The Spirituality Ego Trip

The ONE is nonduality, it preludes reality, and it is the source of all existence and non-existence.

All consciousness from the simplest to the self-consciousness, rises from the ONE as waves rise from the ocean, and after their journey in the duality world, all consciousness returns to the source, to the ONE.

I have discussed this metaphysical concept, at large, in some of my previous blogs but today this will be just a brief introduction to the subject at hand “The Spiritual Ego Trip”  

So, what is the Ego and what is an Ego trip?

As we are born we still have the quality of non-duality, that means the newborn and very young babies have no knowledge of “Good” or “Bad” we are pure Spirit encapsulated in a meat, bones and skin bag. 

We must learn what pain is in order to know what pleasure is, we have to learn what a lie is in order to know what truth is, we have to learn what hate is in order to know what love is. In short, we must know the evil in order to know the good.

This may sound harsh but without losing our innocence we wouldn’t be able to survive in the material world. This is our original sin “eating the apple from the tree of knowledge”

Along with the knowledge, we also learn how to speak and how to reason using language and symbols.

We are also indoctrinated in the concept of identity.

You are no longer a manifestation of God part of all that there is but a separate individual, a human.

To enforce that identity, you are given a label, a name and a role you have to play – to be John the son or Mary the daughter of your parents. Usually, after that, you are assigned another role “the student role”

Sometime around 7 years old +-  our learned function “the reason” connects to the assigned identity.

and thinking becomes predominant over all the other functions of the Spirit; intuition, imagination, creativity.

If you are lucky some of your talents may be nourished and further develop or unlucky and have all your talents be suppressed and never develop.

It is in the teenage period when the reason reaches the stage of self-consciousness “the I think therefore I am” form. At that time, the Ego takes control from the Spirit and asserts itself as the true identity of the human experience. Our Ego trips multiply. We are sports fans, boyfriend, and girlfriend, democrat or republican, Christian or Muslim, athlete or cheerleader etc.

But these Ego trips are just the introduction to the big roles, father, mother, engineer, teacher, entrepreneur or worker etc. Just ask anybody who are you and they will answer with the assigned label and role. Nobody has any clue that, that is just an Ego trip not the real identity of the “I”

The development of the Ego imposes the Ego qualities over our personality overshadowing the qualities of our Spirit. All Ego qualities arise from the belief in its separate state from everything as opposed to the spirit that knows it is connected to everything.

Some of the Ego qualities derive from that are the belief of scarcity, poverty, ignorance, and fear but what keeps the Ego in power is the supreme quality of the Ego – Vanity. The I am better than you Ego game that all of us are involved in even if we are not aware of it,

The classical example of vanity Ego trip would be any person driving a Ferrari or similar car, any person decked in jewelry or a guy with a trophy wife. That is the Ego saying to the world look at me I am better than you. I am a winner and everybody else is a loser. But that is just a façade, an empty attempt to fill the void of Ego existence.

Another form of Ego trip is the spiritual Ego trip. Because of the explosion of information, we now know that material success doesn’t equate with happiness and we even look down on people with money.

Having money will not excuse you from being a douche bag so some people have found another way to be better than you. The spiritual pseudo “non-material” Ego trip.

One of my favorite spiritual Ego trips are the eco-planet-saving warriors. You know the type; vegan, hip, Prius driving apple book totting, save the planet preachers.

Here is the point: For millions of years, we have been living in harmony with the planet without generating any garbage or industrial pollution. Actually, there are people that do that even now. 

The Amish people live in perfect harmony with planet earth. 

They cultivate their own food, make their own clothes and have a zero impact on the planet.

So, all those hip types trying to make you feel guilty for using plastic bags or eating a beef steak are just little hypocrites. 

They are not here to save the planet they are here to show you how much better they are then you. 

If they really cared about the planet they should give up their Priuses, Apple laptops, and cell phones and go live on an Amish farm with zero impact on the planet they say they love. Right?

And then of course then is us the Zen Buddhist, Born again Christians, Hassidic Jews, and Fundamentalist Muslims. You know the type; My God is better than your God and my religion and beliefs the only right one. In other words, I am better than you Ego trip disguised as “I am doing you a favor saving your soul from the eternal flames of hell”

It is all a charade, a grotesque circus of hypocrisy. The Pope and the Vatican are the richest men and institution on the globe. How did they get all that money, treasures and land? From ripping off the poor and then turning around to lead the fight against the poverty they created. Just like our eco-warriors friends. If you want to end poverty why not do it? After all, you have all the means and nobody will stop you.  

So, the bottom line is, if you belong to any organized religious or non-religious group you are on an Ego trip. 

Jesus and Gautama had no church or temple. Christ was not Christian and Buddha was not a Buddhist. 

If you want to be a spiritual person you should be like Jesus “in this world but not of this world” and like Gautama a beggar, a nobody meditating under the Bodhi tree.

The promise of spirituality

“We cannot solve the world’s significant problems with the same level of consciousness that created them”

Albert Einstein

I was having a picnic in the park with my family.

It was around the Easter and the kids were having fun hunting for the hidden eggs.

I was lying on the blanket next to the remains of the picnic feast when I noticed an ant coming searching for food.

I don’t know if the ant could smell the food, for sure she couldn’t see it, but somehow she knew the food was around and it was determined to find it.

The funny thing about this is that from my vintage POV it was quite clear where the food was and what the obstacles and the clear path was but the poor ant had no idea and no other way to find it than by trial and error.

Eventually after many trials the ant found a crumb of food but I was thinking what if the ant knew what I knew?

What if, just like the ant, we are looking around for whatever we are looking, unaware that all the information, all the knowledge we need for success in life it is already available?

What if we could have a different POV where all that information about life’s obstacles and the optimum path would be clearly visible to us?

This is the promise of spirituality:

To put us in touch with a higher source of knowledge and wisdom.

To transform one’s life path and experience.

To elevate the level of human consciousness to an optimum level.

This is the path I am looking for and if you are looking for the same thing you are welcome top come along on my journey.

But as Albert Camus said:

"Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow.

Don't walk behind me, I may not lead.

Just walk beside me and be my friend."

Choice

I have been asked many times:

“Have you ever seen God?”

“Have you ever seen a picture or any scientific proof of his existence?”

(For some reason people believe God is a dude :)

And invariably the other question:

“How can an educated and intelligent man like you believe in a superstition about something that doesn’t exist?”

“The same way I believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

I like to reply.

You see, not everything that is important to me exist in a physical form.

Actually, of all the things that are really important to me only, health, clean air, and healthy food are of material nature.

The most important things in my life; love, happiness, and freedom do not exist in the physical realm.

But for me, they are more real than the things I can see and touch.

Here is the scoop:

I do not have the choice of the reality I live in.

However, I have the choice of my beliefs.

Do I want to believe that I am just an evolved monkey?

An insignificant part of a mechanical universe being banged around like billiard balls by cold mechanical forces and laws?

Do I want to run my life by biological animal instincts in the name of survival of the fittest?

Or do I want to believe that I am somebody and something special?

That I can overcome my animal instincts and evolve into something noble, enlightened, a beautiful human being?

It doesn’t make any difference if God exists or not.

If the universe is a stupid exploding bunch of rocks or not.

If there are heaven and hell, karma and reincarnation or just nothing after life.

Those things are not a choice!

They are or they are not. That’s all, but they are not something you can choose.

The only thing you and  I can choose is our beliefs.

Do you want to live your life according to what; the society, mass media, government, the scientific establishment, or the church has chosen for you?

Aren’t you tired of being manipulated, lied to, used and abused by the very institutions that were supposed to watch over your wellbeing?

Well, if you do, you ought to know that you have the choice to choose your beliefs according to the life you want to live not according to anyone else may tell you to do!

(Including yours truly Anagami)

The choice is yours.

Define your own reality!

The Acorn Universe

“Believe those who are seeking the truth.

Doubt those who find it.”

Andre Gide

I was watching this time-lapse photography on YouTube.

It was a vine climbing up a wall, and this young sprout acted like an arm or tentacle probing and searching the wall.

When it found a nail on the wall, something amazing happened.

The vine sprouted a curly ending and grabbed the nail!

That time lapse camera showed not only that the vine was moving but that it was doing something intelligent too!

I had a moment of epiphany.

I realized that instance how narrow and prejudiced we see the reality around us.

Out of the infinite spectrum of electromagnetic radiations we see an extremely narrow band.

Out of the sound spectrum, again we can only hear a tiny portion.

Our senses of smell and taste are even worse, we are nothing compared to dogs or sharks.

Not to mention that we lack some senses totally – like the shark’s ability to sense electrical fields, the snake's ability to see infrared or the bats to see sound.

But the biggest problem is our prejudiced way in which we look at reality.

We look at reality according to our frame reference of time, size, form or function.

For example, we only see things moving at close to human speed, therefore we do not see plants moving.

We see the things the way we are not the way they truly are.

Imagine that you could see 50 years of evolution of an oak tree in a second.

It would look like the oak acorn explodes into an oak tree!

…Imagine that you could look at the universe without the human subjectivity.

Would the universe still look like exploding or would it look like an acorn growing up, evolving not expanding, budding into galaxies and solar systems in an organic way rather than a random blast?

I always had an ambivalent feeling about the big bang theory.

You see, if you would take a can of paint and a stick of dynamite and exploded the paint into an empty white room, you would expect to get just a random splash of paint on the walls. You wouldn’t expect to get anything like repeated shapes or organized patterns.

So to me, this explanation that the universe exploded into being the way it is just by accident sounds totally bogus.

I am not a scientist and I can’t prove my theory, but for me, the idea of an “Acorn Universe” growing and evolving, sounds more sensible than the "Big Bang" theory.

What do you think?

The Chemical Brain

You can look at a human brain and compare it with a personal computer

You have the hardware, that collection of billions of neurons connected in trillions of connections, and you have the software, all your memories, and thoughts firing the neurons creating an electrical storm in your brain.

This is a rather new view of the brain’s functionality. For the longest time, we thought that our thoughts are created by the neurons firing but now we understand that the brain is just a machine and it is the software, our thoughts, that makes the brain think.

So where is that software, that data in our brain that thing we identify as being us, comes from?

We are a quilt of data collected and put together from all over the place.

We start with the data inherited from our parents through our DNA. We add to that the formative learning from our primary caretakers, parents, grandparents or nurses. Then we enter the school system, the media, TV and Internet and of course our own curiosity impulses will make us search and assimilate more data.

All this data put together makes up what we call “I”

Since I can remember I felt that in my head there were to people present. I couldn’t quite understand it and nobody could explain it to me why I felt that way. Later when I grew up I kept it as a secret because of the stigma attached to the people that heard voices in their heads but latter when I start my search for spirituality the question came back to me.

The best I could do is to separate the “I” into two parts. The “Spirit” or “Soul” being the part we are born with, the information carried through the DNA from generation to generation from the beginning of time. The I am therefore I think presence. I look at that primordial data as the BIOS of the brain, the language on all the other languages are built.

The second voice of “I” is the Ego or “Reason. This is the part that is added to us through education and experience. This is the “I think therefore I am” presence. It is a higher language using abstractions like words, written words, and spoken words. This Higher language is specific varying from culture to culture and individual to individual.

I also believe there is a “hardware” duality as well. I believe that the “Spirit” resides in our “primitive” brain the limbic system and that the Ego resides in the modern brain, in the cortex.

Also, the way the two manifestations of “I” have separate ways of operation and interface with the rest of the body.

The Spirit / Soul operates in feelings and emotions and interacts with the rest of the body through hormones: Estrogen, Testosterone, Adrenaline, Ephedrine, Dopamine, Serotonin etc.

The Ego /Reason operates in electrical pulses through the firing of the neurons in the cortex and the interaction with the rest of the body is done also through electrical pulses carried to all the muscle that we can control.

Getting old has its set of problems, especially health-related problems. So, I found myself with a little lower back pain problem. I went to see a pain specialist (OK my problem wasn’t that little) and he prescribed me a large dose of a drug used in the treatment of depression that also has a pain control effect and not like the opioids it is not addictive in long time use.

But my greatest concern was not the addiction part but how this mood/pain control drug will affect my spiritual practice, mainly my meditation.

Since the pain had already ruined my meditation sessions I went ahead with the drug treatment.

I thought I will be like some of my friends that are doing long-term depression drug treatments.

Turn into a zombie indifference to what’s going on without any genuine feelings or creative expression.

What I found very interesting is that the effect was exactly the opposite.

My meditation practice has not suffered I even go as far as to say to say that is better.

That doesn’t make any sense unless the meditation somehow changes the way the drug affects my system. That is a fascinating hypothesis and it would be really interesting if a comparative study will be done to see what is the effect of meditation on mood-altering drugs.