Ego: The Greatest Barrier
A Vedic astrologer recently told me that the only thing between me and enlightenment was my ego. My immediate (and not very spiritual) thought was "duh"!! But, second thoughts quickly followed. For all my noodling in things spiritual, I always return to the comfort of very "me" centered thoughts and actions. My current consciousness can't conceive of what it would be like to reach that goal of absolutely "no-I." The tricky thing about enlightenment appears to be that once you think you've found it - you probably need to start all over again!! So, just how great is enlightenment if you can't return to what you know as "yourself" to acknowledge that, "yes, indeed - I am enlightened now – hurray for me!" Where is the fun for (here we go folks), the EGO?!!
We are so entrenched in the ego as our frame of reference. Andrew Cohen in his article The Higher We says that "Ego is the deeply felt sense of being separate and superior. Indeed, it is an emotional and psychological compulsion to see and feel the self as being separate from and superior to the other, the world, and the whole universe (1)." If we are honest with ourselves, one of the motivations to pursue enlightenment is the desire to see ourselves as having the inside track on this thing called life. Of course, purer motives exist alongside coarser ones, but the ego is a powerful trickster and leads us through many a merry chase. A predicament many of us have encountered is that as our desire for oneness increases, our resistance to the “un-spiritual” may also increase - leaving us in the same dense ego-forest we were when we started!
In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna describes the characteristics of a Sage: "He who neither rejoices nor hates nor grieves nor desires, renouncing good and evil (treating both as the same), full of devotion, he is dear to Me” (2). In A Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment, Thaddeus Golas suggests that any resistance in our body/mind manifests as density - keeping us from being "light." As physical beings in a body, he theorizes that there are a host of things we are resisting and for each idea we are unable to love, or understand, we create density in that form. "What you cannot conceive of in your awareness, you will stumble over in your path" (3).
How many times have we had good intentions that produce the exact opposite result from what we wanted to achieve? The classic example is the sexual renunciant who turns to sexual perversion. Anytime we (our ego) deny or suppress something, we become a magnet for that to manifest in our lives until we achieve a balance. Once you figure this out, life becomes a richer experience as discomfort is now an impetus to know yourself better rather than just a 'pain in the neck' or wherever imbalance is finding its home!
Unfortunately, it is not enough to know ourselves - we have to love ourselves as well, to release the pattern of resistance. Here is a typical pattern: "I resist people who are successful because it makes me feel less successful. I manifest this by displaying passive aggressive behavior towards those I consider more successful than myself. This behavior distances me from my peers and people I admire which keeps me from being successful, entrenching the pattern."
An exercise out of this quagmire might look like this:
1. Reframing yourself in relation to those who you admire: "A has a real talent for achieving X. I have a talent for achieving Y but not so much for X. If I can learn about X from A and in the process share my knowledge of Y, we can creatively come up with a combined Z."
2. Accepting that where you are and where the other is in life is just perfect and that even though it may not seem that way right now, we are all equal - only our perceptions are different.
3. Love yourself for the fact that you have been working under the perception that you are not equal.
4. When you feel you are successful at having released your pattern, this is the time to be really careful! Now you may see that pattern in others and judge them for it or try to change them to see that your new vision is the right one to have. Instead of judgment, work on loving others for having that pattern!!
------------References and Recommendations------------------------------------------------------------
1). Cohen, Andrew. The Higher We. Retrieved from: http://www.wie.org/j26/higher-we.asp on January 2nd, 2006. Great article from the founder of What is Enlightenment magazine.
2). Raeside, Ian MP (Foreword), Swami Kripananda, Tulpule, Shankar Gopal (Introduction), 1999. (Page 172). Jnaneshwar's Gita : A Rendering of the Jnaneshwari. Siddha Yoga Publications. Poetically beautiful 13th century interpretation and commentary of the Bhagavad-Gita translated by Swami Kripananda for today’s English reader.
3). Golas, Thaddeus, 1972. A Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment. Read this great little book free online at: http://freespace.virgin.net/sarah.peter.nelson/lazyman/lazyman.html#contents. References to LSD and other substances add color to the time-frame reference in this book (penned at the end of the “sixties”) and don’t detract from the very real good advice in this volume.