Hi Nomad (not all who wonder are lost)

You mention that – the reality is that I’m in the present now… the reality is ‘you’ are always in the present. Its the only place ‘you’ can be. When you imagine the future you are bringing the future into the present.

Anyway if I understand, your saying that you can only quite your mind when you are focusing on goals and desire for the future? That your intention of meditation and awakening is to get control or this thing you call ego in order to achieve those desires?

There is a time for everything and this may not be the time worry about process. It may be enough just have started… and being open to learning.

Perhaps a place to start is to come into relationship with the ego. For many the ego is something we are ‘supposed’ to defeat. Its bad… however the ego plays a important role in becoming. Consciousness is a product of the experience tension. Here is a paradox for you – it takes a person with a healthy ego to detach the sense of self from the ego.  A weak ego will experience any attempt at detachment as trying to kill it and it will engage the ‘id’ to fight back.

Try to communicate a experience, to yourself or others without using the word ‘I’. You can’t. Notice that the ‘I’ is a construct of language, a symbol that points past it self to something we don’t quite see. Because we can’t see ‘it’ the error we make is mistaking this construct ‘I’ for the Self . We do this by attaching the ‘I’ to experience, emotions, desires, thoughts… we say and believe ‘I am the experience, I am the emotion = identification and attachment of the the construct of ‘I’  to a illusion which becomes ego – the ego believes ‘I am my ego’. It’s a difference getting to experience the emotion of sadness… and defining the ‘I’ as being the emotion of sadness.

One of the ideas behind meditation is to learn how to observe our thoughts, breathe… in time we notice that the ‘I’ is a constrict, a illusion. As we become mindful of this truth we learn to detach the ‘I’, the ego, from the emotion, thought, experience…  the mind becomes the still point.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by Peter.

Hi Nomad,

I understand where you’re coming from. But the thing is you can’t look at something that which you are – awakened presence.  (Title of the thread -“Can’t stop looking at awakening”). Looking at it will make you something separate from it.

If you have been trying to bring your attention back to the present moment, then I’m sure you have been following Eckhart Tolle’s teachings. Have you? Have you read any of his book(s)? If yes which one(s)?

I too have a similar kind of issue so can direct you with something or the other.

Why does everyone hate the ego? Why does the ego have to die?

The ego is our defence mechanism to cope with a rather shitty 3rd density world. Without it we become ultra sensitive and get walked on or ridiculed. Take no notice of ‘Spirit’. ‘Spirit’ does not live in a 3rd density world. Spirit is in the process of killing me, or rather, my Ego, which is essentially me and everything I identify with. It seems that the more I ‘trust the process’, to quote the usual psychobabble, the worse it gets and I often hit the drink or the painkillers. (To quote Trampled by Turtles: “I’ve finally found something to hold on to” -Codeine).

There are people on here who are under a delusion put forward by self-appointed gurus. Ego death IS brutal. Your whole persona is being slowly murdered. I occasionally go into terrible rages, or break down in tears ( all done in private, of course. I don’t want to end up in a mental hospital). I have also self-harmed. The person claiming that ego death doesn t have to be brutal is talking utter nonsense. At times I could have very easily stuck a knife in someone. That’s how bad it can get.

Best wishes,

Tannhauser