Years ago I used to visit and have Satsang with a Surat
Shabd Yoga Master who first introduced me to the truth that the ego is not the
thing that is permanent and as we have spiritual struggles; oftentimes it is
because we are hooked in to thinking that we are those ego selves and we were
best served by not listening to the demands of the ego too much. Her sister once said in conversation that
many who believe in reincarnation get confused because they believe it is the
personality that reincarnates when it is not.
That was decades ago, so I've had a little bit of time to think about
that.
In my personal spiritual growth and amazing experiences, I've
come to experience who I am underneath the personality / ego / mind stuff
/brain from time to time. It waxes and
wanes with my meditative practice. I and
you are that eternal light and consciousness that propels physical form forth.
What hasn't been elaborated enough for me in my circles is
the value of the ego / brain stuff in this physical explicit nature of
reality. However, Alan Watts talks of
music and the strings of a harp and how if all the strings would be played at
once, it is muddy but if none are played, it is silence. We and
the universe need to be a combination of sound and silence to make a song. Even though I am understanding the
illusory states that we are all engaged in, I am convinced that our ego selves
and the way we live our lives in temporal existence is just as important as the
intelligent consciousness of the primal stuff that bore us. Why would this implicate order of
intelligence manifest in to explicate and coarser reality that is comprised of
matter and brain to produce thoughts, awareness, and choice?
Daniel Dennett, a philosopher and cognitive scientist wrote
a book entitled “Freedom Evolves” in which he addresses that free will is a
human thing and required evolution in order for it happen. It makes sense. We see in everyday situations where some
people whom we know could make things happen and don’t believe they have the
ability just might not have found the way to exercise that free will. It is true that money does unfortunately buy
freedoms that those without money do not get.
I believe this is changing. I
believe people are waking up. I believe
that it is in the waking up that we are able to gain more awareness and it is
in that awareness that we realize more of our free will for ourselves, others
and the planet.
This morning I was half awake half asleep enjoying a hypnagogic
dream. An aspect of this hypnagogic dream
was there were parallel thoughts running in comparison and relationship to each
other. I was watching a tree branch with
leaves bud forth and older leaves dying out and thinking of life as shared,
self-replicating, but improved as more evolved and having new intelligence. The new life was clean and clear with unadulterated
perspectives to experience life fresh and from where they had burst. The energy from the old was moving through to
the outer like sap, and generations of people and improvement upon self similar
entities in evolution – and the shared spirit / consciousness behind feels like
it does the same thing – grows and does more miraculous living within the
implicate “spirit” world. It was the same shared energy source and I
was feeling this sense of reincarnation in that nothing and nobody is a
discrete personality or ego which moves on into a next life, but a purified
blend of fresh knowledge and intelligence received from previous lives without
the biases that ego would have.
The laws of Karma, I don’t know. Perhaps if you make some doo doo in your
spiritual stream, then you have to deal with it down your own pathway. HA!
So the answer to my question of why have ego anyway, is I
believe it is to experience life, and to beautifully be the stuff outside that moves the stuff inside along. The explicate physicality feeds back in to
the implicate spirituality (if one were to choose to look at this dualistically). [Personally, I believe it is a continuum and
that it is only our instrumentation that cuts it from physical to
nonphysical. It is within ranges of
frequency that we hear sounds, and in the cosmic music of things, we experience
the silence with the song.]
It is in our egos that we can find awareness and therefore free
will. We can choose to nurture, or we
can choose to tear down. I am always
astounded to find seemingly “spiritual” people enjoying “good murder mysteries”,
watching TV that involves crazy murders and playing games that involves
violence. Then, why are we so shocked
when our young kids kill and torment violently?
We have shat down our spiritual highway so why wouldn't it be
toxic? I believe these ways do not
create the spiritual ground of peace and love if we continue to let our egos
and brain stuff engage in such crap.
Do you believe you have free will? In what areas? What can you choose to do for your
environment in physical reality and the spiritual ground from which sustains
us?
