The Reiki Cafe 

Finality,

I finially got it !
This is the article that resonated it to me.

LOVE AND THE EGO

The mantra of the ego is, “Its all about me.” The footprint of the ego is “My way is the only way.” The ego, by nature, will adopt any belief as an identity. Then it is fearful when faced with other beliefs. It feels threatened.

There is no love in the ego and the path to God is love - not a belief. The ego must always imagine that it is the center of the universe. Thus, “My way is the only way” comes into being and, by extension, everything with which the ego is associated. An ego-centered Christian says “Jesus is the only way” and an ego-centered Muslim says, “Islam is the only way.” The translation of both statements is, “My way or the highway.”

The ego is the opposite of love. The ego is me... me... me... and love is you... you... you...

The ego is motivated by, “What’s in it for me?” Love asks, “How may I serve you?”

The ego is Satan in us. Love is God in us.

The ego is the sense of separation from God and others. Love is a feeling of unity with God and others.

The ego is “I” and “mine.” Love does not seek to possess but only to give.

Where there is ego there can be no love and where there is selfless love, there can be no ego.

Think of any negative emotion - jealousy, hatred, greed, anger - all of them are the fruit of the ego whose roots are “I” and “mine.”

Therefore, love is the most potent destroyer of the ego. Jesus says loving our neighbor and loving God are the keys to salvation. Innocence is the fertile soil in which love takes root.

That brings us to these questions: “Do I love God with all my heart and mind? Do I love my neighbor as my own self?” - as Jesus commanded? If the answer is no, then we are not going to heaven. If no, then we must begin the quest for this love to which Jesus directs us. Yet we will attend church for years of Sundays and not hear one sermon about love much less any advice as to how to practice this kind of love. Christian books and tapes are more numerous than the stars in the sky but few are concerned with love and how to attain it. This is astonishing because this is the central teaching of Jesus!

Love is the very path to salvation! Sadly, we don’t recognize love or the need for it because we ourselves have no love. We have long since forgotten what pure selfless love is or what it feels like.

This is part of an article called "JESUS, BUDDHA & KRISHNA ARE ONE!"

Let Love and Light Guide You Today and Always,
voodoodoll

Hi,

Thanks for sharing this. It's a great explanation, probably the least complicated that I have seen.

It gives much to think about.

Gentle Blessings
Helen

Dear Voodoodoll,
I enjoyed reading your post. Im not sure about "where there is ego there can be no love". What person is without ego? We can look past our ego, push it aside perhaps but are we able to eradicate it while on the earth plane? Maybe that belief in itself is a trap of sorts, to believe that we have moved past the ego to the point that it is no longer there. Perhaps it is like other aspects of the self, we recognize it and go forward in spite of it?! :)

peace & joy,
holobon

Otoharo!

Holobon, you say things so well. Yes, it is possible to be without ego, but so far, I have not achieved this, but i am getting there a bit at a time. My friend, however, is there. However, in all her lifetimes, she never did buy into ego. Whereas, I purposely did so several thousand years ago. New babes do not have ego. Ego is not accepted by earth, so it will die out with the death of all that are living now.

finality

voodoodoll,

I have heard this line for a long time now, and it seems to me that people are confusing "ego" - the character traits that make up the mind of the self - with selfishness and self-centeredness.

Ego is essential to survival. It helps us to make healthy choices and discriminate among the possibilities life offers each of us, including the possibility for loving All, and living as though All Is One.

As I believe Jesus Himself would put it, we are each the I AM. He had a sense of Himself as a human being, distinct from but connected to all others.

Ego is not inherently bad or unhealthy. Selfishness and self-centeredness are a different story.

That's the view from here! Take care...

Ken

Otoharo!

I differ from your view of ego. The ego is a function of the intellect. It is a pattern that we use to create that function for ourselves. It was an experiment. Other planets do not have egos. It was intended to be like a servant, but has assumed charge over us.

Long ago one of the early psychologists offered the models of id, ego, and super-ego. That is not the model of which I am speaking.

The fact that we, humanity, have turned all our decisions over to ego is what has caused ego to turn against us. It is the Self who does all those things you name that ego does. It originally was meant that ego would observe the environment and report to the self and the self made the decisions. For instance, it might report that it is raining outside. The self decides then whether to wear rain gear, etc.

Ego does not have feelings, therefore does not love.

finality

Dear Voodoodoll & Finality,
Thought of you two & your posts today after I read this from the introduction to the Tibetan Book of the Dead:
"...Buddhism looks for the basic cause of sin and suffering and discovers this to be the belief in a self or ego as the center of existence. This belief is caused not by innate evil, but by unconsciousness, or ignorance of the true nature of existence. Since we experience the whole of life from this falsely centralized viewpoint, we cannot know the world as it really is. This is what is meant by saying that the world is unreal. The remedy is to see through the illusion, to attain the insight of emptiness - the absence of what is false. Inseperable from emptiness is the luminosity - the presence of what is real, the basic ground in which the play of life takes place."

peace & joy,
holobon

Silly me I thought I was starting to understand it : )

Otoharo!

voodoodoll, I think you are beginning to understand ego. Don't give up so easily. The buddha did not speak English, his words are translated. I understand the quote that holobon shared with us, too. When one is in being there is not an awareness of ego or self or anything else, just being. In other words we are not aware of who is being, but only aware of beingness itself.

finality

Dear Voodoodoll,
Ooops, I didnt mean to upset your apple cart . I posted this quote because it mentions that ego is self centered & our belief in ego or self centeredness is what pulls us away from truth or reality....ego is a concept, something that has arisen from a need to understand human behaviour..it is not a concrete object that we can see ..though most of us seem to be able to see Ego very well in others!! :)
Hope I did not confuse...for me, seeing things from different angles helps my understanding.

peace & joy,
holobon

HI,

Don't worry my apples are stirred not shaken.

This "ego" has many avenues.

In the article I posted I can easily understand how the "ME ME ME" is just one part of it.

A while back a very wonderful and wise forum member explained to me because of ego how we experience fear. Thank You again my Angel for those wise words.

I think the most important thing I have learnt so far about the ego is we need "Love and Gratitude" for ourselves and for others.

There is so much to learn ...

Let Love and Light Guide You Today and Always,
I'm trying to :)
voodoodoll

ALL,

I don't believe that we have turned over "all" our decision-making to the intellect. If we had, the human race would be much farther along in its evolution. In fact, a reading of human history shows the opposite - most of humanity's larger decisions have come from acting on feelings rather than intellect (see: The War in Iraq). Most poor decisions made in individuals' lives (extra-marital affairs, for an example) come from over-reliance on emotion rather than intellect.

If the Buddha had relied on feeling and emotion, he never would have left his family to find "enlightenment." Buddha (as far as we know) taught that attachment to people and things (suffering, by way of emotion) was the issue that condemned our souls to the wheel of reincarnation, correct? The way to break the cycle was the Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths - the essence of all being the intellectual understanding that we are all connected as aspects of God, and that true compassion for All leads to enlightenment.

The essence of Buddhism is balance, is it not?

Balanced ego is essential to human development, both as individuals and as a species. I think it's the IMBALANCE in individual egos and in the collective ego (or reality or consciousness) that causes problems for us.

If we discount the ego, we discount intellect. I don't think that serves any of us too well. There are way too many people out there who don't think before they decide...they react emotionally and act on that reaction. And then karma kicks in...

Ken

Otoharo!

We are talking about different things. This is my definition of ego. This planet is a decimal planet and thus is where experiments can be done. Ego is one of the experiments. No other planet has ego. So what you say does not hold water.

Emotion is not feelings. Emotion is thoughts macerading as feelings that are promoted by ego.

Feelings are, I feel good, I feel bad. Love and joy are the basics of feelings. Simple.

Emotions are very complicated, true.

Ego resides in the intellect, but is not the intellect. You use your intellect without using ego if you know how.

When I was first learning this, what I knew as me was ego. When someone suggested I drop ego, i could not because i thought it was me, how could I drop me? It took a long time for me to recognise ME as differnet from ego.

Until you can make this dictinction, none of what I say can make sense to you.

Hey lady,
I loved that particular verbage about ego. It was very moving and insightful.

Ego also says we can't shouldn't, be ashamed, hold onto, grasping, limited, not enough.
The true self is more about letting go, expanding and allowing, loving uncondtionally, relaxing.

Its amazing how much our perceptions change and start to heal as we move through all these limitations we have held as truth that really just bound us to dogma in the first place isn't it? All these rules that someone else made up and we believed their fantasies and made them ours.

What a fantabulous, amazing, wild ride is Life!! I feel like a little kid who is just learning she has always been free. The question is, what does that freedom really mean? Its so personal for each of us according to where we are in consciously. Where I am you may not be comfie, and where you are, I may not be comfie.
Or as some here say, Mileage may vary.. lol

Bright Blessings and laughter as always,

Amen!

J

holobon,

/*\ Namaste :-}}

- you said in part: "though most of us seem to be able to see Ego very well in others!! :)"

- ahhhhhhhh, isn't projection such a fine mystery???

bagl

Reiki All Around,

All Blessings,

Firekeeper