I love to study the ego. I have read many books that discuss this topic and how to move beyond it but the one I'm reading now is by Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth; Awakening to Your Life's Purpose.
From the book . .
"Ego is always identification with form, seeking yourself and thereby losing yourself in some form. Forms are not just material objects and physical bodies. More fundamental than the external forms - things and bodies -are the thought forms that continuously arise in the field of consciousness. What you may be aware of as a voice in your head that never stops speaking is the stream of incessant and compulsive thinking. When every thought absorbs your attention completely, when you are so identified with the voice in your head and the emotions that accompany it that you lose yourself in every thought and every emotion, then you are totally identified with form and therefore in the grip of ego."
"Once you realize what the ego is and how it works [you will find peace]. When forms that you had identified with, that gave you your sense of self, collapse or are taken away, it can lead to a collapse of the ego, since ego is identification with form. When there is nothing to identify with anymore, who are you? When forms around you die or death approaches, your sense of Beingness, of I Am, is freed from it's entanglement with form: Spirit is released from its imprisonment. You realize your essential identity as formless, as an all-pervasive Presence, of Being prior to all forms, all identifications. You realize your true identity as consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness had identified with. That's the peace of God. The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am."
4 comments:
This is very heavy. I will need some time with this one.
I think it goes hand in hand with your posting about your fall. When that happened to you, certain things that you had identified with and that gave you a sense of self, vanity for one, fell away and you experienced peace. There was nothing left at that moment but Being.
This is one of those moments I feel so out of your league. I know it doesn't seem to bother you but I feel like an idiot when I read this because I can't seem to process one sentence. This is a compliment to you; you have not lost it, you are still very intelligent, probably more so since you have became a mother, not less.
You are not an idiot and we are in the same league. I think this is just a different way of talking about achieving peace and connecting with God and I don't really think it's that much different than what you try to achieve with your religion. It is just in a context you are not familiar with. I think taking it out of the context of the book also makes it harder to understand. We can discuss it sometime in person if you are interested . . . xo
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