[QUOTE=a.mi;64182]Hi,
I am new to the forum and have been reading a lot of interesting stuff on here about yoga. However, there are a couple of questions that I wanted to post in order to gain some insight.
The first is about ego…What is the purpose of ego? Do we really need it? I have read that the ego necessitates boundaries between “us” and the “world” and that without these boundaries then we would lose the ability to care for our own personal needs. However, I feel that the majority of the “negative” emotions I feel in life are due to attacks or threats on my ego.
If one were to reach the end goal of yoga (self-realization), would there be no ego? Or would one’s ego no longer be threatened?
I know that repressing one’s ego is bad but mine is so jealous, selfish, materialistic, and vain. I need to let go of attachments but it is so hard. I cannot simply “detach” because I still yearn. I have begun reading the yoga sutras but sometimes it just goes over my head.
Anyway, I hope that my questions are constructed clearly enough. I can always reiterate if anyone needs more clarification. Thanks![/QUOTE]
You are clear headed, knowledgable, and you base your opinion on self expereince.
The ego is there, and it makes you suffer when you get in conflict with other egos. Try to turn attention to those parts of your being, those thoughts, emotions, will impulses what go against the usual trend of self conseravtion. I am talking about moral impulses. Everyone has them. The picture is not black and white. There is not only ego, but there is something in you already what works against this ego, maybe yet weak, and it’s voice unheard. The best time to try to listen to this vpoice, is in the morning, in that little space between sleeping and waking up.
There is also a way to make this voice stronger. Try to be healthy. Try to do not indulge in sensual excesses. Try to feed your soul with art, and spirituality. Spend more time in nature. Listen to music what lifts you.
Read the Bhagavad Gita, the Gospel of John or any other time tested work of spirituality. Pretend that you are better than you are, and act like it. Sooner or later your actions become habits, and you will become what you have pretended to be. Be true about this, though. There is great tension between acting like you’re a followerr of Christ, for example, and knowing how many times you have failed just this very day. And that’s good. It keeps the ego at bay. Our failures, and having negative emotions like hatred, jealousy, are failures in our emulation of Christ (or Self, or atman), are good. They make us remember who we really are, how limited and small, and selfish we are.
When you think you have mastered something a test will come. Unpexpected situations will test our patience. If under heavy load and unexpectedly tried you are still able to maintain your calm, and inner peace, than you indeed accomplished something. All the events in our lives are such tests. And our failures are the best teachers. Our errors are our own. We made them. They are linked to us organicly. Without facing these, no real self knowledge is possible. Without real self knowledge, no spiritual discipline can be maintained for long, as the monsters of the unknown deep will steer your ship just when you would not want that to happen.
The ego is what we have, it is the lead what can be turned into gold. Naturally, it will than cease to be lead, so this is a mortification process. You have to give yourself up and try to rise from personal interest to universal. This will not make you lose your identity. When the ego is not in the way, only than we are able to fully perform what we have came her for. Because we have came here with a master plan. That plan has been devised by our immortal self, residing among the higher hierarchies, before we have been born. Because it bears the stamps of heaven on itself, (God approved), that plan exceeds in wisdom our human one. Thus often it may seem we are aimless, and without a track, or we have to expereince bad things. These are all part of the plan.
Our very fate, place of birth, parents, traits, are all part of the plan. We came here to learn, and become something more by this expereince. And the plan is not forced on us. It is like this: you are among all heavenly beings, in communion, they all see you, you see them all, they all know what and who you are, fully, and you are permeated by their higher wisdom, love, knowledge and power. There are no boundaries like the ego, in heaven. You are drenched in wisdom, light, knowledge. And because of this, you see clearly how your earlier life-lives were, and what did you contribute to the whole of existence. And because you are enlighetned, and aware, the desire to make up for the bad you have brought into the world, will rise as a moral necessity. You simply cannot accept that the world have become worse because of you. Than, togheter and led and helped by the higher wisdom available to you there, you make a plan. Often, in our anxious desire to make things better, we try to take too heavy tasks on us. So in a way, they even help us, to only take up burdens we will be able to carry. Because of this, everyone faces only challanges one is able to face. They might seem very hard or outright impossible when we meet them, once down in our bio-skafanader, and without the knowledge and wisdom of the higher beings there to help us. But this is how we aquire and develop such havenley qualities of our own !
You see, we are destined to become great. But not great as we imagine that usually, coming from our ego.
Life in not about getting rid of ignorance, and into the nirvana. Life is becoming something more. It’s not a loss of identity, but gaining a higher one. I have been told that we are actually the next hiarachy, the next promotion of angelical beings. We are to become the angels of freedom and love. (surely, the sophists will say, even becoming a deva, is not the ultimate goal … but let us not deal with that yet. In order for a baby to become a man he firts needs to become a child. So we must take things one step of a time.)
