Download PDF - Stillness Speaks

oneness with the Self."(44)Ego is commonly viewed as an implacable inner enemy, an ugly andintractable foe. Actually egoism, a misunderstanding about who we are, notego, is the problem. An ego is just embodied Consciousness, like a tree, amicrobe, a whale.The day we pop out of the womb conditioning casts its restrictivecover over the uncoverable Self. Myriad do's and don’ts, should's andshouldn’ts, likes and dislikes, habits and tendencies obscure the self-evidentSelf. By the time we understand we’ve been spiritually duped by mom andpop, the government, and society in general, it's usually too late to change.The image of Gulliver, a powerful giant rendered impotent by thousands oflittle people, is a beautiful metaphor of the Infinite in oneself made prisonerby thousands of insignificant thoughts, feelings, illusions, andmisconceptions.On the objective level everything we do is the result of conditioning -the way we think, talk, eat, sleep, walk, etc. Our conditioning hurts becausein our innermost being we know what it is to be spontaneous and free.Feelings of duty, obligation, responsibility, attachment, boredom, anger,frustration, hostility, aggression, alienation, etc., indicate powerfulprogramming and may motivate us to seek escapes through alcohol, drugs,work, entertainment, etc.; but we quickly become prisoners of the escapes.The only way out, as these commentaries suggest, is through thediscovery that the ego and the Self are one.To make sense of this challenge to conventional wisdom we need onlysee that the ego is simply the Self under an apparent delusion. Those whoinsist on eliminating the ego presuppose that it is a real entity. According toVedanta only the Self exists. Any perception of a separate being is ignoranceor egoism. And ignorance can be removed. If the ego were real it could notbe dismissed. And if it were real there would be two realities, the ego and theSelf. This is not possible because reality is by definition non-dual."The ignorance "i" and "mine"are removed by Self-Knowledge,just as right information removeswrong knowledge about directions."(45)81