When the ego is at war, know that it is no more than an illusion that is fighting to survive. That illusion thinks it is you. It is not easy at first to be there as the witnessing presence, especially when the ego is in survival mood or some emotional pattern from the past has become activated, but once you have had a taste of it, you will grow in Presence power and the ego will lose its grip on you. And so a power comes into your life that is far greater than the ego, greater than the mind. All that is required to become free of the ego is to be aware of it, since awareness and ego are incompatible. Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment - This why we may also call it Presence. The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose, is to bring that power into this world. And this is also why becoming free of the ego cannot be made into a goal to be attained at some point in the future. Only Presence can free you of the ego, and you can only be present NOW, not yesterday or tomorrow. Only Presence can undo the past in you and thus transform your state of consciousness.
What is spiritual realisation? The belief that you are spirit? No, that is a thought. A little closer to the truth than the thought that believes you are who your birth certificate says you are, but still a thought. Spiritual realisation is to see clearly that what I perceive, experience, think or feel is ultimately not who I am, that I cannot find myself in all those things that continuously pass away. The Buddha was probably the first human being to see this clearly, and so anata (no self) became one of the central points of his teaching. And when Jesus said “Deny thyself,” what he meant was: Negate (and thus undo) the illusion of self. If the self – ego – were truly who I am, it would be absurd to “deny” it.
What remains is the light of consciousness in which perceptions, experiences, thoughts and feelings come and go. That is Being, that is the deeper, true I. When I know myself as that, whatever happens in my life is no longer of absolute but only of relative importance. I honour it, but it loses its absolute seriousness, its heaviness. The only thing that ultimately matters is this: Can I sense my essential Being-ness, The I Am that I am at this moment? Can I sense my essential identity as consciousness itself? Or am I losing myself in what happens, losing myself in the mind, in the world?
The foregoing is worthy of careful study and places a totally new emphasis on the words inscribed above the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in ancient Greece: “Man, know thyself.” The Greek words reproduced on a stained glass window are shown above. Lionel
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