It is a no-brainer to say the ego is holding me back. The ego is holding us all back. It is the ego that is creating our limited consciousness of ourselves. In fact we shouldn’t talking of the ego as if it something separate from us, we are that ego. When I say “my ego” it is like the ego saying my ego. We create further fragmentation within ourselves by dividing ourselves into yet another compartment, “the ego”
We so often hear people criticize people saying, “It’s your ego saying it” Suhas Tambe is particularly notorious for using this criticism on others. What does not realize is that it his ego saying, “it’s your ego” Spiritual people like to behave all high and mighty and will readily criticise another person, but do not realize that the one that is doing the criticizing, is their own ego.
It is entirely possible that I have deceived myself into justifying my indulgence in desire as an actual path I am following. In fact, a lot of people who go on the left-land path do it just because they need a good excuse to indulge in desires. Many people who went to Osho’s ashram(the modern guru of the left hand path) went there because they could have sex in his ashrams.
But, at the same time, there is a rationale and logic behind the left hand path, otherwise it would not have existed at all. Indulging in desire, does after all produce dispassion. As I demonstrated earlier indulge in any desire, say desire to eat chocolate enough times one after the other, and dispassion will dawn. In reality, however we do not indulge intensely in any desire, but rather vary our desires, before we repeat it. I am sure you have heard yourself saying, “Never again, I will not do this again” but after a certain amount of time, you are back to doing it and enjoy it again. Then again you tell yourself, “Never again”
Dispassion comes the very moment you fulfill a desire if you are acute enough to sense it. After sex, you feel dispassion for sex immediately. You don’t want it. In fact the anticipation of it was much better than the actual sex itself. This one has happened with me so many of my times, I would spend weeks fantasizing about sex and what it would feel like, and then when it actually happens, rather than producing joy within me, it feels more like a relief or even a disappointment.
But, what is lacking with this dispassion is discernment(vivek) The discernment has to be there along with the dispassion to realize, “Sex is not all that great actually, I really don’t need to have sex ever again in my life” or “Chocolate is not all that great actually, I really don’t need to have chocolate again” This discernment will not come for a long time, or even ever in some cases: some will remain addicted to sex, chocolate, drugs or whatever all their life. This is why the left-hand path is there, by overindulgence in a short amount of time the appearance of discernment is accelerated. You need to experience whatever your object of desire is with great intensity, to the point where you blow your fuse out(no pun intended) this is why Osho held those orgies in his ashrams.
