Tag Archives: ego

ABOVE AND BELOW

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To meet God “directly,” we’ll need a more radical approach:

Assuming that we have to “go up” – i.e., ascend – in order to experience “ecstasy”
Requires, for good balance, for us to also “go low” –
Into “humility,” “modesty,” and “humbleness”

That is, in order to get high, we’ll first have to go low –
And, to meet God, face to face, we might even be required to “disappear” altogether.

In other words, an ego (much less a big ego) will never experience God “directly” –
Everyone knows this – since most male religious leaders
Possess the biggest egos – and look at how empty they’ve turned out to be.

No one talks about this –
Which is fine with God
Who prefers meeting in secret with her most un-famous friends.

THE “MYSTICAL” BEATITUDE

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Mathew 5:8: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”

The pure heart is an “empty” heart
A heart with plenty of room
For God.

The pure heart is a heart without ego
Because living without ego
Enables one to experience life without fantasy.

The Old Testament tells us that anyone who looks “directly” at God
Will immediately die –
And this is true for the ego
Because an ego’s encounter with God will result in its obliteration.

The “true self,” that is, the pure heart, can look at God
All day without harm –
In fact, that’s when the true self gains the power
To live life fully.

THE NATURAL TRASH COLLECTOR

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The ego is a natural trash collector –
As soon as it feels any space opening up
It immediately refills itself – generally with some new species of “trash” –
And that’s why there’s never any room for God or one’s “true self.”

The most elevated spiritual path ever discovered by mystics was “emptying out” –
Literally, “everything” has got to go! – especially all one’s favorite treasures.

So, after all the work and time spent cleaning out our ego-self,
What’ll be left is “no-thing”
Which provides us with the space to be “born again”
Which also provides us with space for reality to enter our lives –

In other words, room for God to be welcome in our hearts.

THE RAPTURE

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The rapture is not a physical ascendance –
(which is a spiritual-materialistic concept).

The rapture is when we’re so overwhelmed by love –
That it occasions a feeling of floating – above and looking down at – one’s self –
After we have jettisoned our “ego.”

So, rapture is not just when you are “feeling” some love,
Rapture is when you become love –
And leave the material world behind.

TRAGEDY OF THE SPECIES

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God incites us to love others –
Whenever we can take attention away from ourselves –
Even for a moment.

In God’s “school,” there are various lessons to learn –
Lessons of the senses, lessons of the spirit,
And lessons taught by the other people in our lives.

Unfortunately, as soon as any of these confronts us
We want them to go away –
Because we view them as a distraction from our true love –
The “ego-self.”

The problem with ego, however,
Is that it’s empty – without true reality –
Like a balloon with clusters of mental images printed on the outside
That’s been inflated inside our heads
So there’s little room for anything else –
Also, egos are highly addictive
So any threatened de-flation
Will instantly be met with a frantic search for something – anything –
To re-inflate it.

We equate our ego’s destruction with extinction –
Something even more painful and final than physical death –
In spite of this, however, we carry around a strong desire for a spiritual “explosion” –
Like a pack on our back –
But have been waiting to open it – only after we die.

All the gifts we have ever desired are already inside us –
But, unfortunately, instead of opening them while still alive,
And enjoying them,
We’ve been waiting for the time when we no longer have hands, eyes, or heart –
That is, we’ve decided to wait until it’s too late –

And that’s why the destiny of humanity –
Up to this point –
Has mostly been tragedy.

SUBJECTS AND OBJECTS

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“Sin”
Is treating people (including one’s self) and other living beings as objects.

Objects aren’t real – they’re ephemeral –
Only subjects are “real” in any true sense.

For example, the ego is a self-made intangible “object”
While your “true self” is always a subject.

The essential work of human beings is to find and align
Their true selves with a “real” God – not with “made-up” ones.

Mostly, though, we need to jump-start our everyday lives
Into an alternative world of creativity, joy, and color –
That we’ll start experiencing the moment
We decide to put aside our comfortable ego
And, completely, “wake up”!

A MYSTICAL DEATH

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A “mystical death” entails dying to one’s false self –
That is, to the “ego,” and becoming “enlightened.”

This is difficult to do, however, because most of us
Have never known anything else.

It’s a death-defying “leap”
Out of a cherished, comfortable, and manipulable ego
Into an evanescent and ecstatic “true self.”

Listen, before jumping –
Don’t bother even thinking about it –

Since, in truth, in order to “come alive,”
You simply have to “do it”!

THE LAST MAGIC WORD IN THE POSTMODERN WORLD

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The soul
Is the “true self”
Buried under an avalanche of ego.

It can free itself
Anytime it wishes
Just by saying the last magic word remaining in the postmodern world:

“God.”

HOW TO BE “LIKE” GOD

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It’s certainly not about being powerful –
A few spiritual masters have said that, after death,
Each of us will be able to create our own universe –
But that’s just silly.

We’re not ever going to be God –
Even though it is possible for us to be “like” God
By getting “free” of all the “not-God” surrounding us.

After all, God is absolutely free – and doesn’t have to ask before acting –
We can be just as free – and in the same sense.

Wouldn’t it be thrilling to be as free as God –
To start thinking and acting, as a human being,
The same as God would if God were in our place?

What’s the main impediment for doing this?
It’s the ego, which we have mistakenly identified as our “self”
But the ego is not our “true self,” it’s only one of our own creations –
And being “man-made” – is not part of what God originally gifted us with.

We feel as if we’d disappear without our ego –
That we’d be a no-body, a no-thing –

And that would be right!

Because we aren’t an ego, a body, or a thing,
We are spirit – potentially, totally free –
If we accept being our “true self” –

Free as God, if we choose to be.

In such case,
What we’d lose is our artificial “self” – our ego –
And what we would gain is our “true self” –

Jesus called it “the pearl.”

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF GOD

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21st Century American poets
Sing about God’s “disappearance” –

But it’s not God who’s disappearing, it’s America’s spiritual culture –

What a waste! – our allegiance to a nationalism of no love –
To upper-echelon materialism –
And, also, to this ersatz “heaven” of global capitalism.

This raises the question, however,
Whether anything can exist without a center –
Especially since our own center is an “ego”
Which we’re rapidly losing confidence in.

The primary duty of working poets at all times and places
Is to sing about joy in the presence of God –
So that each of us might, in turn, have our own individual joys reaffirmed
And our true center hold.

When American poets started giving up God –
What was left was a group of negative images and a few slick verbal tricks –
What was left, in essence, was a deep emotional depression – artistically made invisible.

But what came next, of course, was Satan –
Grinning ear to ear –

Death trailing behind in all its manifold forms –
Entering our lives like the tide –

This is the price we’re going to be required to pay
For American poets being so willing to let the “real” God go.