Keeping the Ego, but seeing it for what it is.

After my fear last night that the only way to spiritual enlightenment was to destroy the 'Ego', I have fiddled around with the theory to make it more comfortable in my belief system. And I have come up with the solution, as I see it.

Keep the Ego, but see it for what it is.

When we become 'aware' we are in the moment. We can see our thoughts and emotions for what they are. They are NOT us. All of mankind's problems come from not realising this. When an emotion is strong it can take us over, and it can be difficult to seperate our 'real self' from this emotion, which pretends that it is us.

It isn't though.

I have spent the last few days since my Reiki session in some sort of 'in between' world. A lot of the time I have spent sitting. Just sitting.

Yes, thoughts came and went through my head. But I am not my thoughts.

Keeping this consciousness is hard, as we can be easily snared by the traps of the Ego. But when a negative thought surfaces in our head, it is important to detach from it, and see it for what it is.

Letting go of the Ego (and also perhaps, the opening of my throat chakra) hs also led to conversation being more interesting, more stimulating. When conversing, very few of us actually listen. This is due to the endless chattering of the Ego. Part of us is hearing what the other person says, but the majority is thinking of what we are to say next.

When you let go of the Ego, or see it playing its tricks. You stop the chatter. And you actually listen. The effects have been amazing. People are responding to me in such a positive manner, and the simple reason is that is how I am responding to them.

Of course a life-time of bad habit can not be changed in a day, a week, a month, even a year. Its a learning curve.

But all you need to do is sit down and meditate for ten minutes at the end of the day. Close your eyes, watch your thoughts, but do not attach to them. Remember who you are is different from how your Ego constructs you.

You are the blue sky. Your thoughts and emotions are clouds flying past. Do not attach to them. Do not see them as real. They aren't.

I'd like to finish with a quote from a very inspirational blog that I discovered (http://beyond-within.com/blog)

The ego, represented by the false creator, or Demiurge, is not something to be defeated, destroyed, relinquished, killed or otherwise done away with, but neither are we meant to indulge in or be ruled by its false beliefs about itself. The ego is an aspect of the self, a tool used for having experiences and interacting with the material world — but when we go to war within ourselves, who wins? No, the ego is to be transmuted by the purifying, alchemichal flames of gnosis; to be balanced and shown its true form by Spirit. This catalyzing process is every individual’s apocolypse, which literally means “unveiling”; a trial by fire that brings forth a whole new creation.

Death of the Ego

The way to achieve spiritual enlightenment is to kill the 'Ego'.

The Ego is how we construct the reality of this world.

But the Ego is an illusion that is the root of every human misery. Without the ego there would be no pain, no suffering, no war, no disease.

To reach true enlightenment we must look inward, not outward, and figuratively 'kill' the Ego. To accept that this is all an illusion, and the Ego is a false master. That we spend our lives in a false world, in a false self, tricked by the Ego into thinking that this is it.

To kill the Ego we must spend hours, in 'awareness watching awareness' mode. Where we lie down and watch our true self, watching.

Nothing else.

I meditate and believe that it is important, but this 'Killing of the Ego' scared me.

If we lost all of our 'self' then what is left but an empty shell? What is the point of going outside, making friends, embarking upon relationships, travelling, going to the cinema, reading, going for a walk in nature? After all these are just an illusion created by the Ego to divert us away from our true nature.

The point of this 'awareness watching awareness' is to realise our true essence. The 'Ego' that we think is real is not real. Nothing is real. So why bother? Let's just stay in a room all day in a meditative trance, reach enlightenment and never have to go through the endless cycle of birth, death, rebirth ever again

(The book would say that what is now speaking is my Ego, which has been frightened that it has been discovered, and is trying to stop me from killing it)

Jacob and the Angel

I remember watching Angels In America a few years ago. The closeted gay Morman in the play opens up at one point to describe his inner struggle, between his faith and his sexuality.

He talks about a biblical account where Jacob spends the night wrestling god's angel.
In the end Jacob triumphs, and the angel says:

"Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and men and have prevailed" (Genesis 32:28)

The Morman talks about seeing this scene as intensely homoerotic. Two specimens of masculinity spending the night locked together in an embrace. The irony of him being sexually excited by the scene, and also of it being a metaphor for him battling his sexuality, does not pull any punches.

For the Morman, he can never see his sexuality as a blessing. It is something he must fight against and never win. For him, faith and sexuality can not be reconciled. Unfortunately this a myth perpertrated by fundamentalist religious people, who spend their time looking outward, instead of inward, judging instead of embracing.

The angel can represent something different in every person. For the Morman, it was his sexuality, for others it may be their lack of a partner, for others it may be an addiction to something, for others it may be a fear of something.

We all struggle against something. The secret of mastering it it is to realise that many times our struggles can actually be our blessing, and that why it is an angel he battling against, not a demon.

And yes, it is very erotic.

Something. Nothing. Everything.

When I originally decided to travel it was to find something

Shortly after I found something else, which very quickly became everything

And I no longer needed anything

Until I lost what I thought I had found

And travel became everything, because I had nothing

Now I have realised that even though I am nothing

Inside I have everything

And therefore I need nothing.

A Coral Room

Kate Bush has a song called 'A Coral Room'

It's so beautiful, so personal, that you almost feel like you are 'intruding' by listening.

Today, through a very intense experience, I finally discovered its meaning.

The 'city draped in net' is the collective unconcious. All the experiences, memories, hurt, pain, dissapointments, hopes, desires that are floating underneath the surface of our concious mind.

Our concious mind is our self identity, as reflected by our five most easily accessed senses. It is represented in the song by a boat, gliding over a river.

When an experience is so difficult for us to process, or the hurt is too painful to deal with, or understand, we push it down, underneath the water.

We feel better, on the surface. But we haven't expressed that fear, that hurt, that pain, so it turns into a knot. A knot that twists inside us, causes negativity, anxiety, stress. The thing is we don't even realise the knot exists, until it is released, when we put our hands over the side of the boat.

'Put your hand over the side of the boat.

What do you feel?'

'In Ignorance, To View A Small Portion And Think That All'

I spent most of the night online, doing some more research into Gnosticism

I find it really fascinating, for me it is the only religion I have come across that makes any sense.

William Blake was a great advocate of it, and I think the aforementioned quote sums it up really. Everything in the world works towards making us think 'this is it' I am here, I struggle I die. This is the Atheist's world view

The Christian world view is equally dangerous, if not moreso. I am here, I am imperfect. God is perfect. To keep him happy I must follow a set of laws, rules, instructions. If I don't he will send me to hell.

For Blake on the other hand, 'The Divine resides in our Imagination'

For years, the church has advocated this idea of faith, belief, looking outwards

Atheism has advocated reason, sense, humanism

Both are based around a number of laws.

Blake personified reason as Urizen, "the embodiment of conventional reason and law. He is usually depicted as a bearded old man; he sometimes bears architect's tools, to create and constrain the universe; or nets, with which he ensnares people in webs of law and conventional culture."

'Urizen' has put all these laws in places to keep human conciousness relegated to a very low level. This is the purpose of the Church's doctrines on sin, to take all pleasure out of life, to limit what the individual can do, and to keep his/her conciousness from achieving it's full realisation

This is a false knowledge, as Urizen is a false godhead (remember, Urizen is not literally a 'real' person, he is a metaphor)

Because we are wrapped up in all these laws, we are constantly looking outwards

But what if it is all inside us?

True spiritual knowledge (if you wish to call it such) comes to us in our dreams, in our imagination. This is the true meaning of Gnosis, the Greek word for knowledge.

And in their stead, intricate wheels invented,
wheel without wheel:
To perplex youth in their outgoings, & to bind to labours in Albion
Of day & night the myriads of eternity that they may grind
And polish brass & ron hour after hour laborious task;
Kept ignorant of its use, that they might spend the days of wisdom
In sorrowful drudgery, to obtain a scanty pittance of bread:
In ignorance to view a small portion & think that All.
Blake, Jerusalem

'The Night Owl Effect'

Always nice to put a name on something

And here is the name - Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome

But what does it mean? Well in Wikipeida it is defined as

a misalignment between the patient's sleep pattern and the sleep pattern that is desired or regarded as the societal norm.... In most circadian rhythm sleep disorders, the underlying problem is that the patient cannot sleep when sleep is desired, needed or expected.

And what does it literally mean? Well here is my definition...

Trying to go to bed at 2 or 3 am and lying there in the dark, wide awake, eyes open, listening to the sounds of this house in the middle of the night.

Lying in the dark with my iPod on for hours, staring at the celing

Sleeping all of the day, avoiding the heat, missing the sunshine

This is what my life has become in Darwin. And when I think back, it's always been like that.

When I was studying I would stay up most of the night reading, burning candles and insence, meditating, listening to music

I remember working in Tesco, starting my shift at 10pm and finishing at 7am. Sleeping all day.

Even more recently, when I was working in the school here in Darwin I never got to sleep until about 2am and then I had to get up out of bed at 7am. And what an ordeal! At night time, I lie awake for ages, desperately trying to close my eyes, to go to sleep. Yet when that alarm went in the morning, I could sleep at the click of my fingers. And god what a struggle to get myself out of that bed. 4 to 5 hours sleep most nights. And then I'd make up for it at the weekend by sleeping most of the day.

Since I have broken my foot this has intensified normally. I now do not get to sleep until just before dawn (between half 5 and six every morning) Then I sleep soundly and beautifully for most of the day. Today I woke up at 4pm.

It is NOT insomnia, for which at least I should be grateful. As wikipedia tells us

People with DSPS have at least a normal - and often much greater than normal - ability to sleep during the morning, and sometimes in the afternoon as well. In contrast, those with chronic insomnia do not find it much easier to sleep during the morning than at night.

Boy do I find it easy to sleep during the day!

So now I have decided to stop fighting against it. To stop forcing myself to try and align my sleeping times to normality. Who wants to be up during the day time anyway in Darwin, when it is so hot, sticky and humid? Better to just accept that I am a nightowl. I have always preferred night time, I have always had difficulty facing the morning. And now that I am not working, lets just go with it. Lets become nocturnal.