20 Mar Ego was the Helper; Ego is the Bar – March 21 2020
[T]he ego has to be first accepted as though it is a reality in order to be dealt with before it can be transcended. At the higher levels, the ego is seen to be an illusion, without any innate reality.
Dr. David Hawkins,
I: Reality and Subjectivity
Ego was the helper; Ego is the bar.
Sri Aurobindo,
Aphorisms
The ego is how we come to know ourselves. The ‘terrible twos’ is that time in development when I begin to recognize that I am separate from the world, that wanting my mother to do something does not make it happen. Thus begins my movement toward individuation, self-reliance, self-identity. I learn how to distinguish myself from others, from the crowd. How to stand out. How to excel, or if not, then how to not even get involved in these games other humans are playing. I learn where I fit, how I fit. What are my gifts, what are my shortcomings. What is my tribe, who are my people. Who reflects me to myself most fully.
And just when I start to think I’m getting this thing figured out, I discover that in order to continue to grow and to evolve I have to step beyond each of these differentiating qualities to the place where I am at-one-with everyone and everything. I must begin to transcend all these ideas of difference in order to know myself as the Oneness, as Nature, as Life Itself.
Life is made up of these two selves: our small self individuality, and our large Self universality. Our journey in life is first to know the one absolutely so that we may transcend it and be the other. Know ourselves as ‘me,’ individuality, that I may then begin to know myself as ‘I,’ universality.
And then? And then to transcend even this duality and know myself as both, together. Individual and universal. At the same time.
Why? Because that’s the way it works. Because this movement, this learning, is the way of Life. Because the movement from knowing nothing, to individuation, to oneness, to All-ness, is the movement toward an ever greater, ever more expanded, ever more enjoyable experience of myself here in the world.
Today I will realize that no matter how loud the voice of the ego may be, there is something I am that is more. There is something I am that is beyond it. There is something I am growing toward, and if I simply choose to stop listening to the constant voice of the ego, in the silence there behind that voice I will begin to hear this something, and begin to recognize it as what I am.
