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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2013 18:02:42 GMT -5
Ego is an imagined thing that you are creating in order to dissect yourself into pieces and know yourself better. You are slicing yourself up into pieces, naming the pieces things like ego, small self, personality etc...and then trying to understand the parts as you have separated them. You are dividing the indivisible to know it better. But keep in mind, that dividing is not uniting ;-) If you want to know, keep dividing, if you want gnosis of God Union, stop knowing, stop dividing, and alertly BE, without knowing. 1. Are you saying that discerning between these things is of no value wrt gnosis? 2. I'm trying to discern between what is and imagination about what is. 3. Doesn't gnosis require immersion in what is? 1. YES 2. But oddly, you seem to be doing so by creating imagined divisions and categorizing them in your own arbitrary way. 3. Immersion is best obtained through BEING, not by knowing, dividing, and defining, also, you have to consider what it is exactly that you are trying to find, i.e. Your true nature through gnosis, or the workings of your mind via discrimination and categorization. You will never really gnosis the absolute union of the self that is ALL that IS via discrimination and categorization. When you reside in the gnosis of your absolute ISNESS, these types of discriminations seem to be a lot less important.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2013 18:30:51 GMT -5
1. Are you saying that discerning between these things is of no value wrt gnosis? 2. I'm trying to discern between what is and imagination about what is. 3. Doesn't gnosis require immersion in what is? 1. YES 2. But oddly, you seem to be doing so by creating imagined divisions and categorizing them in your own arbitrary way. 3. Immersion is best obtained through BEING, not by knowing, dividing, and defining, also, you have to consider what it is exactly that you are trying to find, i.e. Your true nature through gnosis, or the workings of your mind via discrimination and categorization. You will never really gnosis the absolute union of the self that is ALL that IS via discrimination and categorization. When you reside in the gnosis of your absolute ISNESS, these types of discriminations seem to be a lot less important. On #2,I'm willing to hear any suggestions for making it less arbitrary. On #3, Being your true nature v. Knowing/dividing requires a teensy bit of discernment doesn't it? Residing in gnosis sounds like what I imagine I'm aiming at. Does that residence include bouts of vanity, lust, anger, or are those distractions?
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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2013 18:37:19 GMT -5
Yes, but is this mean that when one drops that idea of individual self, it is no more? Yes, that is what I'm partly inquiring about. The answer seems to be that since there was nothing like a self to begin with, there's nothing that 'is no more.'. So what of these ongoing behaviors? Is that just ego and personality?
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Post by silver on Oct 16, 2013 18:41:59 GMT -5
Yes, but is this mean that when one drops that idea of individual self, it is no more? Yes, that is what I'm partly inquiring about. The answer seems to be that since there was nothing like a self to begin with, there's nothing that 'is no more.'. So what of these ongoing behaviors? Is that just ego and personality? I've come to believe/accept that no matter whatever else we are, we 'contain' this self that apparently gets us through our days here on lovely planet earth.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2013 18:44:14 GMT -5
1. YES 2. But oddly, you seem to be doing so by creating imagined divisions and categorizing them in your own arbitrary way. 3. Immersion is best obtained through BEING, not by knowing, dividing, and defining, also, you have to consider what it is exactly that you are trying to find, i.e. Your true nature through gnosis, or the workings of your mind via discrimination and categorization. You will never really gnosis the absolute union of the self that is ALL that IS via discrimination and categorization. When you reside in the gnosis of your absolute ISNESS, these types of discriminations seem to be a lot less important. On #2,I'm willing to hear any suggestions for making it less arbitrary. On #3, Being your true nature v. Knowing/dividing requires a teensy bit of discernment doesn't it? Residing in gnosis sounds like what I imagine I'm aiming at. Does that residence include bouts of vanity, lust, anger, or are those distractions? Anything that I or anyone else can offer you on #2 would be arbitrary also...its all arbitrary regarding that. On #3....no, BEING versus Knowing your true nature does not require discernment...simply being still, and alert, without knowing and discrimination is enough....you talk of discernment, but really, in that whole process of defining the small self and big self and ego and personality etc...really you are not discerning, you are discriminating into parts arbitrarily sliced up and defined by you. If you want to discern your true nature, just look at what IS without discriminating via defining and dividing, and what is right there within and without IS your true nature in its entirety. If you want to Gnosis your true nature, quit looking for it altogether, and just BE with alertness and stillness, without looking FOR anything. To that last bit in your post, yes, you are one with all that is, including lust anger etc...whatever arises arises....but if you are residing in gnosis of your true nature, if these things arise, you will not be attached to them, and they will pass without any more concern than any other phenomena... Forgiveness, in the sense of letting all things come and go without attachment or aversion is an aspect of residing in the gnosis of true self.
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Post by laughter on Oct 16, 2013 19:17:33 GMT -5
self is small 's' in this case. I'm thinking of self as primarily being the myth of personhood which is based on beliefs held unconsciously, for the most part. It is fundamentally conceptual, a creation of imagination. Ego, on the other hand, is a noun label given fundamentally to drive and motivation. Ego is motivation. It could be vanity, lust, desire, greed, repulsion, fear.... Personality, preference, taste -- these are conditioned, whether the conditioning is due to DNA or the developmental environment. The personality is the particular filter which creates the peculiar hues and shades and textures of individual expression. The personality steers where ego motivations will be fulfilled. Ego and personality happen and the particular manifestations of these are tagged with 'my' or 'me' in the production of the self. The conceiving of the self creates positive feedback for the ego. It's no longer just a sweet tasty jelly bean, it's 'my' jellybean. So on top of the typical sugary, chewy, sweetness there is the added feeling of specialness. Like whipped cream on a jelly bean. While the myth of self can be seen through, seen as a myth based on imagination, the ego and personality continue. But without that added spin of self, the manifestations of ego become more transient and less entrenched. Perhaps. Just thinking out loud. I listened to part of an J Katz interview with Fred Davis this morning. Mr. Davis was talking openly about ego. How, before awakening to the falsehood of self, it was confused and driven primarily through addiction, and transferring addiction. After awakening, it continued and manifested as wanting to be a spiritual teacher. And it continues to this day, though appears to have less intensity to it. self is a game most people don't know they'er playing and ego is an intensified bonus-round of the game. For those who are conscious of the game the bonus-round makes it really really clear when they're participating.
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Post by tzujanli on Oct 16, 2013 19:54:51 GMT -5
Greetings.. self is small 's' in this case. I'm thinking of self as primarily being the myth of personhood which is based on beliefs held unconsciously, for the most part. It is fundamentally conceptual, a creation of imagination. Ego, on the other hand, is a noun label given fundamentally to drive and motivation. Ego is motivation. It could be vanity, lust, desire, greed, repulsion, fear.... Personality, preference, taste -- these are conditioned, whether the conditioning is due to DNA or the developmental environment. The personality is the particular filter which creates the peculiar hues and shades and textures of individual expression. The personality steers where ego motivations will be fulfilled. Ego and personality happen and the particular manifestations of these are tagged with 'my' or 'me' in the production of the self. The conceiving of the self creates positive feedback for the ego. It's no longer just a sweet tasty jelly bean, it's 'my' jellybean. So on top of the typical sugary, chewy, sweetness there is the added feeling of specialness. Like whipped cream on a jelly bean. While the myth of self can be seen through, seen as a myth based on imagination, the ego and personality continue. But without that added spin of self, the manifestations of ego become more transient and less entrenched. Perhaps. Just thinking out loud. I listened to part of an J Katz interview with Fred Davis this morning. Mr. Davis was talking openly about ego. How, before awakening to the falsehood of self, it was confused and driven primarily through addiction, and transferring addiction. After awakening, it continued and manifested as wanting to be a spiritual teacher. And it continues to this day, though appears to have less intensity to it. self is a game most people don't know they'er playing and ego is an intensified bonus-round of the game. For those who are conscious of the game the bonus-round makes it really really clear when they're participating. Those that deny self are playing another game, and they are very aware they are playing it.. they play to feed the ego's belief that the game they know they're playing makes them superior to those that accept self for what it is.. self is just another aspect of the experiencer's totality.. Be well..
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Post by laughter on Oct 16, 2013 20:09:07 GMT -5
Greetings.. self is a game most people don't know they'er playing and ego is an intensified bonus-round of the game. For those who are conscious of the game the bonus-round makes it really really clear when they're participating. Those that deny self are playing another game, and they are very aware they are playing it.. they play to feed the ego's belief that the game they know they're playing makes them superior to those that accept self for what it is.. self is just another aspect of the experiencer's totality.. Be well.. Well first off it was just a pair of cute metaphors and second off there's no superiority or inferiority implied ... there's no shame in not being conscious. There's nothing wrong with it. It's not a sin, and even if someone thinks otherwise, in terms of the metaphor, it's all part of the game anyway. Third off, referring to it as a game is hardly denying it, just characterizing it.
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Post by silence on Oct 16, 2013 20:52:28 GMT -5
It all sounds half-cooked to me. If the psychological truth is that I feel like a self/ego/whatever, then why not respect it and act it out till its end. Why create some abstract theoretical conflict that never actually touches my heart? The conflict isn't theoretical. You can look right now and see how much you are in conflict with yourself. That being said, most do live it out until the very end.
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Post by silence on Oct 16, 2013 20:54:41 GMT -5
It all sounds half-cooked to me. If the psychological truth is that I feel like a self/ego/whatever, then why not respect it and act it out till its end. Why create some abstract theoretical conflict that never actually touches my heart? Half-cooked is the story of my life. Do you feel as if I'm disrespecting your feelings? Show me how to touch your heart and I'll gladly do it. I'm interested in the subject because I've noticed the presence of ego related feelings but not necessarily the self. I'm wondering if I've been conflating the two. Hence I present half-baked musings online hoping to spur my own understanding. I suspect you've mostly started associating certain feelings with the term ego because of the amount of knowledge you've acquired on the subject. What ego even more accurately is in this context is the formation of certain feelings now being seen as problematic and sectioned off in a different category.
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Post by silence on Oct 16, 2013 21:00:11 GMT -5
Ego is an imagined thing that you are creating in order to dissect yourself into pieces and know yourself better. You are slicing yourself up into pieces, naming the pieces things like ego, small self, personality etc...and then trying to understand the parts as you have separated them. You are dividing the indivisible to know it better. But keep in mind, that dividing is not uniting ;-) If you want to know, keep dividing, if you want gnosis of God Union, stop knowing, stop dividing, and alertly BE, without knowing. I just feel bad for the middle self. It always gets ingored
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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2013 21:15:07 GMT -5
Ego is an imagined thing that you are creating in order to dissect yourself into pieces and know yourself better. You are slicing yourself up into pieces, naming the pieces things like ego, small self, personality etc...and then trying to understand the parts as you have separated them. You are dividing the indivisible to know it better. But keep in mind, that dividing is not uniting ;-) If you want to know, keep dividing, if you want gnosis of God Union, stop knowing, stop dividing, and alertly BE, without knowing. I just feel bad for the middle self. It always gets ingored LoL
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Post by quinn on Oct 17, 2013 8:27:12 GMT -5
self is small 's' in this case. I'm thinking of self as primarily being the myth of personhood which is based on beliefs held unconsciously, for the most part. It is fundamentally conceptual, a creation of imagination. Ego, on the other hand, is a noun label given fundamentally to drive and motivation. Ego is motivation. It could be vanity, lust, desire, greed, repulsion, fear.... Personality, preference, taste -- these are conditioned, whether the conditioning is due to DNA or the developmental environment. The personality is the particular filter which creates the peculiar hues and shades and textures of individual expression. The personality steers where ego motivations will be fulfilled. Ego and personality happen and the particular manifestations of these are tagged with 'my' or 'me' in the production of the self. The conceiving of the self creates positive feedback for the ego. It's no longer just a sweet tasty jelly bean, it's 'my' jellybean. So on top of the typical sugary, chewy, sweetness there is the added feeling of specialness. Like whipped cream on a jelly bean. While the myth of self can be seen through, seen as a myth based on imagination, the ego and personality continue. But without that added spin of self, the manifestations of ego become more transient and less entrenched. Perhaps. Just thinking out loud. I listened to part of an J Katz interview with Fred Davis this morning. Mr. Davis was talking openly about ego. How, before awakening to the falsehood of self, it was confused and driven primarily through addiction, and transferring addiction. After awakening, it continued and manifested as wanting to be a spiritual teacher. And it continues to this day, though appears to have less intensity to it. To me, it's a lot simpler than all that. What we call ego is just a movement of thought that takes ownership of whatever is going on. So say I just snapped at my husband (not that I would ever do that, heh heh)...ego says I've got a problem or I'm justified or I feel guilty or whatever it takes to latch "me" into the equation and create a psychological self. Ego and self are both phantom thought-creations, self being the psychological creation and ego being the (thought-created)name we give that process. That's basically how you described it (ego) too, but then you gave it all sorts of powers. To say that ego 'continues' or is 'steered by' personality is to give it substance. It has no substance - it's just a movement of thought. If the myth of self can be seen through, what does it matter if the movement to create that 'self' keeps running? As long as we have bodies to tend to and people keep calling us by name, that movement is still going to be active. The point is that it isn't anything substantial.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2013 9:45:56 GMT -5
On #2,I'm willing to hear any suggestions for making it less arbitrary. On #3, Being your true nature v. Knowing/dividing requires a teensy bit of discernment doesn't it? Residing in gnosis sounds like what I imagine I'm aiming at. Does that residence include bouts of vanity, lust, anger, or are those distractions? Anything that I or anyone else can offer you on #2 would be arbitrary also...its all arbitrary regarding that. On #3....no, BEING versus Knowing your true nature does not require discernment...simply being still, and alert, without knowing and discrimination is enough....you talk of discernment, but really, in that whole process of defining the small self and big self and ego and personality etc...really you are not discerning, you are discriminating into parts arbitrarily sliced up and defined by you. If you want to discern your true nature, just look at what IS without discriminating via defining and dividing, and what is right there within and without IS your true nature in its entirety. If you want to Gnosis your true nature, quit looking for it altogether, and just BE with alertness and stillness, without looking FOR anything. To that last bit in your post, yes, you are one with all that is, including lust anger etc...whatever arises arises....but if you are residing in gnosis of your true nature, if these things arise, you will not be attached to them, and they will pass without any more concern than any other phenomena... Forgiveness, in the sense of letting all things come and go without attachment or aversion is an aspect of residing in the gnosis of true self. The advice to 'just BE with alertness and stillness, without looking FOR anything' is a puzzler. Just BEing alertness and stillness is something I'm familiar with. Not looking FOR anything is as well. That's gnosis? What's all the hoopla about then? The stuff I've looked at talk about -- in Vedanta -- that you 'understand' the knowledge that ends all seeking for knowledge, which is that you are noneother than the totality orhoweveryouwantosayit. Others recommend realizing that 'there is no separation.' There is talk about how the belief in separation underpins what may be called the self. But it's not like you just look internally and locate something labeled 'Belief in Separation.' See it over there trying to hide under the fire escape stairs in the bacik alley? Once you see it it disappears. Voila! It's more like you notice where identification is involved in thoughts and thinking. You notice repetetive cycles of thought and try and see what they're based on. I'm not wedded to that little brainfart in my OP, I don't care about it all. I'm just ruminating on these cases where someone has 'awakened' from the dream of being a separate being from the rest of the universe but still they report the movement of ambition and specialness, which they term ego. It seems like this necessarily suggests that self and ego are not the same. Or that the particular 'awakening' from the dream of self was not actually an awakening, but just a shift of some sort.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2013 9:56:19 GMT -5
self is small 's' in this case. I'm thinking of self as primarily being the myth of personhood which is based on beliefs held unconsciously, for the most part. It is fundamentally conceptual, a creation of imagination. Ego, on the other hand, is a noun label given fundamentally to drive and motivation. Ego is motivation. It could be vanity, lust, desire, greed, repulsion, fear.... Personality, preference, taste -- these are conditioned, whether the conditioning is due to DNA or the developmental environment. The personality is the particular filter which creates the peculiar hues and shades and textures of individual expression. The personality steers where ego motivations will be fulfilled. Ego and personality happen and the particular manifestations of these are tagged with 'my' or 'me' in the production of the self. The conceiving of the self creates positive feedback for the ego. It's no longer just a sweet tasty jelly bean, it's 'my' jellybean. So on top of the typical sugary, chewy, sweetness there is the added feeling of specialness. Like whipped cream on a jelly bean. While the myth of self can be seen through, seen as a myth based on imagination, the ego and personality continue. But without that added spin of self, the manifestations of ego become more transient and less entrenched. Perhaps. Just thinking out loud. I listened to part of an J Katz interview with Fred Davis this morning. Mr. Davis was talking openly about ego. How, before awakening to the falsehood of self, it was confused and driven primarily through addiction, and transferring addiction. After awakening, it continued and manifested as wanting to be a spiritual teacher. And it continues to this day, though appears to have less intensity to it. To me, it's a lot simpler than all that. What we call ego is just a movement of thought that takes ownership of whatever is going on. So say I just snapped at my husband (not that I would ever do that, heh heh)...ego says I've got a problem or I'm justified or I feel guilty or whatever it takes to latch "me" into the equation and create a psychological self. Ego and self are both phantom thought-creations, self being the psychological creation and ego being the (thought-created)name we give that process. That's basically how you described it (ego) too, but then you gave it all sorts of powers. To say that ego 'continues' or is 'steered by' personality is to give it substance. It has no substance - it's just a movement of thought. If the myth of self can be seen through, what does it matter if the movement to create that 'self' keeps running? As long as we have bodies to tend to and people keep calling us by name, that movement is still going to be active. The point is that it isn't anything substantial. Ah so that's why folks talk about how 'awakening' is more like waking within the dream. One knows they are dreaming whereas before they were fully immersed in the dream. I don't know what you're talking about with the marital irritation issue, BTW. Ha. What I've noticed with those situations is that the ability to be aware of the dream in that case is inversely proportional to the intensity of emotion involved. These folks who say they've 'awakened' within the dream, do they remain fully aware of the dreaminess nonstop?
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