Letting Go Of Ego

Dissolving the Last Remnants of Ego

February 4, 2013

Christina Sarich, Contributing WriterWaking Times

Leaving My Ego at the Door of Heaven
I came out alone on my way to tryst.
But who is this me in the dark?
I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not.
He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger;
He adds his loud voice to every word I utter.
He is my own little self, my lord, he knows no shame;
But I am ashamed to come to thy door in his company.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

There is no enlightenment while the ego still exists. The two masters which the bible tells us to choose between are the masters of the Divine, i.e., Infinite Love, and the master of Ego. We cannot serve them both, it is true. The yogic sage Babji told us that doing compassionate things can help to reduce the ego, but until we really truly realize that all of our thoughts are a prayer – a complicit whispering to God, or the Ego – choose your master – then we will continue to feel afraid and guilty, sad, and lost, all the trappings of a soul who has chosen the wrong master.
When we realize that with every thought we are choosing light or darkness, only then have we overcome the illusions which the ego would have us believe in forever. The love we do not get is the love we do not give. The hurt or betrayal we feel was done to us by someone else, is really the betrayed soul within us – given to the evil workings of shadow – or if you prefer not to ascribe the ego such power – the dualistic side of heaven. We dwell in our self created hell when we shun heaven. We may not know that we are doing this, but we do it with every tightening of the natural response to love, with every withholding of praise, with every smile we don’t give another person on the planet.

We have been deluded for far too long, believing that we can atone for our ‘sins’ by continuing the very thoughts which created the idea of sin to begin with. Persons like Yogiji Maharaj, Jesus, Buddha, Rumi, Krishna, etc. were just realized souls who had given up the thoughts of ego. The thoughts of ego, for we are all creators of vast skill. We are truly God-like in our ability to form reality, and this is the pain of letting go of our ‘small’ selves that Tagore is ashamed to bring before God. We are not small, though the ego wants us to believe this is so. As long as we believe we cannot affect change by changing our thinking, then we have lost the game set before us by the ego to keep us linked up and shored to its/his power. We support the illusion instead of realizing we created the play.
Every fragmented part of our illusion will be brought before us to look at and see for what it really is. All pains which we believe we have dealt with and incorporated will be brought to the surface to ask us one last time, “which master do you choose?” Have we lost our ability to keep our hearts, minds and thoughts on the Divine, or have we become so entangled in our fractal, segmented, cracked mirrors that we can no longer see our own perfection?
Milarepa, the great Tibetan yogic sage said, “When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick: every time a stick is thrown, you run after it. Instead, be like a lion, who, rather than chasing the stick, turns to face the thrower. One only throws a stick at a lion once.” When we look at our ‘reality’ – the world out there, with its trials, its tribulations, its annoyances, its pains, we see the thoughts we have already put into the mill to be used for grist which turns into reality, and then we chase after the reality created by those thoughts as if that will change what we experience, but the lion knows it is the thrower of the stick – the maker of the thoughts – that creates reality. The ego will have us see things in reverse, upside down, in every way but RIGHT.
The innate purity of the mind does not require you to manifest anything, only to realize its true nature. From this place, only pure thought can arise, which means only TRUE reality, not the FALSE, egoic version has any opportunity to manifest – to arise into your awareness. When we sit in silence, we honor the mind in its true state. We shed all the egoic trappings of blame and hurt, pain and wanting. Shedding the last illusions of the ego is like taking inventory, but not being swayed by the copious closets of costumes and magic hats, colored lights and boxes to be sawed in half. The illusion lays before you with no color, no light, and all you are drawn to is the ever-present purity of an untainted mind, trained on God.

About the Author

Christina Sarich is a musician, yogi, humanitarian and freelance writer who channels many hours of studying Lao Tzu, Paramahansa Yogananda, Rob Brezny, Miles Davis, and Tom Robbins into interesting tidbits to help you Wake up Your Sleepy Little Head, and See the Big Picture. Her blog is Yoga for the New World.

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