You Are Not Book.indb - Stephen H. Wolinsky Ph. D.

100 / You Are Not
The “I” ego is not bad; saying it is bad would be like saying
that digestive enzymes are bad when they occur naturally
to digest the food that was eaten.
THE vEil Of EGO YOGA
Doing to Get Rather Than Doing to Do
These questions must be asked, Who is meditating?
Do we do spiritual practice?
This can be best illustrated by what “I” wrote in
Quantum Consciousness:
“In 1988, I was meditating and began to become curious
about who was meditating? When the awarer turned its
attention around; there was nothing . . . nobody was
there and nobody was meditating.”
If you are doing spiritual practice to get something,
there is a subtle belief that you are, and a belief in the nonexistent
self-body that does this practice and will get something.
Spiritual practice can occur without any intention
of doing or getting anything, when it just happens with no
more or no less significance, or importance, then brushing
your teeth, making love, or going to the bathroom. Why?
Because in reality, the “I” is a representation, or “picture,”
produced by the nervous system and is not. It would be like
drawing a picture of a person (representation) of “you” on
paper and then imagining that it can do a spiritual practice
and get something. Most spiritual practice is a “spiritualized”
survival mechanism; i.e., if “I” get enlightened, then the new
and improved spiritual “I” will somehow survive better.
However, beware of the subtle body-mind survival
traits.