The regrets of the past, anxieties of the future, fantasies, desires, etc., which were byproducts of the dualistic life will give way to the non-dual life of Oneness.

You will no longer be a bickering cloud; you will find yourself to be an infinite, eternal sky.