If you take a look at your life you would see so many roles that you took.I am a mother , I am a daughter, I am an IT professional , I am the son etc
So many "I am so and so" roles.
Even though you never explicitly state this, it is these roles that create the thoughts in your mind. If you didn't have the root thought " I am this body". These roles make no sense. When you work , you use your hands , brain etc to function. But this is taken same as "you" by the mind.It is from these that you say "I am an engineer", instead of saying my hands and brain worked.
All the successes of your brain and hand become yours. Somebody praises you for the work you feel elated, somebody gives you a memo you are worried to the max.
Does the work correspond to you ?. Or is it that the equipment called the body carried it out for the real you?
If it is so what is so great about the work ?. An equipment can always work .
Your eyes are just a sophisticated video camera. Your brain a big computer. You own that for the time being. But YOU ARE NOT THAT.
See, how from disowning and stepping back a bit has eased your relative problems in that role.
Your children come from your body . So you say my children and other's children are not yours. So all these roles are created out of the ego.
Aham means self and akar means shape. When the Aham takes a shape it is Ahamkar.
When the Aham doesnt have a shape it is the essential existence or the atman.
The ego meta-morphs into different roles in your life. Each of these roles create a set of duties, responsibilities, desires expectations failures and so on.
As a mother you start to think about your child all the time which starts the attachment in you. This attachment leads to various desires for the child. You want the child to be so and so , you want to do so and so. See how this sea of samsara is created out of just an identity.
Take any incident in your life and trace it back to its root, you would see an identity that you took and which in turn leads to the ego.
The mind only works with the help of this ego. You can say that the foundation of the mind is the ego. All the various structures in the mind come from the basis.
The body too is affected by the mind and its functions. If you are tense, your heart reflects it , your sweat glands and various hormones in the body too. When the body is thus affected , your mind becomes more pathetic. It now has new worries about the body also. So many people die of heart attack because of the stress creating havoc in their systems.
Since the mind has to rely on something slippery that it has to catch hold of your attention all the time. If it doesn't, the identity would also slip away.
If the identity slips you feel blank and that is what happens when you are mentally challenged. So in order to avoid that the mind starts building a system of lies. These lies create a virtual reality for you which you are attracted to and what is worse you start firmly believing in .
One of the tricks it uses is to superpose a previous incident in your life on a current situation. Suppose you had a nice child hood where everything was peaceful and serene. Suddenly your life takes a turn and you are subject to new realities of life. What the mind does is this. It superposes the old child hood days ( nostalgia) onto the current situation. It creates a new set of thoughts called comparison and respond . You assess the person based on your memories rather than on the facts. By doing this, the mind can hold onto the identity that it has created. The identity is how you existed as a body some years ago and now.
The opposite is also common. You could have had a troubled childhood and you can superpose that on a person and start suspecting him or her.
Another form of superposition is value superposition. If suppose you value money too much. Money has a value but if you value more than what is worth , it creates lot of new thoughts.
Fear is also created out of a projection into the future. Your body would be projected out into the future and analysed. This problem of fear also creates an anxiety now.
This living out of the moment is its way. When you have the correct identity is that ,you don't have a past or future identity that you can compare. Each moment is fresh and new. There is only the current moment in its full glory. Memories exist only of the facts not of the narrations or story lines.
A great yoga master once told us , the whole of yoga can be stated as perceiving reality just as it is without any interpretations.
What is the solution to this identity crisis?.
It is rather simple. Trace the identity and find out whether it is a real identity or an illusory one. The sages or the spiritual scientists have found that the ego is the illusory identity because it never can last. In deep sleep there is no sense of body, in dream there is an imaginary sense of body. So the ego takes a different shape in those states. Obviously we don't die when we sleep or dream. So if the identity has to correspond to those states also it cannot be the ego because the ego is totally different from the waking state.
That explains why we have all these problems. It is clutching onto a straw when you are drowning. The slippery identity is what made all the issues.
So not only is the solution according to what spiritual life says but also is essential even if you don't take that path.
The practice of self realization can be likened to the dark room analogy that we said earlier. The dark room is lightened by a mirror which lies outside the dark room. The mirror just reflects the sun light into the dark room. A person can see the objects in the room using this reflected light. But if he were curios he would follow the light beam onto the mirror and finally onto the understanding that it is the sun.
Similarly we need a system which would help us to trace to the root feeling of " I am". without the roles and identities. This is our real identity . ( Note that there is nothing after I am)
Note carefully what i said here . If we trace all our thoughts in the mind what we would reach " I am this body". We need to trace one more step backward, then only we reach " I am".
When we do that we come out of our mind since we have digged inside the foundation of mind .
This is the reason why the process is difficult and that is the reason why we have been oblivious.
When you reach that "I am " state prior to the role formations, and identify that the real me is that, then you cannot create problems even if you wanted to.
An example to this technique is the following .
Suppose someone asks you " what is in this book?".
What do you do ?. You open and read the book. You don't go on repeating "what is in this book ?" what is in this book?"......
Just like that the principal way is to investigate who " I am" by feeling inside our being penetrating the mind . We dont repeat " I am" "I am" "I am" and so on.
Meditation is the way to reach your state prior to the role formations.( You are opening yourself)
What is the real essence of me?From where does all these things come ?. what is the correct me?. What came before these roles?
You have to start the journey inward .....
Here is a hint to watch your mind. When you are thinking two things happen.
One you are a producer of the thoughts. Second is, you are the experiencer of the thoughts.
The first can be absent at times, however the second is always there.
In short whatever you are thinking or feeling, it just reminds of the fact that we exist. That is all. This feeling is there in our mental background.
That is the only truth in this whole business. Everything else is created artificially.
This is your "I am". Hold on to that. Turn your attention to that and discard everything else.
I told you the other day any form of prayer is wrong. This is because when we pray to an outward image of some absolute reality , we are again moving away from our self. Moving outward is the familiar way of the ego. It destroys our goal of reaching towards the inner self which really is the true reality. So if you want to turn your attention inward , you have to come out of this habit. Even though i may seem to say something paradoxical, while talking about spiritual practice, you would understand as we move forward.
There is only this current moment that we exist. The last second we have already died. The next second, we could potentially die. So only moment "I am " is this current moment.
So the "I am " is nothing but the current moment!!!!!.
Ego is an act of doing while the self is art of being
So many "I am so and so" roles.
Even though you never explicitly state this, it is these roles that create the thoughts in your mind. If you didn't have the root thought " I am this body". These roles make no sense. When you work , you use your hands , brain etc to function. But this is taken same as "you" by the mind.It is from these that you say "I am an engineer", instead of saying my hands and brain worked.
All the successes of your brain and hand become yours. Somebody praises you for the work you feel elated, somebody gives you a memo you are worried to the max.
Does the work correspond to you ?. Or is it that the equipment called the body carried it out for the real you?
If it is so what is so great about the work ?. An equipment can always work .
Your eyes are just a sophisticated video camera. Your brain a big computer. You own that for the time being. But YOU ARE NOT THAT.
See, how from disowning and stepping back a bit has eased your relative problems in that role.
Your children come from your body . So you say my children and other's children are not yours. So all these roles are created out of the ego.
Aham means self and akar means shape. When the Aham takes a shape it is Ahamkar.
When the Aham doesnt have a shape it is the essential existence or the atman.
The ego meta-morphs into different roles in your life. Each of these roles create a set of duties, responsibilities, desires expectations failures and so on.
As a mother you start to think about your child all the time which starts the attachment in you. This attachment leads to various desires for the child. You want the child to be so and so , you want to do so and so. See how this sea of samsara is created out of just an identity.
Take any incident in your life and trace it back to its root, you would see an identity that you took and which in turn leads to the ego.
The mind only works with the help of this ego. You can say that the foundation of the mind is the ego. All the various structures in the mind come from the basis.
The body too is affected by the mind and its functions. If you are tense, your heart reflects it , your sweat glands and various hormones in the body too. When the body is thus affected , your mind becomes more pathetic. It now has new worries about the body also. So many people die of heart attack because of the stress creating havoc in their systems.
Since the mind has to rely on something slippery that it has to catch hold of your attention all the time. If it doesn't, the identity would also slip away.
If the identity slips you feel blank and that is what happens when you are mentally challenged. So in order to avoid that the mind starts building a system of lies. These lies create a virtual reality for you which you are attracted to and what is worse you start firmly believing in .
One of the tricks it uses is to superpose a previous incident in your life on a current situation. Suppose you had a nice child hood where everything was peaceful and serene. Suddenly your life takes a turn and you are subject to new realities of life. What the mind does is this. It superposes the old child hood days ( nostalgia) onto the current situation. It creates a new set of thoughts called comparison and respond . You assess the person based on your memories rather than on the facts. By doing this, the mind can hold onto the identity that it has created. The identity is how you existed as a body some years ago and now.
The opposite is also common. You could have had a troubled childhood and you can superpose that on a person and start suspecting him or her.
Another form of superposition is value superposition. If suppose you value money too much. Money has a value but if you value more than what is worth , it creates lot of new thoughts.
Fear is also created out of a projection into the future. Your body would be projected out into the future and analysed. This problem of fear also creates an anxiety now.
This living out of the moment is its way. When you have the correct identity is that ,you don't have a past or future identity that you can compare. Each moment is fresh and new. There is only the current moment in its full glory. Memories exist only of the facts not of the narrations or story lines.
A great yoga master once told us , the whole of yoga can be stated as perceiving reality just as it is without any interpretations.
What is the solution to this identity crisis?.
It is rather simple. Trace the identity and find out whether it is a real identity or an illusory one. The sages or the spiritual scientists have found that the ego is the illusory identity because it never can last. In deep sleep there is no sense of body, in dream there is an imaginary sense of body. So the ego takes a different shape in those states. Obviously we don't die when we sleep or dream. So if the identity has to correspond to those states also it cannot be the ego because the ego is totally different from the waking state.
That explains why we have all these problems. It is clutching onto a straw when you are drowning. The slippery identity is what made all the issues.
So not only is the solution according to what spiritual life says but also is essential even if you don't take that path.
The practice of self realization can be likened to the dark room analogy that we said earlier. The dark room is lightened by a mirror which lies outside the dark room. The mirror just reflects the sun light into the dark room. A person can see the objects in the room using this reflected light. But if he were curios he would follow the light beam onto the mirror and finally onto the understanding that it is the sun.
Similarly we need a system which would help us to trace to the root feeling of " I am". without the roles and identities. This is our real identity . ( Note that there is nothing after I am)
Note carefully what i said here . If we trace all our thoughts in the mind what we would reach " I am this body". We need to trace one more step backward, then only we reach " I am".
When we do that we come out of our mind since we have digged inside the foundation of mind .
This is the reason why the process is difficult and that is the reason why we have been oblivious.
When you reach that "I am " state prior to the role formations, and identify that the real me is that, then you cannot create problems even if you wanted to.
An example to this technique is the following .
Suppose someone asks you " what is in this book?".
What do you do ?. You open and read the book. You don't go on repeating "what is in this book ?" what is in this book?"......
Just like that the principal way is to investigate who " I am" by feeling inside our being penetrating the mind . We dont repeat " I am" "I am" "I am" and so on.
Meditation is the way to reach your state prior to the role formations.( You are opening yourself)
What is the real essence of me?From where does all these things come ?. what is the correct me?. What came before these roles?
You have to start the journey inward .....
Here is a hint to watch your mind. When you are thinking two things happen.
One you are a producer of the thoughts. Second is, you are the experiencer of the thoughts.
The first can be absent at times, however the second is always there.
In short whatever you are thinking or feeling, it just reminds of the fact that we exist. That is all. This feeling is there in our mental background.
That is the only truth in this whole business. Everything else is created artificially.
This is your "I am". Hold on to that. Turn your attention to that and discard everything else.
I told you the other day any form of prayer is wrong. This is because when we pray to an outward image of some absolute reality , we are again moving away from our self. Moving outward is the familiar way of the ego. It destroys our goal of reaching towards the inner self which really is the true reality. So if you want to turn your attention inward , you have to come out of this habit. Even though i may seem to say something paradoxical, while talking about spiritual practice, you would understand as we move forward.
There is only this current moment that we exist. The last second we have already died. The next second, we could potentially die. So only moment "I am " is this current moment.
So the "I am " is nothing but the current moment!!!!!.
Ego is an act of doing while the self is art of being
No comments:
Post a Comment