Stranger wrote: ↑Wed Feb 15, 2023 12:43 pm
First, the "separate self" is not improvable, it's a catch-22, the ego cannot improve itself, it can only become "enlightened ego"
I believe there’s something quite out of place here. Calling the separate self an illusion is quite customary in popular nondual culture today but this doesn’t help in the least. You yourself have said many times “the ego is completely real, it is there in the structure of reality”... yet then it is called an illusion nonetheless.
I understand your motivation – to find the only true center of being. But the ego is not another center in the strictest sense. Consider the following.
The Divine Spirit is like a master virtuoso. Yet it expresses through the layers of entangled relations – these are our sheaths. Now give a virtuoso a broken piano and he wouldn’t be able to make very good music.
This is the healthy way in which we should see things. The flaws of character are not in the least due to something that doesn’t exist but we think it exists. They are the channels and ducts etched in our soul, life and physical bodies. The way we move, the way we act, our gait, our handwriting, our default reactions, our sensibilities, our way of thinking – all of these are curvatures within our bodies, which streamline our flow of becoming.
Imagine this vividly. Our “I” always has the same Source – the Divine Singularity. When we’re deeply enmeshed in the disorganized sheaths we’re still that Spirit that experiences itself. But because of the curvatures of the sheaths, the Spirit has very little creative control over its flow of becoming. Instead, its state of experience evolves largely according to the etched riverbeds of the bodies. Then if we’re insulted or if we insult somebody, these are all semi-automatic reactions within our soul body, they simply follow the gradient in configuration space. So even if we feel as an evil ego, our “I”-ness still has its source in the Divine. It is only that our soul body is thus organized that our spark of “I”-ness is pushed and pulled by the most various desires (which are the curvatures of the soul body). The only illusion is that we accept these desires to be an intrinsic part of what we are. This is what most people do. They say “I like purple” or “I like Brad Pitt”. And even from a materialistic perspective it is already clear that there are lawful reasons, there are some structures that make us feel like that. However, people simply accept that as their unique atomic constitution. It’s similar in deeper esoteric understanding, where we know that it’s not only the brain but the finer fractal-levels of entanglement that shape our flow of becoming. And these we can begin to investigate immediately, we don’t need laboratories and scanners – everything is at our disposal.
What you call ‘separate self’ is like a collective token for all these layers. Then you imagine the purity of the free Spirit and call the state within the layers a delusion which must be pushed away. However, as Federica pointed out and you agree, this doesn’t lead anywhere. We have to penetrate the sheaths with the spirit and begin to creatively mould them, according to higher ideals. Otherwise we find ourselves in a dual situation. You already mentioned this. You are unhappy because of the fact that when you have to interact with the outer world you can’t keep your nondual state and snap back to dual patterns. This makes you believe that you have finished your work on Earth and you can continue beyond, where you won’t be distracted from your nonduality.
But all this results because of the hard split, where we basically take all our being, label it separate self and declare it an illusion. Then we feel right only in meditation where we’re undisturbed and we can diffuse into Oneness.
On the other hand, if we take seriously that we have structure (which is not in the least of importance only on Earth – we live with our sheaths also after death, even though they get transformed) then we understand that it is precisely this ‘delusion’ that we must work on. It’s like the virtuoso getting to work to repair the piano, to tune the keys and so on. This is our true work. And as we have said so many times, the only reason why one neglects this work is because it is believed that all these sheaths of entanglement have importance only on the Earthly stage and will be completely left behind at the gate of death.
When we understand things in this way, our meditations become a living process of exchange. We open all our being to be inspired by the Sun Spirit that works through us and which gives us the spark of our “I”-ness. Through that higher Inspiration we begin to notice the things that we have to rectify in our layers of being. The goal of this is that the Earthly ego becomes ennobled. It learns to be a servant of a higher Idea.
Then our daily life changes too. In fact, we may discover that we find unusual joy in interacting with people and the world. Not because we’ve put on our pink glasses. In fact we become even more conscious of everything that is painfully wrong in the world. Yet we also understand how everything unfolds according to Divine impulses and we find our joy in trying to align with them and work for them.
Now this doesn’t mean that in our busy daily activities we’ll be living in the nondual state. Our aperture will be surely narrowed and this is how it is supposed to be. But everything that we do now flows through better shaped channels. And this is not unique to spiritual development. It’s like this in every area of life. The student needs quiet time to study. This is his meditation. In that process he etches the proper channels within the bodies. Then when he goes on the exam, he reaps the fruits of his labor. He’s pressed by time, there’s nervousness, yet if the channels were properly etched, the ideas will easily flow. It’s similar in sports. Athletes do over and over again the most varied exercises in order to embed in their muscle memory certain movements to the state of perfection. These can’t simply be made up at the time of competition.
So the ‘delusion’ that you speak of must be worked upon. It is our suit. It is our interface to reality. If we call that illusion we have no choice but only seek to seclude ourselves and spend time in the nondual state. Yet there should be constant rhythmic interplay, just like we have waking and sleeping.
By calling the ego an illusion we selectively bundle whatever we dislike about ourselves and then believe that we’re above it. But this has one serious drawback – we have failed to examine our structure. We believe that we’re above our soul body and we’re no longer steered by the curvatures of unconscious desires. This is the fatal error. Because we now make it impossible to examine the very desires which make us push away the ego-bundle and declare it a delusion. We’re blinding ourselves about the fact that we still operate within physical, life and soul bodies and the curvatures within this out-of-sight soul body steer us towards this declaration of delusion. Alas, by believing that we’re already above the soul body, we no longer have any chance to recognize that what we do is not some absolutely ‘free will’ of our pure creative potential but is still heavily conditioned by our out-of-sight structure (we can’t bundle it in the ego-package and push it away simply because we’re unconscious of it).
And one last thing. When we’re busy in the day it is indeed impossible to meditate and expand. And this is not even necessary – actually it could be harmful. But we can surely pray. By praying I don’t mean to stop and recite memorized prayers. It’s about channeling our inner activity. For example, when we feel unsatisfied, we can feel the presence of the Divine within us and repeat in our mind “Thank you, Thank you, Thank you…” By giving thanks we open ourselves to the positive currents which help us dissipate the clouds of resentment. Another very effective thing is, when we feel that we’re treading thin ice, when we’re unsure what we’re doing, we can repeat “Lord, be with me at every step”.
Whoever experiments in such ways will find out that we don’t at all need a special meditative state. We’re like a deep diver connected with the air line to the surface. It’s of no use to imagine that we’re outside the water. We embrace this fact. Yet we can focus on our air link, to always remember that a higher level of our being gently modulates the envelope of the potential that we explore. We have to seek that Being as an attractor, as the guiding light that helps us find our way in the chaos of sensory perceptions.
Just like the student and the athlete, the degree to which we’re able to do this, depends on our ‘homework’. The more intimate our relations with the Divine Being are within our meditations and prayers, the more we transform our channels and ducts of the sheaths. Then in our daily life prayer becomes very natural, it flows through prepared curvatures. Prayer becomes as breathing. With every breath we look upon the Divine and desire to inhale only the most beneficial, the most loving currents and exhale them in the sensory world as virtuous life.
The summary of all this is that we really need concrete knowledge of our structure - the physical, life, soul bodies and the Divine spark of "I"-ness that works through them. What we call a separate self is simply how our "I" feels when it is out of control deep within the disorganized sheaths. Instead of calling this specific "I" state a delusion, we should investigate our structure and understand the hierarchy of our organism, why the virtuoso that works through us has so little control. If we simply declare that "I" state a delusion we have no choice but bask in the feeling that somewhere on high we're already the virtuoso and we simply have no conditions to work further here. But the virtuoso has all the means to begin transforming his musical instruments. That's how our true being gradually awakens within us and how we can work virtuously even among the chaos of the senses, by keeping constant attunement through prayer.
