Comment by Louise on June 15, 2010 at 5:54pm

I found this interesting, it was posted on another site I belong to, which is also discussing the 'ego' and the purpose it has in our lives:-

“Featuring: Deepak Chopra, Cheri Huber, Paul Lowe and Saniel Bonder

Introduction

Enlightenment equals ego death. For millennia this equation has held true. While the term "ego," meaning "I" in Latin, is obviously a relatively recent addition to the English lexicon, just about every major enlightenment teaching in the world has long held that the highest goal of spiritual and indeed human life lies in the renunciation, rejection and, ultimately, the death of the need to hold on to a separate, self-centered existence. From Shankara's rantings against the ego as a "strong and deadly serpent" to Muhammad's declaration of a "holy war against the nafs [ego]" to the Zen masters' fierce determination to use any means necessary to break the ego's grip on their students, this "ego-negative" interpretation of the spiritual path has remained enshrined in enlightenment teachings for ages, for the most part unquestioned and unchallenged.

Yet in the course of our research for this issue, it became increasingly apparent that the meaning and significance of ego death are undergoing radical revision in our Western spiritual culture, a culture steeped in the values of autonomy and self-reliance and informed by a psychological understanding of human nature. In some contemporary spiritual teachings, this revision is a shift in emphasis, some might even say a translation of older values into a modern context. But in others the rejection is more total, a radical reformulation of both the path and the goal of the spiritual life. In fact, the ideal of ego death is more and more often viewed with suspicion rather than respect, skepticism rather than reverence—as a chimera, an illusion, a pot of fool's gold at the end of a mythical spiritual rainbow.

It was perhaps never more obvious to us that the tectonics of the spiritual world had profoundly shifted than when, last September, a series of books crossed our desks that seemed to capture this changed landscape in stark relief. Titles like Relax, You're Already Perfect and There Is Nothing Wrong With You: Going Beyond Self-Hate, A Compassionate Guide for Learning to Accept Yourself Exactly As You Are made crystal clear a conclusion that had been dawning for some time: that the teachings of self-acceptance have earned wide recognition as an alternative approach to the path of liberation. "Much of spiritual life is self-acceptance," popular Buddhist meditation teacher Jack Kornfield writes in his best-selling book A Path with Heart, "maybe all of it." To Kornfield and many other harbingers of this kinder, gentler spirituality, it is a crippling self-judgment or self-hate (rather than a narcissistic ego) that is at the root of our spiritual dilemma—a core psychological wound that true spiritual work enables us to acknowledge, uncover and ultimately heal. "We must accept ourselves as we are" is a common refrain of these teachings—in order that all the parts of ourselves that have been hidden away in the dark corners of the psyche, including the ego, can be reconciled and integrated within a whole and unified vision of self. To the advocates of this approach, the traditional ideal of ego death is simply an anachronism in today's eclectic and democratic spiritual culture, a relic from another era that invokes a patriarchal, hierarchical and dualistic view of the spiritual life in which man is separate from God, and the spiritual seeker is called to engage in a self-defeating effort to kill the "bad" part of their personality.

What most intrigued us about this new paradigm was not that the message of self-acceptance plays an important role in the burgeoning Human Potential movement—after all, the groundbreaking book I'm OK You're OK has been popular since the seventies—but rather the fact that the philosophy of self-acceptance has now found its way into teachings that have enlightenment as their goal. But is that where it belongs? What role should self-acceptance play in the lives of those who aspire to profound spiritual liberation?

In a break from our usual interview format, we approached four spiritual teachers who emphasize self-acceptance in their own work and asked for a written reply to a single question addressing this important issue. We contacted the omnipresent pioneer of new age spirituality Deepak Chopra; one-time heir apparent of Osho Rajneesh and maverick therapist, now independent spiritual teacher, Paul Lowe; Zen meditation teacher and author of a popular series of books on Zen and psychology, Cheri Huber; and former long-term disciple and spokesperson for Da Free John, now independent teacher of the way of "white-hot mutuality," Saniel Bonder—and they each graciously agreed to participate. And while these four diverse teachers did not always confirm our suspicions about this new face of East-meets-West spirituality, their articulate and illuminating answers force one to question many traditional beliefs about what's truly important on the path to liberation.

–Carter Phipps

Interview

QUESTION: The goal of traditional spiritual teachings has generally been understood to be ego death—the final destruction of our attachment to a separate sense of self. But in today's rapidly evolving spiritual culture, what is often taught as the means to liberation is not ego death, but self-acceptance—acceptance of every aspect of ourselves, including our egos. The message of self-acceptance has become increasingly popular and is now commonly seen by spiritual teachers from almost every tradition to be the most effective and holistic way to address the suffering of contemporary Western spiritual seekers. As someone who works closely with many seekers, guiding them on the delicate and subtle path to liberation, why do you emphasize the importance of self-acceptance in the pursuit of spiritual freedom?

Deepak Chopra: When people get in touch with themselves, they become aware that the inner core of their being contains opposing energies. The human soul, because of its karmic baggage, is a place of ambiguity. It is a place where sinner and saint, the sacred and the profane, the divine and the diabolical coexist in seed form. When we get in touch with this part of ourselves and accept it for what it is, we simultaneously lose the need to judge others. Christ said, "He who is without sin shall cast the first stone." I believe what he was saying was that self-acceptance makes us compassionate, forgiving and nonjudgmental of others. This is the first stage of liberation.

Cheri Huber: "Kill the ego" is a phrase that is easily misinterpreted. Who is identifying "ego"? Who is killing whom? Who is seeing whom as the problem? Who is right and who is wrong? Who is making these decisions? There are two things we can count on where egocentricity is concerned—One: It is very clever; Two: Its only job is survival. Ego will take anything—ANYTHING—and use it for its purposes, even the notion of killing/ dissolving/ transcending/ accepting itself. You can see the danger, spiritually speaking, of misinterpreting "kill the ego."

These words are interchangeable: I, ego, egocentricity, conditioning, karma, suffering. The definition they share is that they are the illusion of a self that is separate.

I offer this as a working definition of self-acceptance: The realization that there is nothing separate—from All That Is, from "God," from Essence. It is the moment-by-moment living awareness that the self who struggles is not who we are but is, instead, karmic conditioning, a learned response to life, a survival system that served us as children but has lost its efficacy for us as adults and now needs to be appreciated, embraced and relieved of its job.

The desire to get rid of ego is very different from ceasing to identify with a karmically driven, egocentric, socially conditioned illusion of a separate self. The first implies a contest: Ego is charged with killing ego; ego battles with ego; ego wins! The second implies letting go of the illusion of control; it is the end of struggle, and the means to that end is awareness.

The processes that I teach for ceasing to identify with conditioning are threefold: pay attention, believe nothing, take nothing personally. I don't actually teach self-acceptance. I encourage people to see that the things they believe about themselves are not true. When you see through all that you have been taught to believe, when you realize who you are, self-acceptance becomes irrelevant.

All suffering is held in place by false beliefs. All beliefs are false. What is, is. Believing it is not helpful. Believing is what the illusory separate self does to maintain an existence outside the present moment. The process of not taking any of this personally allows us to see that we are all in the same boat. We can take responsibility for ending suffering, but we don't have to blame ourselves for being born into it.

Paul Lowe: If I emphasize self-acceptance it is because it is the deepest level of the spiritual path I have found that people will allow me to share with them. I have not found people who are ready to share at the level of, let's say, radiating nothing. When I share more deeply, it is not about self-acceptance, it is just being, including everything, with awareness.

This is not new. Jesus said, "Take no thought of the morrow, let the morrow take care of itself." It is an inclusive, positive approach, and to me, it is living what IS real. Is it good or bad? Does it benefit or harm? It just is!

On one level we have the illusion that there is an ego; on another level there is no ego. It is the same with self-acceptance. Self-acceptance is still a movement away from what is. At a certain level of realization, there is no self; therefore, self-acceptance does not exist.

We think we can accept or not accept, but the fact is: Existence is existence and we can either say yes or no to it. With "no" we go into the mind and conditioning, whether it is Christian conditioning or the new waves of Eastern influence. But when we live a total, unconditional "yes" to what is happening, we evolve.

Science says we use five percent of our brain and experience one-billionth of reality. People who have entered the depths of Eastern wisdom tell us there is much more. And there is. We get there by being ourselves, unconditionally, in each moment. And the method I have found most supportive is absolute ruthless honesty with yourself, and when you are ready, sharing the truth with others. Be in the truth of each moment—all that you are sensing in the body, thinking in the mind, feeling with the emotions. Don't suppress it and don't support it. Be with what is.

I have come to see that this focus on enlightenment is outdated. It was a goal for a while; it gave us something to head for. But enlightenment is another myth, another idea of God, something outside of ourselves to look toward to comfort ourselves.

In my search I have often felt, "This is it!"—and then discovered another level. It seems there are endless levels of awakening, of consciousness expanding; and yet, there's only One—there is the unformed. From the unformed we create what we call reality through saying yes or no.

Saniel Bonder: You're asking for what amounts to (a) a rationale for profoundly tantric, nonexclusive, genuinely liberating dharma and practice, or (b) a rationalization for why contemporary Western seekers need to be let off the hook that many of our Eastern forebears have swung from for lifetimes. I'll shoot for (a).

The phrase "self-acceptance" seems to imply resigning yourself to karmic limits. I prefer the term "greenlighting," which, as in Hollywood, gets real changes going. I welcome people to greenlight their limited egos and even the sense of separateness instead of chronically wasting energy fighting all that. For every Olympic spiritual gymnast who proclaims that he's blown the moon of ego out of his sky and now there's only sunshine, there are thousands of people (excuse the pun) mooning around!—wishing they could have really done it; practically, or actually, giving up hope of ever transcending the vise of separateness, which still grips them day and night.

What needs to die is separateness. Not "I-ness" itself. "I" is just the natural, organizing function of individual personhood. We need it to navigate space-time—even in dreams and visions. "I" can't blow "your" nose. Limited, egoic "I-ness" is OK. It's also not identical to chronically suffered separateness. And I suggest that it's possible, and much more natural and feasible, to transcend the separateness—and thus to enter fundamentally liberated existence—without assuming it's necessary in advance, or ever, to flatline the thinking mind, banish reactive emotions, exterminate "I-ness," and always be gloriously blissful no matter what!

Transmission of the fundamentally nonseparate, nonexclusive state is crucial. You can then template on an awakened helper's radiant nature and, with good counsel and wise friends, greenlight your heroic, tantric identification with your previously cut off, detested, shadow parts. But you don't get reduced to just being all that. You get to recognize it. Your own infinite conscious nature is cooking alive and awake, so you're suddenly noticing what has made you tick in separateness all along, in ways you never could have before. And you get more and more confident that your "I" and all its stuff cannot sabotage your awakening into integral, nonseparate freedom of Being.

That awakening, when it occurs, is not perfection. Paradoxically, it's not without limited "I-ness." It also detonates a massive, endless, spontaneous transformation of that local self and all its parts. But nobody I know who's gone through it would trade it in!”

http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j17/self_acceptance.asp?page=1

Comment by Maya Nicole Beaver on June 15, 2010 at 6:29pm

As this is the age of aquarius we are facing I agree with you in a practical aspect. But I know that the higher you get the less of a self you have. So in order to get higher is it not nessicary to forget the term I AM? I don't know, I want to find what i can call myself in this reality but I know it will just fade away in the next life.

Comment by Stephane Wuttunee on June 16, 2010 at 2:05am

I heard somewhere that the term stands for "Edging God Out". I thought that was pretty clever. :)

Admin Team Comment by Acyutananda on June 16, 2010 at 4:36am

Dear Nicole, I respectfully disagree on your point, 'the higher you get the less of a self you have.' Some simple philosophy will illumine what I mean...
We're all people, we have an identity, a sense of self. The SOURCE of a thing must contain its prerequisites in full (you can't make a cake from the ingredients found in a rock). Therefore, the highest absolute truth must contain a sense of self/identity to it's maximum. Otherwise, were do we get OURS from??
We must exist in an Absolute state of identity that transcends temporary material concepts of self that we have in this world. Unfortunately our minds tend to draw upon examples based on relative, mundane experiences in the material world, therefore it's hard for us to imagine a higher, fuller sense of identity that is unconditioned. We choose to opt for impersonal concepts instead as it's easier to imagine.

Comment by Vaipxi on June 17, 2010 at 11:59am

I just wanted to share my thoughts/insight on the subject:

I tend to think of the ego as another way of describing the Conscious Awareness. The I Am. This precludes that there is nothing negative with the Ego. I tend to believe that while here in the flesh/body-vehicles our egos are, shall we say, narrowed down to a small spectrum/range of operation... however when we leave the body, re-center or shift our awareness we can then resume our native functioning of ego. So, one could say that as we shift our awareness about the Cosmic Spectrum we also alter our egoic ranges and functionality.

I believe it is a matter of where our conscious awareness dwells currently. The Personality-self which is the current ego we are operating with is only a small entity of our greater whole-self awareness. It is entirely possible for our greater ego to encompass many personalities simultaneously. And of course our greater whole self awareness is but one portion of an even larger whole self awareness and so on and so forth.. (Fractals! the secret of the Universe! the ever blossoming rose, the more you look is the more it unfolds!)

So, for me I tend to feel that as you expand your conscious awareness you become more of your whole and original self- the 'you' you have been all throughout time and existence. But once again I must emphasize and stress the importance of our field of awareness.

Furthermore, and I realize this may be slightly off topic, I tend to feel that we can only work with what is within our field conscious of awareness. If you expand that field then you will have a wider functionality of consciousness therefore you can work more reality into your creation. I personally believe that main stage of existence is where experience is gained.. and this main stage is right here within our field of awareness. As a result I think our goal here is to become more and more conscious thereby pooling in more of the All-Reality from beyond our borders. I believe this is what those before us have done and I believe this is what happens when we go through ascension or enlightenment.

So to summarize, I think as we expand our fields of awareness from our current in-the-body-personalities we will be restored to our original ego functioning... this is assuming of course that you are a part of our original self while in the body. So it seems to me that as we expand we function on a higher level and we become more of our true-selves... perhaps this means we lose our ego-attachment of the flesh-personality. Maybe this is the loss of self that occurs as one moves higher in consciousness? But for me I think it is kind of intriguing.. you experience a loss of ego-attachment only to gain your true and original self... amazing is it not?

Ex Uno disce Omnes!
Much love and thanks for your time reading this!

Admin Team Comment by Acyutananda on June 17, 2010 at 6:47pm

Thanks for sharing, Vaipxi. :)

Comment by Victoria on July 10, 2010 at 6:58pm

Oh I am very grateful for this post. I had never thought of the Ego being a good thing... I also never thought about having an eternal individual identity. but it is through others that I learn more about myself! Or I should say, REMEMBER more about myself. This makes sense. :) Thank you!

Comment by Argenciel on January 25, 2011 at 5:39pm

Thanks a lot Acyu,

 

I was wondering why it is nurturing to know who we are.  I am.  The false ego need to be cleansed to come back to our true source.  Our true Self.  That way we can heal the severance we have with the Universe, that severance created by the false ego. 

 

Thanks a lot for sharing that puzzle pieces for my own spiritual advancement.  I share the view.  :)

Comment