posted July 20, 2013 01:00 PM            

Anyway, it's recently come to my attention (after a break up and some self-reflection) that I have a problem with my ego. The (obvious) problem is that it's too big. Astrologically the causes of this are my Sun square Uranus and Neptune and my Mars in Leo. Personally the causes of this is me letting compliments go to my head and probably some deep-rooted insecurity.

posted July 20, 2013 01:34 PM            

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Originally posted by somethingexcellent:
Remember that the goal is a healthy ego, not a big one or a small one.

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posted July 20, 2013 01:53 PM            

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted July 20, 2013 02:48 PM            

You want to look tough because you're scared of people seeing the "weak" you, and hurting you or humiliating you in some way.

posted July 20, 2013 02:54 PM            

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Originally posted by Doux Rêve:
I think having a "big ego" is basically a way of covering up one's insecurities and vulnerable side.

You want to look tough because you're scared of people seeing the "weak" you, and hurting you or humiliating you in some way.

There's a lot of drama when it comes to being vulnerable and "real".
Can't blame anyone though, we're conditioned to think / behave that way.

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I find that the people with the most confidence will help a struggling person and the ones who have more insecurities will put someone down who is struggling

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted July 20, 2013 03:12 PM            

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The Ego Cannot Live in the Present
The Power of Now IS the peace that passes all understanding. Ego will argue this to it’s last breath because ego can’t live in the present. That’s too real and genuine. It has to derive it’s power from the painful past or the fearful future. The Lion lying down with the Lamb is another way of saying there is another reality here that can work.

Being enlightened or being conscious and present, is not some new age doubletalk. Jesus was enlightened by any standard. It simply means to be to be made lighter. At risk of angering the ego, lighten up. When you understand the terms, a mind, or that spinning thought factory for pain, anger, and resentment is a terrible thing... waste it. If it is filled with negativity and drama... waste it. Get out of the unchangeable past and the unknowable future. Buddhism says that sometimes there is nothing left in life to do but have a good laugh. If you just said in your mind "that’s stupid," it was your ego defending and wanting to justify itself.
Surrender to Now
"Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life. The only place where you can experience the flow of life is the Now, so to surrender is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation... It is to relinquish inner resistance to what is. It is precisely at those times that surrender needs to be practiced if you want to eliminate pain and sorrow from your life. Acceptance of what is immediately frees you from mind identification and thus reconnects you with Being. Resistance is the mind .Surrender is the most important thing you can do to bring out positive change. Any action you take is secondary. No truly positive action can arrive out of an un-surrendered state of consciousness." ~The Power of Now

Surrender, acceptance and staying present are the keys to good mental and spiritual well being.

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posted July 20, 2013 04:11 PM            

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Originally posted by Ami Anne:

I find that the people with the most confidence will help a struggling person and the ones who have more insecurities will put someone down who is struggling

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Yes, Ami.
That's if someone's genuinely confident.
But if they have a fake, inflated ego, that's probably because they're insecure and try to hide it.

posted July 21, 2013 08:08 AM            

Ego is an essential part of us yet we need to find self control to tame it .
Self control through practice and wisdom

is a key to taming it.

quote:

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Surrender, acceptance and staying present are the keys to good mental and spiritual well being.

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posted July 21, 2013 08:11 AM            

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Originally posted by Doux Rêve:
Yes, Ami.
That's if someone's genuinely confident.
But if they have a fake, inflated ego, that's probably because they're insecure and try to hide it.

A lot of people will put on a tough facade even though deep inside, they're like scared little children who got lost.

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Good point. Randall said he was strong and would stick up for weaker kids. I really respect this.

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted July 21, 2013 09:35 AM            

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Originally posted by juniperb:
I really likeed your post JFT, It reminds me of a snippet, a mighty one, of What the Seeker needs.

Ego is an essential part of us yet we need to find self control to tame it .
Self control through practice and wisdom

is a key to taming it.

(edited b/c wrong quote)

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Hi Juniper!!

you will love 'the power of now' if you haven't read it already.

What i understood, is that the ego is really a 'line of thoughts' what we must do where we were, or where we should go etc etc etc,

except when we shut that voice or no longer listen to it, so it's no longer existing, is when we become who we really are.

by simply being in the minute, and not trying to impose a thought or feeling onto it (because these are false in any case and not who we are) we humans are actually amazing creatures capable of doing all what we couldn't when our (thoughts/ego/false sene of self) was in command.

okay must really go and find a legit link to this book online but for now this is a good talk with him
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbj4nLOPN8o

Enjoy it

ps(ego doesn't mean you always think well of yourselves, sometimes it's the opposite...all in the video)

posted July 21, 2013 12:22 PM            

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Originally posted by Hera:

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posted July 21, 2013 03:55 PM            

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Q: Is the ego the source of our thoughts or are our thoughts generated elsewhere and passed through the ego?

Answer: Thank you. There is no ego apart from the thoughts. These thoughts, identification with thoughts, is ego.
But the thoughts that go through your mind,of course are linked to the collective mind of the culture you live in, you manage as a whole, So they are not your thoughts as such, but you pick them up from the collective, most of them, and so, you identify with thinking, and identification rethinking becomes ego.
which simply means that you believe in every thought which arises, and you derive your sense of who you are, from what your mind is telling you, is who you are. Opinions built on 'that's me' some people talk to themselves 'oh you are so good.....why doesn' t the world recognize you' or the mind says 'you're no good' same thing' you're no good at all, you fail at everything don't you?'
Again and then you believe in it, and suddenly you have a low view of yourself, why do you have a low view? because you believe in your thoughts. and why are you thinking those thoughts? probably because you picked them up somewhere, maybe in childhood, maybe your mum was so stressed out she said you're no good, and so you pick up certain thoughts, and they get stuc k in your head. Thoughts taht you hear in childhood, they're little energy forms like entities, and they get stuck in your head and "dole!?!?!" refuse to go, and the more you believe in it, the more deeply lodged they become in your mind. And so some people are stuck with, some umm very hostile entities.
am saying entities not in some spooky way, but every thought is an energy form, and as such we can call it an entity, and there are many people in this world, who are stuck, with hostile life denying continuously critical and attacking entities, that they carry in their heads. And they believe that, this is who they are.
And they are continuously attacking themselves. And if they are not attacking themselves, they attack others around them. (pretending to be these ppl, and pointing a finger) "Let me tell you who you are!!" Of course what they are really saying is, let me tell you who i am.

They project you know, you know the famous saying, we don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. Which means you look at reality through the screen of your thinking...and your judgement which is conditioned by the past. A dreadful prison to live in. It's like blinkers...worst than blinkers, it's like looking at reality through heavy viels.pretending to be this person"ooh looks so dark here...is that a human being or?...." it's all...and so the identification with thinking, believing in your thoughts, having no space, outside of the movement of thought, again here we come to the vital thing:lack of space inside, that is the unconscious condition, spiritually completley unconcious and then you are burdened by a heavy ego. You are the ego, which is not an entity apart from thought. It is thoughts that you have identified with, and the first moment of freedom comes, when you realize that certain thoughts have been going through your head for years perhaps, and that they are only thoughts, and that you are not a thought, you are the awareness

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posted July 21, 2013 04:14 PM            

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but every thought is an energy form, and as such we can call it an entity, and there are many people in this world, who are stuck, with hostile life denying continuously critical and attacking entities, that they carry in their heads. And they believe that, this is who they are.
And they are continuously attacking themselves. And if they are not attacking themselves, they attack others around them. (pretending to be these ppl, and pointing a finger) "Let me tell you who you are!!" Of course what they are really saying is, let me tell you who i am.

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Absolutely. Psychological projection

It is the most common (imho) of the ego`s defence`s . A dirty filter from lifes conditioning creates this behavior. Cleaning and polishing the filter, to see who you truely are, is the key to mental health and happyness.

Every time we call someone a name, accuse them of a behavior, check self. Is it me or you I`m speaking of. Honesty will aid in cleaning the filter until we can see the "me of me" and function whole.

Clean your thoughts, clean your filter ;simple but not easy
sufi 101

Thanks so much for typing that out for us!

posted July 21, 2013 04:24 PM            

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In my case i became aware that i had just thought...for example it started in childhood, one of many negative thoughts i had, that bad things always happen to me. bad things always happen to me...*laughs*...when i saw people roaming, okay they've got all these nice things, and always there'll be bad things happening t-t (me)..and of course you're perception then becomes selective, when you have a thought like that, you notice much more, because in everybody's life, daily life, things could go wrong, you miss a bus, you get stuck in a traffic jam, or you loose some money, but yes this is normal but if you have thought bad things always happen to me, you are extremly aware of those things, and they confirm to you, that your thought is correct.

and now this is a selective perception, of reality through the screen of thinking, so the reality will 'confirm' to you, and not only that, that thought, or any thought of that kind, actually attracts bad things, negative things. or if you believe people are basically bad, and that is a deep seated belief and you don't realize it, is only a thought in your head or a belief, not only do you use, you would single out where you observe unethical or bad behaivor in others "ahh! there it is" Not only that, but you actually are much more likely to encounter people who manifest that kind of behaivor. Because you attract it. And so, that is just incredible, how people create their world through that (points to head, as in thought)
so freedom comes from stepping out, encountering, first all little bit of space inside you...presence...and then from there you realize, certain thoughts as repetitive, and just a thought. "bad things happens to me....oh there it goes again.... i just thought that before"

So that's it, to become free of ego, means to become free of thought; identification with thought. that's the end of the ego.
You may okay it reasserts itself from time to time, but at least that's the awakening, how about your thoughts what happened to your thoughts, do you uh?

Woman who asked the question probably that i have to get everything right. it's an intense figure it out and get it right, it lulls(rules?) me.
TolleAnd if it's not right?
woman who askedi escape. i just won't do it, i pretty much predict way ahead of time, so i won't try a lot of times.
TolleAh. yes...yes...some people are afraid in not succeeding in whatever they do, because they have a self, their self image which is derived from thinking would suffer "if i fail at something then i will my self image will be injured and therefore i'm not even going to try" and then again this has to do with deriving the identity from thinking. and in the thought 'i have failed' is a lie, "i am a failure" is an even greater lie, you have not failed, you can simply re-inerpert it as "i have learnt something here, this is not for me, for example, so but why believe the lies that your mind produces? so as you know, people, many people, live with a very hostile mind, that's....but those people the motivation would probably be very great i would hope to get out of their minds, but they first have to realise that their problems are self-generated....mind generated, *laughs* not wild generated (points at others in the studio)...thank you

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posted July 21, 2013 05:48 PM            

(juniper BTW I type your username, and the 'autocorrect' thinks I misspelled, even after I correct the autocorrect-ness! grrrrr)

I can innerwardly "see" what Tolle is saying and agree.... in the 'moment'... But have HELL separating myself from "tricks" people have manipulated me with....

In my life, I was able to see auras pretty vividly. Lies and deception show up as a weird limegreenish color, usually with muddy browns. I have been able to use this (suddenly noticing my own in the mirror) and to SEARCH myself very deeply... 'What' am I lying to myself about? What am I trying to get people to believe about me so I can look acceptable to them? and to my own self?

The soul search and correcting my self problems can go on and on until I 'accept' and own something about me that I resisted to face....

Many authoritarians use the "ego" word to actually inflict pain on ones they feel are inferior to themselves.... Deflections... Truth, but DIRTIED by an insult or 'slap' with it... too many slaps create unhealing wounds and callouses on people's souls?

I've been "told" by ones in authority that they are 'telling the truth'.... and there were cruel punishments for dis-believing what I saw and knew. I was forced into "believing" THEM. I had to even 'shift' inside my own shell and thoughts and give out 'signals' that THEY were looking for--- that they were right, and I was wrong, and I deserved the punishment. (Which in a way was the truth because I had 'caused' them to believe a lie about me... flip, flip, flip, flip)

Then part of the set-up was to get "me" to 'stay' fortified in sustaining out a certain 'vibe' to the outerworld from inside that I am not a worthy target ... I have nothing they would want, and I'm not their 'threat'.... BUT, the trick is on ME--- because they SENSE what I have, and they feel my existence is a threat as long as I am around. And I continually wind up crippled because I am frozen 'feeling' the 'threats' to my 'safety' from them... when I AM NOT!! I just want to BE, and to feel "safe" BEING!!! (see how 'mixed up' this gets????)

METAPHOR: Like movies I've seen, where a submarine in war hides at the bottom of the water (of emos/truth) and the big enemy battleship (self-deception/ outer perps) is on top of me, crushing me, launching bombs against me, "depth" charges.

The submarine captain orders the crew to gather clothing and loose articles and things and place them into the sub's torpedo tubes, and orders them to jettison the debris. The battleship says 'it won' and the sub is dead...

It is sooo hard for me to hold self "protection" .... feel trapped.

Truth and Kindnesses can get 'dirtied' passing through filters. Sometimes they can "mix" with airs of superiority or inferiority.

Somewhere, I left a quote from Bible Book of Psalms....
'Let the words of my mouth and meditations of my heart be acceptable '....

Just before this verse, it speaks
'Save your servant from presumptuous sin, and let it not have dominion over me, then will I be upright and innocent from transgression....'

Feel caught in a trap. Got scared to trust my own gifts... Atrophied from nonuse. I hate it when people consciously deliberately lie to me. Makes me feel pain in that dark very solitary cave....

I want to be of service to others... but sick and sore from being manipulated and 'used' in the most wrong ways.

I don't know how (yet) to deal in a world so cruel that they would use innocent and act like they're glorifying it and actually be sinister in public view and in their spirit and lying truths.

posted July 21, 2013 11:52 PM            

how ironic would it be, if i told you that the person who gave me, my first copy of 'the power of now' was the one who caused me the most grief in life so far? and she'd go on about the 'ego' yet she had the biggest 'false sense of identity' on the planet.
i never read that copy. i tore out the page in which she so 'sweetly' hoped i'd enjoy the book, threw it, and threw the book away for whomever wants it.

a week later i met, one of the sweetest souls to enter my life journey, and he wouldn't stop going on about it. so it was on my mind again...a few month later, as if something invisible was moving me, i enter a bookshop and buy it, and read it this time.

am no longer as angry at people that caused me that 'episode'. i now realise it's their false selves not their real selves that caused all the hurt, and once they become who they really are it won't matter anymore.

inner peace is what Eckhard Tolle is trying to let us see. i was like the ppl i was angry with before, i let toughts become my 'god'/'ruler'...whether about how hurt i am or such, and then i'd just spend time dwelling on this pain,and not moving on or evolving in life. now i acknowledge some things were/are painful, no denying that, but this hurt and my thoughts about them aren't who i am. i let these thoughts orbit around me like earth orbits around the sun, and my inner sun/light(the giver of life) is who i am, and going with the flow of where it wants to shine is the other or main thing am doing in life now, than live in this world/earth of painful thoughts and matters. it gives peace to be like that.

and this inner peace is what the false 'guru's' you refer to, want to prevent u from reaching. so they take something so good as what Eckhard Tolle spoke about, then throw the word ego, knowing how people misunderstand it, (ego can say u're no good to, not only how good u r) and try to manipulate or control other's that way.....but it doesn't work once u find the real truth about what is meant by separating your ego(this again in no way means pride...pride and ego are very different, but somehow people started thinking of them as the same thing) from who you are.

Notice that Tolle, doesn't tell u to suppress your thoughts. on the contrary to acknoweldge them, and be aware of them. Awareness is important, as that's how u seperate them from who you are (the inner space of peace that is, that u create so u can really connect with who u are). on the other hand false 'saviours'/and egocentrics playing the 'here is who you are' game, mentioned previously, don't even want u to do that.

posted July 22, 2013 02:17 AM            

and I understand that state of like re-locating consciousness. fear can constrict and knock off center... and if it happens too fast or too suddenly it can be hard to 'find' where you are-- where you (oneself) 'went'....

some ministers preach on Adam & Eve in the garden, how after the 'fall' God called out to Adam and asked 'where are you?' with God being all-seeing, God knew where Adam was....but Adam had a relocation happen to him.... he was off the center of where he 'Be'

thanks for helping me make that connection today....

posted July 22, 2013 03:49 PM            

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Question: in talking about thinking, i know this has an obvious answer, and am actually asking beyond this. Where do our thoughts come from? So often time i'll...i'll have thoughts and i'll even recognize them as not my own, or possibly patterns that have existed for years and years. Jealousy thoughts, or competitive thoughts or thoughts of being threatened...fear...but truthfully it's this something that wakes up in the middle of the night that you were talking about. what is that, is it just part of the condition of being alive?

Answer, Tolle: Thank you....the buddha was asked a similar question, and i'll tell you what he said, but then i'll answer it, because he didn't.
somebody asked him a question like that, and he gave a parable. he said somebody shot you with an arrow, you have an arrow stuck in your body, and before you remove it, you're trying to find out where did that arrow come from "Before i remove it, i need to know who shot it, and why and where it came from, lets examine this in more details.

and that was his answer, what he was saying was that our main concern, should be to remove the arrow, instead off, trying to find out, where it all started, how did it all start, where did it all originate, that was his teaching was very practical. totally practical. Not all buddhisim is that practical anymore, some of it still reamains practical compared to other traditions.
But i nthe beggining the buddhist teaching was to just totally practicaly; remove the arrow, the arrow ofcourse stands for suffering, any form of suffering that is self generated, through the mind, and okay...so that was his answer,

now of course i agree with that, and i'm sure, we all do, thought going a little bit beyond it, thought, is...there is such a thing as a collective mind, and so many thoughts, are not your thought really, they arise in the collective mind, they are energetic fields or energetic entities, that one could almost think of them as little bubbles floating around.

they may not be literally true, i have no actually seen any bubbles but, the little bubble thought forms floating around, and if the thought form discovers any resonance with anything inside you.

for example, any form of negativity, grrr...and then there is a thought form in the collective mind, an even heavier form of negativity, just a slight irritation about what someone said today...grr oh why grrr....and then there is another thought form that vibrates resonanates with that negativity and then that little bubble that comes,*plop*(gestures as if something attacking the head) and before you know it, the irritation has become something bigger.

So you connect, with the universal mind, and it moves through you. So when we deal with our so called own minds, with far more than our own minds, but whatever awarness arises in you, is not your benefit, it has impact on the totality of the collective mind.
When awareness arises in you, it means awarness is arising in the collective mind of humanity. so it's not just, not just a personal thing, in the same way that, any thinking, that takes possession of your mind, is not really personal, there is no personal thoughts as such, it pretends to be personal, it's not it's the human collective mind.

in the same way ofcourse any emotion generated by that is not...its it looks like my emotion but its either anger or sadness or jealousy or whatever it is, it's basically still the same in everybody when it arises.

it attatches itself to slightly different stories of 'why am angry' but the anger is anger, human anger.

so again, it's not yours. you pick it up, and then it gets a hold of you, and then many humans live virtually with a mind that has taken possession of them. pretends to be them. and they are stuck with it. without even knowing it!
if they knew it there would be the beginning of freedom. they don't know it, and if you tell them, they get angry. But they don't know it, the mind does, because it feels slightened.

so they are still humans who won't hear this, they can't hear this, because immediately they would feel threatened by it, because in total, they are totally possessed by the mind.

you can se how, for example certain collective thought forms, can take possession of an entire country. Such as happened for example during communisim, soviet communisim in Russia, Maoisim, in China. million of people all thinking the same thing, and the, but even in our society, it is not necessarily one monolethic thought form as that, but there are different thought forms through the media that come perpetuated, an without knowing it often, they are our most basic assumptions, how we interepert the universe and the world around us, our basic assumptions our thought forms, that come out of the collective have taken possession of us. And they are all forms that conciousness takes in the mind, and that is all fine, in itself, if there is an awareness. But if thought is all there is, it becomes destructive and insane; without awarness.

Ofcourse your next question if you want to carry on that is, is why?

how did it all start? where does it all come from? and that is the arrow again.

asker Yeah in fact my friend Jen and I, use the phrase, when you ask why, that is the lie, just ??..let it go. butthe thing that occued to me, when you shared your answer, thank you, is that the thinking isn't something i need to war against, but rather it's a tool. and it is showing me where i'm allowing myself to identify with something that i'm not.and thus, identify with being seperate from this one..so it's a wonderful tool. that is ultimatley powerless in the face of consciousness, is that correct?

Eckhard Tolle yes, if you identify it with thinking, then your powerless then yes, because you're not there, your abscent, virtually abscent or as completely asleep when identified with thinking so you're being run by patterns, or what, the call it collective patterns, mental patterns.
And so your true power comes as you wake up, out of that,

*astonished awakened look, and ends it*

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posted July 23, 2013 03:40 AM            

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Originally posted by mirage29:
thanks and hugs, jellyfishtry. your words are soothing to me... and thanks for relaying that story... cool how our personal lessons and experiences can teach us contrasts, which we can relay to another person. the efficiency of the universe!

and I understand that state of like re-locating consciousness. fear can constrict and knock off center... and if it happens too fast or too suddenly it can be hard to 'find' where you are-- where you (oneself) 'went'....

some ministers preach on Adam & Eve in the garden, how after the 'fall' God called out to Adam and asked 'where are you?' with God being all-seeing, God knew where Adam was....but Adam had a relocation happen to him.... he was off the center of where he 'Be'

thanks for helping me make that connection today....

and thanks for pointing out that juniperb cannot access the urls -- wow I never knew that.... yet she made a kind comment about my providing songs here.

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Hugs back at you Mirage, and pro'lly JuniperB realized which songs they were, so knew what you meant!

Anyway maybe the second part i put, has more, i do'nt know, i feel that after some time things do get better, no matter how bady they are.

posted July 23, 2013 09:29 AM            

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there are different thought forms through the media that come perpetuated, an without knowing it often, they are our most basic assumptions, how we interepert the universe and the world around us, our basic assumptions our thought forms, that come out of the collective have taken possession of us. And they are all forms that conciousness takes in the mind, and that is all fine, in itself, if there is an awareness. But if thought is all there is, it becomes destructive and insane; without awarness.

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Yes. How we interpret the universe is what is fed to us.