Words From The Master - 02 Mar 2008

Towards Meditative Living

Thorns on your path
There is only one real obstacle on the path of meditation: the Ego. Whatever other issues come up, whatever problems you face, be clear: they are just the different voices of the ego.

What is the ego?

The ego is nothing but your sense of self, the collection of ideas and concepts that you have about yourself. Be very clear: the ego is nothing but a collection of ideas! It is an imaginary thing. The ego doesn’t even have any real existence. Yet it is this ego which is controlling your life! It is the ego which creates a sense of separateness in you. At birth, it separates you from your mother. Until the moment of birth there is no ego, no boundary. The baby is simply part of the mother. At the very moment of birth, when the umbilical cord is cut, the baby senses its own boundary for the first time. In the very first year after birth, the ego builds your picture of yourself and the world. The ego is responsible for your sense of ‘me’ and ‘mine’. Throughout your life, the ego puts you into the position of ‘me versus them’. It separates you from your parents, from friends and strangers, from nature, from all of Existence. Whenever you utter the word ‘I’, you are breaking away from
Existence. You cannot really break away, because you are an intrinsic part of all Existence – but in your mind you break away. You create for yourself a world in which you are separate from all. This world exists only in your mind – it is just a mental concept - but we allow this concept to rule all our actions.

You have always heard people say, The ego is the root cause of all our misery. Why?
Because the ego thrives on hostility, on conflict. Any environment which creates a sense of isolation is the survival ground for the ego. The ego may be a product of your own imagination, but it is a cunning animal! To stay alive, the ego creates a distorted version of reality in which all things are in a state of disharmony.

Look at your own life. Whenever you experience pain, anger, jealousy - it is always
the result of feeling separate from someone else, of feeling alone, of feeling cheated. In times of misery, you always experience yourself as being all alone. In times of joy, you feel naturally connected with everyone and everything
around you. When you are joyful, happy, laughing – these are the times when your ego is at its weakest.

(to be continued.)
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This excerpt has been taken from the book: "Meditation is for You" -- an introduction to the science and art of meditation