Is Ego Necessary??.....

Ego causes most of the problems we face in dealing with others. Once we get rid of it, our true nature emerges, says John Bendix



To analyse the breakdown of an intimate relationship is a daunting task. Is it worth the effort? No one can answer this except the person caught up in such a circumstance. Even then, no one can be sure if their efforts will give them a better understanding of this complex dynamics. By delving into the connections that people have in their relationships, more mysteries than truths expose themselves. We start to realise the many different lines of communication that are available to each partner. Which ones are used and the manner in which they are used are open to each individual and hence the complexity. There is no formula to predict how a relationship may turn out. But certain truths did present themselves to me. By necessity, i researched all the available data and case histories that dealt with the ‘walk away wife’ phenomenon. I wanted all the information possible to try and figure out why my wife of 21 years wanted out of our marriage. Certain questions kept coming back to me. Did she fall out of love with me just like that? Was it depression, mid-life crisis, hormonal imbalances? Was i looking for reasons or just excuses to explain a sudden marriage break-up? My sons and i were at a loss to come to any cognitive reasons for such irrational events. Then the truth hit me. There were no real answers or solutions on the conscious level of the mind. I had to go beyond the mind of thoughts to the core of the problem, the ego. The ego that the mind creates in order to give it a means to confront the onslaught of the outside world. A world that it feels threatened by. Certainly, fear has its place in the dissolution of relationships, just as it does in most of our activities. I began to sense her fears. Fear of the future, of being inadequate, of time slipping by. I examined my fear of the future, of being alone, of divorce procedures, of isolation from my children or raising them alone. I realised that time, contributes greatly to fear. The past no longer exists except as bits of memory and the future is not here and is only an image in our mind of what might be. The only time that really exists is the present moment. There are as many ways to view the world as there are persons in it. The point of perspective is not how you view it but from where you view it. Through the evolution of the brain of modern man, the mind was created. A mind that is aware of its own thoughts. The mind is also in-charge of protecting the organism it inhabits. Working with the automatic system, which controls involuntary responses and functions, it creates defence mechanisms, which ensure the organism’s survival. To assist in the processing of the stimuli received from the senses and the responses to the outside world, the mind has created what is referred to as the ego. One that is geared to take on the onslaught of the world. It has a defensive nature that is constantly on alert for threats and attacks. The ego interprets the information presented to it by the senses and cognetively assesses them and through the mind, produces thought. These thoughts are then transformed, by the ego, into emotions. Emotions are the body’s response to thoughts. Our emotions arise out of these thoughts. The problems created in man’s responses to world are created by the ego going too far in its nature to perceive what is threatening to the organism and its self. It begins to believe it’s who we really are. A fallacy that creates untold damage to the world it inhabits. By believing itself to be who we are, it will also defend itself against all possible threats. Mental threats such as verbal assault can be viewed by the ego as possibly diminishing its foothold as the self. The thoughts created in response can create emotions such as hostility towards the person verbally attacking it. What real damage can the verbal assault have upon the organism? None, for it is a imagined threat but the ego does not differentiate between real and imagined and still feels threatened. These type of emotions are fed back to the ego who now puts itself on a higher level of threat alertness. A cycle has been created and induces the ego to perceive more and more stimuli as possible threats. That which we train our body and minds to do, can more easily be done. The world is now perceived to be a hostile entity with imagined threats all around us. All of us go through life at a level of threat alertness designed by our own egos. Some do not let such perceived threats dictate their responses while others are ready to take offence to the point of violence. It is the level of dysfunction that we allow the ego to obtain that determines our reactions. A runaway ego may even go to the state of mental paranoia. It is not what is said to us, felt, or thought about us that does harm, it is the ego’s reaction that creates the damage. The ego is in a constant state of self-enhancement to make itself feel more secure. It seeks to acquire more material goods, power, prestige, and so on. The emotional feelings, such as contentment, happiness, and fulfilment, that it receives in feedback from its acquisitions further push the ego to seek more. But just like drug addiction, this feeling is temporary. It is an insatiable thirst. The ego wants more at any cost. However, we can all do something to alleviate this dysfunction. But it cannot be done on the intellectual level. The mind is ill-equipped in this pursuit. By taking notice of how our mind and ego work, we can begin to function at a higher level. From the higher self, we begin to see the world as it really is without the judgmental nature of the mind interfering. The mind differentiates the world into groups with similar attributes, for that is one of its purposes. But the ego goes further and separates them. The higher self sees the world and its different features but does not considerate them as separate entities. It sees the connection that all things share. They are part of the whole all creation. The higher self sees itself as a part of this whole. This underlying truth transforms the way we interact with the world around us. This is the essence of compassion. The deep rooted sense that we are all connected. Who would do harm to someone or something that they know they are connected to or a part of ? My search for answers led me to see that the ego causes most of man’s problems in dealing with one another. When we dispense with the ego, our true nature is brought forth. (John Bendix is a spiritual writer based in the US)

Getting Rid Of Fear....

Free your mind of fear-based emotions such as anger, hatred or jealousy to make place for love and creativity, says Owen Waters


True freedom is the ability to express who you are... ...through a natural flow of love and creativity. Freedom is first gained within your consciousness. Then, because your outer life always reflects that which is within, you gain freedom in all aspects of your life. Often, much of this potential flow of authentic life experience is reduced by inner blockages. These blockages of the natural flow of love and creativity are formed by the fearbased emotions that come with the challenges of human existence. Fear is the common factor underlying all disharmonious emotions. For example, fear of inadequacy can lead to jealousy and hatred, fear can generate an over-reaction of greed while fear of being overwhelmed by life’s challenges can lead to control issues. Each of us arrives in this world with a life plan, which includes personal and societal issues that we intend to work through during the lifetime. It also includes the location and surroundings of birth, as also the friends and associates that we are likely to meet as life unfolds. The personal and societal issues that we adopt in our lives are generally based upon the consciousness. For example, one issue being worked through these days is equality of the sexes. The old reality demanded separation of the power of the sexes into societies based on either matriarchy or patriarchy. The new reality, into which we are shifting, requires an equality of the sexes; an integration of that which was formerly separated into two. Every woman and every man is now playing some part in this massive societal adjustment towards equality of the sexes. As the purpose of the entire human experience is to work through and transform such issues, it is appropriate that we seek a solution to all of these fear-based issues. When enough people pass through the gateway into freedom of the spirit, then suddenly, the whole world will wonder why it hadn’t seen such an easy solution all along. Society is building up to a critical mass where consciousness will flip from ‘you versus me’ to ‘you and me’, a shift from competition to mutual cooperation. Every day, more and more people are making this shift to heart-powered consciousness. With a little inner work, these individual transitions to the new reality happen sooner and more easily. Inner work primarily means daily meditation. When you make meditation your number one priority each and every day, then you are putting in the time that it takes to transform those societal issues within yourself and to work through your own challenges. During meditation, you also connect to a wider range of your own consciousness. The deeper layers of your own consciousness can provide you with insights that literally catapult you out of issue-based blockages. As you allow these blockages to dissolve into the light of spiritual consciousness, you become free to express your true nature and follow your inner joy. Spiritual study helps adapt your mind to expanded views of reality. Some concepts in spiritual philosophy also help along this journey into freedom of the spirit. For example, love and fear seem to act like two opposite poles of our duality consciousness. From the viewpoint of unity, love is all there is and fear is an illusion that detracts from the natural flow of love through you. Love is a basic component of the consciousness that fills the universe. Love, therefore, is always available and ready to flow naturally through your heart. You don’t have to earn or demand it, just let it flow. Another key philosophy gaining freedom is “Live and let live”. When you allow other people to be the way they are, your energy is not absorbed in anyone’s futile dramas. Instead, you are able to use all of your energy to follow your joy and help make the world a better place. You can recognise, love, and accept the inner essence of every person you know, regardless of their outward behaviour or how much it may seem to need improvement. It is this unconditional love that heals the world, person by person, and there is no shortage of its supply. Acceptance of yourself is also vital. Accept who you are now, unimproved, with your current motivations and be thankful that you are exactly who you are. You planned to adopt a certain package of feelings and circumstances in your journey through life. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with you at any point along the journey. Things that appear to need improvement are challenges, not faults, so enjoy the ride and gain the most from the experiences that you came to explore. Thomas Edison carried out over 6,000 experiments before perfecting the first electric light bulb, but he never referred to any of those experiments as failures. Instead, he called each one a step closer to success. Freedom from fear-based emotions allows true, unconditional love to flow through your heart and true creativity to fill your mind as you pursue your deepest inner joy. When you see fear as the hollow illusion that it is and allow your heart to open to everyone, then your actions are influenced not by fear, but by your unconditional love for the people around you and, equally, for yourself. Unconditionally loving yourself means allowing yourself to develop loving relationships where mutual cooperation, not competition or contention, becomes your daily reality. People’s greatest fears melt away in the face of heart-powered, inner awareness. Your intuitive insight is your connection to the part of your mind that knows each situation, even before it occurs. When you listen to that still, small voice within, you know where you need to be and when. With intuitive insight, you will never become caught up in unfortunate events that are not of your making. For example, if an aircraft is destined to crash, you simply won’t be on it. If you need information to bring yourself back to health, you will know where to find the answers that are the best for you. Even the fear of loneliness will never cloud your heart because, with love in your heart, you will never be left wanting for good company. Love and insight will pour from your heart if you let them. Give yourself the gift of true freedom, the freedom to express who you are through a natural flow of love and creativity. (Owen Waters is the author of ‘The Shift: The Revolution in Human Consciousness’)

Of Body And Soul.......

A spiritual approach to any pursuit, even as mundane as weight loss, may bring us to a deeper truth, says Trish Whynot

Since each of us is a physical and spiritual being at the same time, everything in our life has a physical and a spiritual aspect to it. Even those things that seem simply physical in nature, such as our bodies, are in truth also spiritual. It makes sense then that if we go deeply into our relationship with our physical self that we will soon find ourselves in the realm of spirit. At the root of everything lies our relationship with God. We find Him wherever we look, even when we look into our bodily self as we struggle with weight. A spiritual approach to any pursuit — even one as seemingly mundane as weight loss — always brings us to a deeper truth. Some people who have an aversion to God are drawn to this deeper truth, while others who profess to be spiritual are secretly avoiding the truth. We can be in denial of the existence of God or of truth, but that doesn’t diminish the existence of either. The crucial thing to realise is that the realm of spirit is the realm of truth. Here, we can’t pretend to be something that we are not — we can’t be in denial of our choices and the fruits they bear. Being brutally honest with ourselves is standing naked before God. As long as we stay hidden in our proverbial clothes or avoid the scale, the truth-teller, we can’t have a close relationship with our creator. God may denote the divine omnipresent energy that touches us every moment of the day. Going deep brings us closer to God because it allows us an opportunity to stand naked before him — open, honest and free of our proverbial clothes (the coverings that come between us and the truth, the various ways we avoid exposing our real selves). This is head-to-toe intimacy with God: naked on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels. Removing our proverbial clothes is the first step toward total spiritual nakedness. Through meditation, we can invite God to bear witness. Here we can reveal the details of what happened (physical), how it felt (emotional), the story we told ourselves about the incident based on our past experience (mental), why we attracted the situation and exposure of that old wound for healing and growth (spiritual). Standing naked before God is inviting God to touch us — with wisdom, understanding, healing, joy. Let God offer healing where there were wounds and bring understanding where there was confusion. If seeking truth brings me closer to God, then avoiding truth separates me from Him. To continue with the allegory of weight gain, the guilt many people feel around weight gain is often really anger toward themselves—making them feel even worse about themselves. The guilty person can then either continue to avoid the scale (to avoid facing the truth). Feeling bad created the weight in the first place, and feeling worse just adds more weight. The person is literally weighed down with guilt. We are ready to face the scale when we are ready to own our choices and the results of those choices, forgive ourselves, have compassion, and make changes in how we live and cope. Let this issue become an opportunity to learn, heal and grow. Once the intention has been set to address the message brought forth by excess weight, identify and embrace the universe’s response to your request. Our prayers are always answered, but there is no shortcut to permanent transformation. Transformation requires effort and discipline. It is fulfilling and rewarding on every level from physical to spiritual. Let’s see Mrs X’s case: Physical truth: Mrs X’s most urgent truth was that she was making poor eating choices. Emotional truth: Acknowledging this truth led her to her next truth: that she eats for comfort when she is stressed. It was necessary for her to face the things that triggered her stress, allow herself to experience the stressful emotions she was escaping and learn to process them. Mental truth: This brought her to memories of verbal abuse that had stripped her of her self-esteem. Spiritual truth: Once we lifted the veil of shame and pain the belief had created, she saw the low self-esteem of her perpetrators and that she had been their scapegoat. The wound was exposed. She had been blamed for the worthlessness of others and had carried it as her own. She also saw that she was abusing herself with food. She had designated her body as her scapegoat. Standing naked before herself and God she requested love, forgiveness and healing. She saw the truth and was able to forgive her perpetrators for how their pain had come through them and onto her. She emerged more loved, and empowered with wisdom, understanding and compassion that she can thrive on. This is fulfillment at its best. When we let go of false beliefs about ourselves, space is opened in our hearts and minds for God to fill with love and truth. We no longer need extra sweets to make up for a lack of affection, fatty foods to cushion potential blows from abuse, or carbs to stifle our passion. We see our feelings as fuel for growth and healing and learn how to use them to experience God at work in our lives. Walking this path allows us to witness how our relationship with our world is divinely orchestrated based on our intentions rather than random and chaotic as we once thought. We can adopt new eating habits that nurture our new state of being. Once the real issues are addressed, eating healthily is easy and fun because there is no longer a purpose to unhealthy eating choices. And if we do find ourselves in some other struggle in the future, we know that it is just a heads-up from the universe, a signal that it is time to confront a truth that will bring us into even deeper intimacy with ourselves and God. When we make choices based on fear or shame, we are likely to avoid God, the source of truth and light, just as we avoid the scale. We don’t want him to see us; we flee from the truth as we avoid facing up to our own behaviour, whether it’s late night snacking or secret stashes of junk food. We tell ourselves we’ll talk to God when we are in a better place, just as we postpone pursuing our desires (buying that dress, seeking that relationship) until we lose a little weight. But avoiding the truth just prolongs our agony while it immobilises us. (Trish Whynot is a holistic counsellor in Middleton, US)

The Joy Of Effortless Living.....

Rajiv Vij

While attending the intermediate course of paragliding many years ago, i remember taking a short flight from the top of a 600-feet cliff and truly loving it. I recall marveling at the effortlessness of the 45-second flight – before gravity took over – and wondering how some of the experienced paragliders managed to stay up in the air for hours. As i learnt, it was their ability, like the migratory birds, to find progressive air thermals that allowed them to stay up and even travel long distances, sometimes up to a thousand kilometres. Were those long flights enervating for them? Never, they were always effortless and exhilarating, as they soared, in complete harmony with nature. Comparing that scenario to the way we live our lives, i often wonder why there is so much struggle to our existence. There appears to be this constant underlying stress all around us and the innumerable choices that we are surrounded with — products, services, careers, gadgets, leisure and so on — instead of empowering us, leave us feeling deprived. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could find a way to make our lives more effortless, balanced, and peaceful? A way to free ourselves from our daily dilemmas to creating a life where making choices were much easier, where we experienced minimal effort to move forward, and where we were fully supported by nature in all our pursuits. The key to this lies in gaining clarity about the purpose of our own existence. Why are we here and what are are we aiming to do? I do believe each one of us on earth is hugely gifted and has a special purpose — but do we take the time to discover it in ourselves; or are we just on a treadmill of activity going almost nowhere? Do you want to be more successful or do you want to make a more significant contribution? Do you want more money or greater happiness? What’s the role of family and friends in our life? What’s our commitment to community and environment? If you had to make a real choice, what’s that one thing that you would like your life to be about? On your deathbed, what is it that you would feel most proud about your life? I have reflected a lot on this and coached a number of people on this. Interestingly, some of the most powerful statements of purpose tend to revolve around an absolute and an inner goal — absolute in that they are not set relative to others and inner in that their progress is not measurable by external parameters of evaluation like career, money, fame, achievement. Examples would include statements like, “I want to be always happy”, or “want to lead a meaningful balanced life”, or “want to give back to society”, or “want to leave a legacy”. Many a times, they also include a component that is focused on others — “I want to be happy and want to make others around me happy”. As you think deeply about your purpose and begin to anchor your life around it, you may well be surprised with the wonderful direction your life may effortlessly begin to take. At a deeper level, we can comprehend the notion of purpose, and creating this joyful existence, in two dimensions — consider that we have two types of purpose in our lives. There’s the external purpose and then there’s the core purpose. The external purpose of living is the roles we choose in our lives — the roles at work and in our relationships; whether we want to be a business owner, an artist, a scientist, a tennis player, or a homemaker. Also, our role as a parent, as a child, and as a friend. Additionally, it includes our varied personal interests and pursuits. Often we build such strong identification with these roles that we lose perspective of our core purpose. That’s when the relentless pursuit of these external goals causes us to struggle and doesn’t seem to provide us with that illusory happiness, balance, and peace. What we really need then is a stronger alignment of our external goals with our true core purpose. The core purpose, it appears, may well be the same for all of us — to circle around undertaking the inner journey of self-realisation; to build greater selfawareness and deeper understanding of who we essentially are; to conquer our fears and anxieties and eventually to transcend ourselves. Once we make it the central theme of whatever we do, the notions of happiness, balance, and legacy are no longer illusory. As they say, “It does not matter what you do, but how you do it”. Once we embrace this purpose, it reflects in how we conduct ourselves in whatever we do – at work or in relationships. We are then less focused on how far we reach in achieving the external goals in life, but more on enjoying the inner journey of being on the right path. It provides us a higher meaning in everything. For a tennis player, it’s the difference between wanting to win a grand slam and being driven by the purpose of inspiring greatness among millions of fans and tennis players. For a writer, it could be between a desire to be famous and her purpose of helping innumerable readers experience their powerful inner emotions.