The-Tibetan-Book-of-Living-and-Dying

THIS LIFE: THE NATURAL BARDO 123
and difficulties we are going through as we come to know
ourselves on the teaching, and even on the teacher: "These
gurus don't care anyway, whatever you're going through.
They are only out to exploit you. They just use words like
'compassion' and 'devotion' to get you in their power ..."
Ego is so clever that it can twist the teachings for its own
purposes; after all, 'The devil can quote scriptures for his own
ends." Ego's ultimate weapon is to point its finger hypocritically
at the teacher and his followers and say: "No one around
here seems to be living up to the truth of the teachings!" Now
ego poses as the righteous arbiter of all conduct: the shrewdest
position of all from which to undermine your faith, and erode
whatever devotion and commitment to spiritual change you
have.
Yet however hard ego may try to sabotage the spiritual
path, if you really continue on it, and work deeply with the
practice of meditation, you will begin slowly to realize just
how gulled you have been by ego's promises: false hopes and
false fears. Slowly you begin to understand that both hope
and fear are enemies of your peace of mind; hopes deceive
you, and leave you empty and disappointed, and fears paralyze
you in the narrow cell of your false identity. You begin to
see also just how all-encompassing the sway of ego has been
over your mind, and in the space of freedom opened up by
meditation, when you are momentarily released from grasping,
you glimpse the exhilarating spaciousness of your true nature.
You realize that for years, your ego, like a crazy con artist, has
been swindling you with schemes and plans and promises that
have never been real and have only brought you to inner
bankruptcy. When, in the equanimity of meditation, you see
this, without any consolation or desire to cover up what
you've discovered, all the plans and schemes reveal themselves
as hollow and start to crumble.
This is not a purely destructive process. Alongside an
extremely precise and sometimes painful realization of the
fraudulence and virtual criminality of your ego, and everyone
else's, grows a sense of inner expansiveness, a direct knowledge
of the "egolessness" and interdependence of all things,
and that vivid and generous humor that is the hallmark of
freedom.
Because you have learned through discipline to simplify
your life, and so reduced the opportunities for ego to seduce
you; and because you have practiced the mindfulness of meditation,
and through it loosened the hold of aggression, clinging,