Transcending the ego and letting go (part two)
EGO AND UNCONSCIOUS GIVING
Unconscious giving is basically dysfunctional giving. Some people cannot say “no” and find their lives with endless giving. This type of giving brings exhaustion, resentment, anger and a nagging sense of being used as well as the urges to criticize the other, always follows. Another trait of this wrong minded giving is to give something to someone, even if the other person may not actually feel he/she needs or want it, has not expressed a desire for it or does not ask it outright. The person that gives in this way wants to establish a connection with the receiver of his/her “generosity” which if is accepted eventually becomes a codependent relationship. The giver’s root motive is a deep need to be loved or to gain someone’s approval, but it is not real altruism, because his/her intention comes from a lack, incompleteness or emptiness. This giver will attract users and abusers and a victim type personality. Under self examination we find that our motivation for giving is to get love, recognition, approval, favor, praise or the desire to feel needed. Therefore the giving is conditional which demands recompense.
THE EGO TYPES
1. The Innocent
Motto: Free to be you and me
Core desire: to get to paradise
Goal: to be happy
Greatest fear: to be punished for doing something bad or wrong
Strategy: to do things right
Weakness: boring for all their naive innocence
Talent: faith and optimism
The Innocent is also known as: Utopian, traditionalist, naive, mystic, saint, romantic, dreamer.
2. The Orphan/Regular Man or Woman
Motto: All men and women are created equal
Core Desire: connecting with others
Goal: to belong
Greatest fear: to be left out or to stand out from the crowd
Strategy: develop ordinary solid virtues, be down to earth, the common touch
Weakness: losing one’s own self in an effort to blend in or for the sake of superficial relationships
Talent: realism, empathy, lack of pretense
The Regular Person is also known as: The good old boy, everyman, the person next door, the realist, the working stiff, the solid citizen, the good neighbor, the silent majority.
3. The Hero
Motto: Where there’s a will, there’s a way
Core desire: to prove one’s worth through courageous acts
Goal: expert mastery in a way that improves the world
Greatest fear: weakness, vulnerability, being a “chicken”
Strategy: to be as strong and competent as possible
Weakness: arrogance, always needing another battle to fight
Talent: competence and courage
The Hero is also known as: The warrior, crusader, rescuer, superhero, the soldier, dragon slayer, the winner and the team player.
4. The Caregiver
Motto: Love your neighbour as yourself
Core desire: to protect and care for others
Goal: to help others
Greatest fear: selfishness and ingratitude
Strategy: doing things for others
Weakness: martyrdom and being exploited
Talent: compassion, generosity
The Caregiver is also known as: The saint, altruist, parent, helper, supporter.
5. The Explorer
Motto: Don’t fence me in
Core desire: the freedom to find out who you are through exploring the world
Goal: to experience a better, more authentic, more fulfilling life
Biggest fear: getting trapped, conformity, and inner emptiness
Strategy: journey, seeking out and experiencing new things, escape from boredom
Weakness: aimless wandering, becoming a misfit
Talent: autonomy, ambition, being true to one’s soul
The explorer is also known as: The seeker, iconoclast, wanderer, individualist, pilgrim.
6. The Rebel
Motto: Rules are made to be broken
Core desire: revenge or revolution
Goal: to overturn what isn’t working
Greatest fear: to be powerless or ineffectual
Strategy: disrupt, destroy, or shock
Weakness: crossing over to the dark side, crime
Talent: outrageousness, radical freedom
The Outlaw is also known as: The rebel, revolutionary, wild man, the misfit, or iconoclast.
7. The Lover
Motto: You’re the only one
Core desire: intimacy and experience
Goal: being in a relationship with the people, work and surroundings they love
Greatest fear: being alone, a wallflower, unwanted, unloved
Strategy: to become more and more physically and emotionally attractive
Weakness: outward-directed desire to please others at risk of losing own identity
Talent: passion, gratitude, appreciation, and commitment
The Lover is also known as: The partner, friend, intimate, enthusiast, sensualist, spouse, team-builder.
8. The Creator
Motto: If you can imagine it, it can be done
Core desire: to create things of enduring value
Goal: to realize a vision
Greatest fear: mediocre vision or execution
Strategy: develop artistic control and skill
Task: to create culture, express own vision
Weakness: perfectionism, bad solutions
Talent: creativity and imagination
The Creator is also known as: The artist, inventor, innovator, musician, writer or dreamer.
9. The Comedian
Motto: You only live once
Core desire: to live in the moment with full enjoyment
Goal: to have a great time and lighten up the world
Greatest fear: being bored or boring others
Strategy: play, make jokes, be funny
Weakness: frivolity, wasting time
Talent: joy
The Jester is also known as: The fool, trickster, joker, practical joker or comedian.
10. The Sage
Motto: The truth will set you free
Core desire: to find the truth.
Goal: to use intelligence and analysis to understand the world.
Biggest fear: being duped, misled—or ignorance.
Strategy: seeking out information and knowledge; self-reflection and understanding thought processes.
Weakness: can study details forever and never act.
Talent: wisdom, intelligence.
The Sage is also known as: The expert, scholar, detective, advisor, thinker, philosopher, academic, researcher, thinker, planner, professional, mentor, teacher, contemplative.
11. The Magician
Motto: I make things happen.
Core desire: understanding the fundamental laws of the universe
Goal: to make dreams come true
Greatest fear: unintended negative consequences
Strategy: develop a vision and live by it
Weakness: becoming manipulative
Talent: finding win-win solutions
The Magician is also known as:The visionary, catalyst, inventor, charismatic leader, shaman, healer, medicine man.
12. The Ruler
Motto: Power isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
Core desire: control
Goal: create a prosperous, successful family or community
Strategy: exercise power
Greatest fear: chaos, being overthrown
Weakness: being authoritarian, unable to delegate
Talent: responsibility, leadership
The Ruler is also known as: The boss, leader, aristocrat, king, queen, politician, role model, manager or administrator.
HUMILITY AND ITS POWER
Attack, defense and judgement are other ego traits. In defence we have a belief that attack is real and consequently justifies counterattack as a defense. Our true and real self can never be attacked and requires no defense. The ego-self has a very high investment in its image, as its ideas, beliefs, opinions, people, careers and possessions. It will watch intently for any perceived threat of loss or change to any of them. It will use defense and resist what is. Humility has the power of defenselessness. Our higher being, our source is invulnerable and therefore needs no defense. But the ego is vulnerable and will rise in defense whenever its identity is threatened. When we drop the false illusion of the ego, what will remain? Only Love will remain which is our own essence. If we were to surrender with our heart to the recognition that our most valuable asset is humility, we would become enlightened in this very instant. We need to engage with total self honesty in order to gain humility, which means to justify our thoughts, feelings and responses in its favour. We need to maintain awareness and discernment in our decision – making but not using judgement as condemnation which will foster guilt. Ego-self defense has not got any power or meaning because all the areas that we try to defend are illusions created by our mind as beliefs, values, bodies, feelings and status.
FEAR VERSUS LOVE
There are only two realities we can choose in this world. One is illusion and the other is truth. There is either fear or love. Where there is fear, there can be no love. Where there is love can be no fear. Fear is an illusion. It only seems real when our minds believe it and use it as a filter on our lens of perception, in which we consequently believe that people, things and circumstances are trying to attack us. Love produces certainty, fear confusion.
In all fear comes the resistance of what is – that is the need to control our external world. Reality seems full of disappointments, suffering, drama and tragedy. Yet it is only our thoughts and beliefs about these that give us suffering. Our perception alone causes us pain and if we act out of fear it will causes more pain. In any given moment, we have the power to choose our experience. We either let the experience define our inner reality or we choose the only reality that truly exists, the reality of peace.
LOVE RELATIONSHIPS
Specialness pseudo – worthiness
The type of love which we are familiar with is “special” love, or conditional love. Our culture teaches us to equate love with feeling special. Any form of competition or comparison is a way of searching for specialness – to be the most intelligent, attractive, gifted, creative, popular, or even to be the sickest, most victimized, most depressed, most despised. Ego-love is full of specialness, judgement, need, blame and guilt. It involves projection, withholding, revenge, and conditions. If our partner has let us down in our needs, our ego projects anger, blame and the withholding of love which in return we bring punishment. Our partner ego perceives this as an attack and responds with a counterattack. Through the ego, we want our needs to be met through the behaviour of others: a favor, a smile, appreciation, recognition. We are attracted physically to a person and expect the right action, right words, touch and behaviour in order to fulfil our need to feel special and they expect the same. Instead go into their heart and soul and simply love them, not for what they can give to us, but for who they are, with no conditions.
In order to gain the special love we seek, we need to engage in a form of transaction or trade with the other person, which comes up as giving our time, financial support, status, energy, recognition, favours, love or gifts, in exchange what we desire. Therefore we enter in an unconscious agreement. Mostly not aware of the bargaining. Our ego unconsciously reasons – I have given you now, I will expect the same, and will place a condition placed in our given.
When the so called love brings anxiety, despair, fear, judgement and attack we can be sure it is not love, but special ego attachment.
When a romantic relationship breaks up is very sad and distressing. It is very important to know that the cause is from not enough real love being extended between partners. Real love is unconditional, not conditional, and only can be increased by extending it. We do this through forgiveness, gratitude, patience, unconditional giving, listening, communicating, and honesty with no hidden agendas to receive anything in return.
Love cannot be threatened by anyone or anything but we need to drop attack, and our ego defenses, judgements, excuses, justifications, projections, denials, resentments, criticism and neediness.
Authentic love and intimacy, that is, the meeting of minds with the shared goal of becoming whole, begins with dropping our defences. Through opening up and having the courage to be vulnerable and honest with our loved ones, only then can we can unlock the doorway to real love. Through this opening we will gain self-knowledge and self-love. We learn to trust ourselves and the source of us that is real love.
When we realise that we are love because it is our own nature, we won’t need others to make us complete and whole. We will be in an authentic relationship which complements each other.
RESOLUTION
In the process of learning and tolerating our fears, dropping our defensive patterns and let go of trying to manipulate our partners, we can then focus our attention on increasing our awareness in deeper layers of our experience. Remind yourself that this situation’s only real purpose is to provide an opportunity to overlook the ego. Which means not making it real. Decide to choose peace, knowing that the real source of the perceived problem is never outside of us. If we want to have freedom of pain / suffering and find peace, we have to realise that only by entering the relationships and situations that life has masterfully put upon us is because we need to learn the lessons. There are no accidents or random experiences, there are no problems, there is no one whom you are meant to meet.
There is only one in and beyond this consciousness, and you are the one – except you don’t know it yet. The healing of yourself and the universe comes from the recognition and response to, that every single person who seems to appear in your life is you!
A life crisis often serves us as a type of wake-up call to get our attention, urging us to question our beliefs and values and insists that we need to change, to find a better way of conducting our lives and how we look at things. We live most of our life unconsciously, learning to cope with our fears and conflicts, until we are faced with disappointments, loss or life altering changes and the pain becomes intolerable, But that pain serves us to motivate us into action, leading to our awakening to the true purpose of our life.
Enlightenment and Ego.
Until we can transcend the ego self, our life will be a cycle of illusion. In the name of spiritual transformation – many people are devoting a lot of time and attention to improve themselves without questioning the ultimate validity of the self that is being improved, or even beginning to question the entire worldview which self exits.
The ego self is always seeking ways to improve, inflate and satisfy itself. It does these things to shore up pseudo-self worth. Attempting to make itself into a meaningful and valuable image. All the workshops, books, asanas, meditations, and chanting will never get you to enlightenment because it is not out there, but is already here, because if you are doing those things from the belief that you are lacking and they can help you to get there, you have missed the point.
To seek it is to move away from it. You are already an enlightened spirit. There is nowhere to go and nothing you need because you already are a magnificent being, but you may not have realised this yet. The only obstacle you are encountering is your ego-self that is based on lacking and looking for external validation.
Spiritual masters rest in peace, joy and completeness of the present moment, no matter what the thought-stream, they have already transcended the ego-self.
Enlightenment and awakening is always in the eternal now. It is only in the now where we can access wisdom from the universal mind that is inside us and around everything that co-exists. The only thing that stands between you and enlightenment + awareness is seeking. Enlightenment is not a place to reach or obtain, not even an experience. It is the nature of the now. Spiritual practices give us discipline, focus with no effort and are beautiful. Spiritual teachers will teach us that consciousness and wisdom are not out there but inside us, and help us to tap in our inner wisdom, master our mind and infinite intelligence that resides in our being and will guides us into universal love.
When you stop seeking, enlightenment will find you. It can never be found through the mind but the energy of the heart which connects us to the infinite intelligence. To connect with the heart we have to undo and release the ego self.
The reality as we perceive it is just a dream, created by ego when we separated eons ago. Yet the source never left us and in reality we never left the source, it is always present, emanating with every perceived particle in the universe. Our job is to embrace it not overcome it – to enter into it, consciously. Truth is only revealed as we develop trust by surrendering the ego-self and letting go the need to control.
