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EGO

Kristie on Ego:

The ego is not who we are, it is what we are: it is the what
we have created
as a buffer...to experiencing awareness because awareness is
the absence of
the ego...the buffer is what we create through a life time
of experience,
perceptions, analysis and sensation....the body is the
vessel that contains
the ego....the body is its ally....between the two are
created the
tautologies of our culture...from it rises the strange
belief that the body
itself can create...such as illness, depression, pain etc...

The ego is a device that brings learning to us and keeps
learning from
us...it's allegiance is to pleasure and pain, not for their
own sake, but to
keep us from Awareness which is the realization of how
unnecessary this mode
of experiencing ouselves is.

Awareness is the recognition of present perfection; that all
things are as
they need to be...without analysis....without
understanding...with perfect
faith and infinite patience...that It is perfect...this is
non-duality in
its essence...

We all experience awareness, even the uninitiated in the
practice of
spiritual disciplines and belief systems, it is our true
nature and arises
spontaneously and naturally....unless the ego gets in the
way....the mind
can serve the ego or it can serve awareness...it is a
choice...

The ego is adversarial in nature and loves to divide things
up and inspect
things for the imperfection and differences. Awareness knows
only sameness.
Sameness is what we are....the recognition and acceptance of
sameness is
love...love is the uninhibited joining of ourselves with
another person,
place, thing, idea.....ego is uninhibited differentiation
and results
uniformly in fear....

________________________________________________________________________

Petros on Ego

It's annoying as all hell, but I *still* don't know what the
ego is. Has
anyone really answered the question here yet? Personally
it seemed that
Richard Hayes' answer (from the Buddha-L list) was the best
so far. I lean
toward his Buddhist view that the word really has no
specific referent at
all and is best done away with. Notice he didn't say, do
away with the
'ego,' he just said do away with the 'concept of ego.'
Which shouldn't be
too hard, since no one has a satisfactory definition
anyway. Modern
psychology has a workable definition of 'ego,' of course,
but paradoxically
there is no ideal of 'killing' the ego or 'transcending' it
in psychology.
If anything, psychologists seem to believe that a weak or
insecure ego sense
is the source of most neuroses and psychoses.

I am reminded of Krishnamurti's description (not definition)
of ego as being
that which you identify with. He used the illustration of
someone who is
very attached to their beautiful home furniture and is
always cleaing it,
polishing it, etc. He said, "Then you ARE the furniture.
Literally. It
goes, you go." That got a laugh out of the audience. It's
true, we are
what we identify with.

I'm sure we've all had the experience of taking one's car to
the mechanic
and discussing some problem with it. The conversation
usually goes
something like this:

"Well, I think my transmission is having problems."
"Are you sure it's your transmission? It might just be your
muffler."
"No, I had my muffler fixed the other month. It could be the
bearings."
"We better have a look at your bearings."
"Yes, you see I was in a little accident last week. Some
idiot hit me in the
rear end. He wasn't even looking where he was going!"
Etc., etc.

We hardly notice that throughout the whole conversation, the
word "car" is
not used once! It's as if one is talking to the doctor about
some problem
with one's own body, not the car's. It is much rarer to
speak this way
about one's house, for instance.

It is possible to objectify one's car if one works at it
deliberately and
makes a habit out of it, and it is also possible to
objectify the body too,
though the results are much less socially accepted. People
tend to look at
you strangely if you start saying things like, "This head
has a migraine. I
think the body inherited it from its parents." Being good
little
nondualists, of course, we don't mind, right . . . ?

I would thus tend to describe ego as a process or habit of
identification
with body, mind, objects, and such. To be more aware of
this process taking
place is to be more or less 'realized.' To really recognize
that there is
no 'one' behind the process, that it is just a natural flow
of attention, is
an important part of 'realization' by my understanding.


________________________________________________________________________


Tomas on Ego:

I guess I think of ego as a security seeking function. This
security seeking
is shaped by the pains and pleasures, the rejections and
acceptences, the
threats and promises that have been established in memory
(all these being
shaped by the envirenment from which the particular body
manifested)

At a certain level, seeking is so fixated on the
excuse-objects(the objects
which is accepted as the needed excuse to let go) that there
is little space
to investigate the true nature of the letting go process.

there seems to be a process whereby this seeking comes to
terms with it's
own nature and this may be said to be an increase in the
space of inquiry,
honesty, investigation, peace, letting go the hold on
knowing

so in this process, the excuse-objects are made gradually
more and more
transparent- meaning that there is an increased
responsibility for one's own
projections of "excuse" onto whatever objects

One is gradually taking more and more, deeper and deeper
responsibility or
ownership of all excuses (another way of saying this is the
letting go of
"victimhood") and of the letting go process itself

In the early part of this process one may talk about One's
growing ability
to recognize what is an excuse object (retrospectively
understood to be an
"excuse object"). In this early development there is a
becoming more and
more conscious of the conditioned messages- this process of
becoming more
consiouss start off by becoming conscious of what one feels
they want or
need to be GOOD, which means searching them out. This
process of becoming
consciouss of these wants seems to also be the process of
constructing the
framework of what will later be understood as victimhood.

In otherwords, there seems to be the establishment of excuse
object before
there is the understanding of excuse objects- with the
consequent growing
ownership

Ultimately it is found that it has always been One's choice
to hold or not
to hold, to let go or not let go

that time and space is a field of excuse objects

that the source of the very thing being sought is right
here, right now

that the fears at the root of the conditioned excuse
projection is a
resistence to here and now

that the resistence can be accepted, and in so doing, be
revealed as nothing
but an expression of the here and now

that true nature of the resistence is the same as the true
nature of that
which is sought

that the true nature of the One is always here and now

that there is nothing needed to let go

_______________________________________________________________________


Xan on Ego:

All essence is
consciousness

It's love
but not emotion

It's love
without contrast

You are love
without qualification

Ego is not-love.

Not-love is the vacuum
that all nature hates
and fills with .....
all this stuff.

Hear this
de-trivialized
fresh:

You are love.

________________________________________________________________________

ANTOINE

A story from the cable boy,

I love my job, as i come to practice tai-chi, in each
movement i make.
It's a discipline, a service to me.

Two days ago, i went to install the cable for a lady. Each
case is
unique. As i was installing the cable, as i may install
cable modem, the
phone or the videophone, the lady got curious about me,
asking me about
my education, my origin. And she could not believe i was
doing this job
instead of being the corporate manager of my firm, with all
my
education. And i was telling her i like my job, i enjoy
every moment of
it, and i am free from it as i leave it. And i "think"
(projection
here), she could see it in my eyes that i like my job as
much as making
love to a woman, to take a frame of reference, or playing in
my garden,
or looking a a beautiful night sky, etc...

She only had on idea in her head, the stock market, and
wanted me to
like it as much. When the tv was connected, she jumped on
the stock
market channel, to start crying. S That was only two calls
in one day, i
make usually from 7 to 12. The Company sends me on special
problem,
either technical or of human relations. Not all days
generate such
stories. But getting to be in the home of so many peoples
does bring
intimate relations.

Lucien Bouchard, our prime minister, a strong man he is in
person. I
respect him deeply. He his one of the few who was affected
by the
epidemic, don't remember the name of the sickness, it append
about 6
years ago over the world. About 100 people died. It was
horrible because
people would die from it in a day or two, and it eaten the
flesh, like
fire. Very few survived it, he did, but lost a leg to it.
All that in a
matter of hours.

So i arrived at the 20 story building, with this decoder box
and my tool
belt, trying not to forget about my tai chi flow :) Had to
sign papers
downstairs and pass a metal detector. Of course i bused with
my tools.
Then up the elevator to the 12. To find three man's waiting
for me with
guns. Checking double checking my identity. Then passing a
series of
doors that can only be open from the inside. Of course i am
escorted.
The chief of security, a 6'2" guy, takes over. And brings me
to the room
where the prime minister is alone, doing some work. The
secretary is
there to let us in at the right time, like in a ballet
dance.

People wanting to become Presidents or prime minister have
not seen this
crystal prison with their eyes.

To smooth things, seeing the chief of security wondering
what could be
in my two boxes. I ask him if he knows Andre Boiclair, a
cabinet
minister of my age. He says yes of course. Then i tell him,
we went 7
years to school in the same classroom, at the College Jean
de Brebeuf. I
made a lie, telling him that we plaid basket ball together,
when Andre
Boiclair was in fact the water boy of our basket ball team.
He soften.
He ask: you plaid basket ball?, where are you from?,
etc...until the
eternal question following why do you do this job. My
eternal answer,
because i love it :)

So we go in the office, me and him, the Prime minister
reading a paper
and the secretary dancing from her phones to him. His wife
was not there
:) To bad Lol.

That installation was like making a tea ceremony for someone
watching,
the chief of security. Taking my knife to open the box. My
cutter to cut
wires, etc., draw all his deep attention. In now time it was
done. I
handle the remote control to the prime minister, first
contact, for him
to see if all was ok.

He took the time to get up for me before i left and give me
a hand
shake. He asked me if he could do something for me. I said
yes, when you
have time please say hello to Andre Boiclair for me. "And
what is your
name" he said. Just tell him the tall one from school tells
him hi, he
will know who i am. And we all laughed, since the security
guard seems
short near me.

And so i left, to stop at a near by cafe on a terrace to
take a drink on
this wonderful afternoon. And then drive to my next job. A
woman alone
in few million dollar house with 16 tv not working. And then
after an
old lady that got scared, because her vcr started the
autoprogram of
channels alone after a power failure. Each moment is unique.

But those are other stories.
he told me she just had lost 50,000
dollars today. I hold her in my harms for a while without
saying a word,
then i left for my next job.

It was the Prime minister of the province of Quebec, Lucien
Bouchard,
who wanted to look at CNN in an office of his. But that his
another
story.

I love my job.

That was only two calls in one day, i
make usually from 7 to 12. The Company sends me on special
problem,
either technical or of human relations. Not all days
generate such
stories. But getting to be in the home of so many peoples
does bring
intimate relations.

Lucien Bouchard, our prime minister, a strong man he is in
person. I
respect him deeply. He his one of the few who was affected
by the
epidemic, don't remember the name of the sickness, it append
about 6
years ago over the world. About 100 people died. It was
horrible because
people would die from it in a day or two, and it eaten the
flesh, like
fire. Very few survived it, he did, but lost a leg to it.
All that in a
matter of hours.

So i arrived at the 20 story building, with this decoder box
and my tool
belt, trying not to forget about my tai chi flow :) Had to
sign papers
downstairs and pass a metal detector. Of course i bused with
my tools.
Then up the elevator to the 12. To find three man's waiting
for me with
guns. Checking double checking my identity. Then passing a
series of
doors that can only be open from the inside. Of course i am
escorted.
The chief of security, a 6'2" guy, takes over. And brings me
to the room
where the prime minister is alone, doing some work. The
secretary is
there to let us in at the right time, like in a ballet
dance.

People wanting to become Presidents or prime minister have
not seen this
crystal prison with their eyes.

To smooth things, seeing the chief of security wondering
what could be
in my two boxes. I ask him if he knows Andre Boiclair, a
cabinet
minister of my age. He says yes of course. Then i tell him,
we went 7
years to school in the same classroom, at the College Jean
de Brebeuf. I
made a lie, telling him that we plaid basket ball together,
when Andre
Boiclair was in fact the water boy of our basket ball team.
He soften.
He ask: you plaid basket ball?, where are you from?,
etc...until the
eternal question following why do you do this job. My
eternal answer,
because i love it :)

So we go in the office, me and him, the Prime minister
reading a paper
and the secretary dancing from her phones to him. His wife
was not there
:) To bad Lol.

That installation was like making a tea ceremony for someone
watching,
the chief of security. Taking my knife to open the box. My
cutter to cut
wires, etc., draw all his deep attention. In now time it was
done. I
handle the remote control to the prime minister, first
contact, for him
to see if all was ok.

He took the time to get up for me before i left and give me
a hand
shake. He asked me if he could do something for me. I said
yes, when you
have time please say hello to Andre Boiclair for me. "And
what is your
name" he said. Just tell him the tall one from school tells
him hi, he
will know who i am. And we all laughed, since the security
guard seems
short near me.

And so i left, to stop at a near by cafe on a terrace to
take a drink on
this wonderful afternoon. And then drive to my next job. A
woman alone
in few million dollar house with 16 tv not working. And then
after an
old lady that got scared, because her vcr started the
autoprogram of
channels alone after a power failure. Each moment is unique.

But those are other stories.

________________________________________________________________________


NEWS BRIEF!

Post-Modern Condition
Upgraded To
Pre-Apocalyptic
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA--The
"postmodern" condition of
alienated, disjointed
late-20th-century humanity was
officially upgraded to
"pre-apocalyptic" Monday, when
new findings from leading
postmodernist theorist Richard
Rorty were published in the new
issue of Semiotexte. "I was
flipping through the cable
channels the other night, trying
to get an abstract sense of the
way emergent processes of
change and transformation
generated by contemporary
high-tech society are
challenging cultural
assumptions regarding diverse
aesthetic forms to create a
novel state of history," Rorty
said, "when, all of a sudden, I
realized that everything I was
looking at was the biggest load
of unimaginably horrific crap
ever." At this point in the
socio-cultural discourse, Rorty
said, the key question is no
longer whether or not social
fragmentation, cultural
meta-juxtaposition and
socioeconomic problematics
require new modes of
experience and interpretation,
but rather, "When will the
seven-headed dragon of the
End Times descend upon us all
in unholy fury?"

---contributed by Gene


________________________________________________________________________________\
____


DIALOGUE BETWEEN GENE AND ANTOINE

Gene:

After a careful reading of your webpages, I see that you are
aware
of the esoterica of thermodynamics. This is a rare attribute
among people,
to see physics in terms of 'spirituality'.


Antoine:

We unfold in from the language we have, we are... For me it
has been
physics that came the closest to my "dreams" and "visions"
in my teens.
It took me a long time then (one year is a very long time :)
to also
come to see "official" spiritual language also in terms of
spirituality.
A small book from a mystic, Maurice Maeterlink, that my
father gave me
for my 16 year hold birthday, was my first door in seeing,
by the medium
of words, instead of visions, that i was not _alone_ in
seeing.

But i do see the lake, and the nature around, where i was
raised younger
as the symbolic domain of my spirituality.


Gene:

Allow me to just ramble here. We face backwards 'because'
what we would
otherwise face is the event-horizon of 'death', the sole
predictable
singularity in life...


Antoine:

It is a sentence rich in meaning that i read here. With
other words, i
translate it this way: The _fire_ burning can only "think"
of finding
the next wood to burn. It is its essence. Death for fire
means not
finding anymore combustible to burn. _Fire_ is _acceleration
of
entropy_. The wood without it, simply decays in its "normal
flow". The
fire is dead, the wood decays.


Gene:

or so it is promoted in world-dream belief and
teachings. For world-dream humans, the future is 'death'...
but for those
(Nagualists, nondualists) few who fall outside of the
artificial limits of
the world-dream, navigation does not include death as a
signifcant
landmark. Thus, facing the 'future' is possible, and is
taught as 'Tantra'
via the school of Vajrayana (which is built not only upon
Buddhism, but
also upon a more ancient foundation, that of the 'Nagualism'
of Bon-Po, or
as it is called. "The Way of Seeing"). It is possible to
live... without
the classical definitions of life and death; to do so, may
put one at odds
with the enforcers of the world-dream. That is when things
become very
'interesting' in a social context, and that is why
hermitism/Shamanism is
still a very rare flower to be seen blooming among the
thorns.


Antoine:

I like in thermodynamics, the Maxwell Demon. He looks at
"death" to
create "life". But he only reverses the classical
"definition" of life
and death. Yin becomes yang and vice versa, he still as a
direction ,
even if the reverse.


Gene:

According to the ancients... all of 'reality' (as treated by
physics) is
merely degenerate light; that is to say, that from light
comes not only
fire, but also movement (relativity), space, water, ash
(earth). We
observe, as you know, from a present which still emanates
from that light,
but this simple fact is lost upon most observers. Entropy is
the activity
of degeneration of light, the return to light, via the
myriad paths of
matter (elements) and energy.


Antoine:

Yes like a tree with millions of leaf and roots.


Gene:

Living biological Beings use the power of _accelleration of
entropy_ for
the business of creation, of honey or anything else.
Organization here, is
at the expense of organization elsewhere.
Eating/digesting/anabolism is at
the expense of the envirionment; we build by destroying. It
is however,
only the 'binding energy' which we actually expoit. Matter
itself is
symptomatic of the existence of binding energy; the Being
uses binding
energy released via the reactor of digestion to sustain
itself, the body is
'simply' the slow-motion outflow of what was destroyed, or
'degenerate
light'.

Eventually, long-wave infrared heat is consumed by the great
singularity,
to be once again boosted in activity to photonic and beyond.


Antoine:

The "eventually", long-wave infrared heat being consummated
by the great
singularity (the big crunch movement), according to the Big
Bang/big
Crunch egg of our imagination, should be as long as the big
bang
movement. The big Crunch is the domain of the Maxwell Demon,
a
contraction into the known, and the combustion into the
unknow, the
explosion, is the domain of the Big Bang wave.


Gene:

This long, seemingly eternal gradient is the _stretched
single point of Being_. The
mind of the human creates 'time' as a _justification_ for
what is observed,
but the concept of 'time' thus disguises the reality which
entropy reveals
to physicists. We seek to remove that disguise, yes?


Antoine:

And remove the disguise which entropy is for physicist.


Gene:

This is why I object to platitudinous 'explanations' which
seek to reduce
it all to slogans and beliefs and standards (even the
standards of
'nondualism') through which to see. It is only by facing
forward into the
future/unknown that direct vision of our power of creation,
the highest
Siddhe, can be recognized and thus used responsibly.


Antoine:

If one objects to something, it is something :)

Rambling here:)

The Big Bang Egg of our imagination that is expanding from
it's initial
singularity (called in thermodynamics, a "movement" towards
the state of
maximum entropy), creates a pattern of manifestation we
associate, in
psychology, to the arrow of time (past (known) -> future
(unknown) ),
(or creates) simple patterns like finding normal that pool
balls placed
in a _triangular_ form on a poll table, when broke by the
_white_ ball,
spread all over the table instead of coming back to form the
initial
_triangle_, or a circle or a square of balls.)

As _fire_ burning wood, using of its power of _acceleration
of entropy_
and that comes to "fear" the lack of wood (combustible) for
its survival
in the state of manifestation. As this _fire_ "fearing"
death, and
coming to face only backwards (to find more combustible to
burn). In the
same way, in our observation of manifestations, we are
brought to look
backward for combustible to survive in the "mode" of the
_fire_ pattern
we are identified with. This is usually felt as a sensation
of a Arrow
of time.

But as much as the expanding Big Bang is a fruit of our
imagination. As
much may it become, after a while (when the ability of
_fire_ to find
combustible will be lost), A Big Crunch, returning to the
initiator a
different form of singularity. The general movement becoming
"then" a
movement towards entalpie (minimum entropy).

An observer used to associate _life_ and _consciousness_ to
the
expanding Big Bang movement, surviving as a separate entity
in the Big
Crunch flow, will observe and experience manifestation as
going from
future (unknown) -> past (known). Fire in the big crunch
will not be a
"normal" form of manifestation, as much as hitting my
triangle ball
formation on a poll table, will not lead to dispersion of
the balls, in
general.

The element of _fire_, movement towards maximum entropy, as
a domain,
support, body for awareness, identity, etc... May as well
become the
element _earth_, movement towards minimum entropy, where a
Big Crunch of
the Egg is/becomes the major law of imagination and
observation observed
in manifestation, instead of that of the Big Bang of the
Egg.

Changing elements from _earth_ to _fire_ or vice versa, is
not a
realization as such, as you know, but it sure helps one to
expand the
object of his/her identification. It's awareness is
presented with a
deeper unknown to "assist" to.


Gene:

Well-thought, Antoine. Yes... we have innate power of
creation, and can
learn to use it wisely. We can, through various means,
deliver guidance and
teaching and encouragement to others. Sometimes this can be
experienced as
a 'shock', by the student. It is what the student _reaches
for in reaction
to that shock_ which is the significant, telling evidence of
just how the
student is already conditioned, and of what thus must be
unlearned, before
the student may be able to face the raw unknown without
pulling a rabbit
out of the hat of imagination/conditioning. Our world-dream
is literally
crawling with such imagined-into-reality rabbits, a factor
which is itself
revealing of our power of creation.


______________________________________________________________________


XAN

Thoughts rise and fall
in no-mind

Emotions flow through
nothing

Sensations register
then cease

But what is this
delicate
constant
flowing
stillness?

______________________________________________________________________


ANDREW

Silent and still
what is my voice?

My wordy self ;
What wind
made this wave?

---------------------------------------------

Always each one ( the only one) keeps asking the question
(the only
question).

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