Happy Tuesday to You!
I had a great day yesterday. It was lovely to get back to some heavy deadlifting, rowing and reptilian crawling in the gym after a fun weekend in the rock garden.
I was busy with coaching, meetings and preparing my next edition of Q&A with Paul and the Monthly Message for www.chekconnect.com.
If you are unaware of my Q&A with Paul subscription, I answer a variety of questions concerning challenges people face on a wide variety of topics each month for our members. I film them and subscribers can benefit from all my answers.
This is particularly helpful for those in any aspect of healthcare or the exercise profession because it allows them to have a holistic perspective for addressing common challenges to health and well-being. You can subscribe at www.chekconnect.com if that interests you.
My Monthly Message is a free offering and there are many other free video clips there if you are interested.
I’m working diligently to get all the pending items completed before heading off tomorrow to Las Vegas to teach a series of classes at the new ECA Las Vegas Balance Conference.
Maybe I’ll see some of you there!
EGO – THE GREATEST GIFT IN THE UNIVERSE!
As many of you are probably aware, there is a long-standing disdain for the ego in many, if not most religious, and even spiritual circles.
This saddens me because it is the source of much confusion for people. The ego is, in my opinion, the greatest gift in the universe.
In his book, The Ego – From Birth to Rebirth, Vol. 6, The Notebooks of Paul Brunton (p.122, paragraph 465), Paul Brunton states:
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“Remove the concept of the ego from a man and you remove the solid ground from beneath his feet. A yawning abyss seems to open up under him.
It gives the greatest fright of his life, accompanied by feelings of utter isolation and dreadful insecurity. He will then clamor urgently for the return of his beloved ego and return to safety once more—unless his determination to attain truth is so strong and so exigent that he can endure the ordeal, survive the test, and hold on until lthe Overself’s light irradiates the abyss.”
This truth could not be stated more accurately and clearly than Paul Brunton has stated it.
His observations are dead accurate according to my own personal experiences. This begs the question!
If the religious and spiritual teachers the promote ego-death actually understand what the ego is and how it functions, why would they want to [Remove the concept of the ego from a man and you remove the solid ground from beneath his feet? (knowing that) A yawning abyss seems to open up under him. (and that) It gives the greatest fright of his life, accompanied by feelings of utter isolation and dreadful insecurity.”]?
In my personal opinion, (based on extensive explorations of what the ego is and how it functions), encouraging people to shed the ego is the direct result of worshiping words on paper above and beyond any authentic experience of what the ego is, or what it actually means to exist without it.
An excellent example of this very issue was vibrantly displayed during Oprah’s recent interview with Joel Osteen on her new show titled Oprah’s Next Chapter, which aired on 1/08/2012.
From Houston, Texas, Pastor Joel Osteen is considered one of America’s most influential spiritual leaders. After attending Pastor Osteen’s Sunday service at Lakewood, the largest church in America, Oprah visits the Osteen home to talk faith, marriage, power and ego.
While interviewing him, she asked about his congregation. She asked if there were gay people in his flock, and did he welcome them openly. He said “yes”.
Later in the interview, she popped a very telling question! “Do you think it’s a sin to be gay?” Just as I suspected, he said “yes”. “According to scripture it is a sin to be gay.”
In paraphrase, Osteen said that he refers to “scripture for guidance on such matters”!
So, here you have a perfect example of what I mean by deifying words on paper above and beyond authentic experience.
Without your ego, there is no-thing to know, do or relate to. All IS. There isn’t even a concept of God. This is the nature of Unconditional Love.
(Note: BTW, I’m really impressed with Oprah’s “Next Chapter” series! Oprah is a genuine gift to humanity)
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So, we have a paradoxical situation that emerges in such religious circles.
We are encouraged to rid ourselves of the ego, which ultimately leads to the experience of Unconditional Love, yet, such “scripture” puts a myriad of conditions on love.
Why does loving any other in a way that nourishes you and they (without harming others) have to be a sin if indeed, the Bible is the word of God?
This essentially means that God sins against God; such a God can only be very confused, and such confusion naturally leads to people living in a state of confused wonder and worship!
In my drawing above, you can see my artistic rendition of St. Francis of Assisi’s reply to seekers questions as to what God is. He said, “What you are looking for!is what’s looking.”
The red ‘U’ in my drawing represents the Universe; the black below represents The Absolute (GOD), which is experienced only in a state of egoless-ness, and as such, can’t possibly be accurately defined by an ego (therefore, there can’t be such thing as scripture that is the direct word of God, for it is an ego that holds the pen!)
Without the ego-construct, there can be no “I and Thou” relationship; there is no subject-object consciousness. Without the ego, one can’t possibly be “conscious of” any person, place or thing.
Could you possibly know of, or have the experience of loving in absence of your ego, your very sense of self? What would you love?
As I see it, the ego is the greatest gift there ever cold be! It is because I have an ego that I can appreciate all the beauty of the universe—the stars, the sky, our amazing planet, all that is Mother Nature, and each other.
In my drawing, the female represents “yin” and the male “yang”. With the gift of the ego, we are at once given awareness of “self”, and of each other.
Because the ego (which also means individual mind) operates on the principle of exclusion (If I am me, I am not you; black is black because it is not white!), as a point of consciousness, it naturally casts a shadow; “gay people are sinners!”
Getting rid of the ego is equal to getting rid of one’s capacity to perceive and experience love.
Without love, what can we aspire to? Without love, what do we truly have to live for?
Without love, what holds our life together when the ego perceives its experiences to be otherwise?
Our love of the sun keeps us warm inside on a cold and rainy day; we know that no one state can last forever and that the rain brings the sun.
If we were all to focus on healing our egos, the world would be a very different place, don’t you think?
As I clearly define in PPS Success Mastery Lesson 2. Self Mastery, the ego is essentially an “idea construct”.
Healing our ego is equal to developing both an open mind, and a level of holistic awareness that all we like, or don’t like emerge from the same source; the word “Universe” literally means One Verse, one song.
If God is Love, it makes no sense that God would create a class of people with authentic same-sex affinity, only to have them be forever starved for love.
Instead, the Universe operates on the principle of harmony. In that harmony, like attracts like and opposites attract.
Each of us enjoys being with people we like, but we often learn the most from those that are relatively opposite in their viewpoints.
Once we are guided by wise, loving teachers with authentic progress in the healing of their own ego, we are given clues by them as to how to see the world as it actually is. Once we have such experiences, we can at once see where we lacked consciousness under the influences of the ego’s shadow.
My personal experience goes against the grain of conventional religious teachings at large in that I have come to see that first and foremost, we must learn to love and care for ourselves.
Of the most important of Biblical, religious teachings is to love thy neighbor as thy self.
But can we really love anyone else more effectively or more authentically than we can love ourselves; can you tie my shoe better than you can tie your own?
When we are guided by wise parents and elders to healthy self-love, that love naturally overflows into our relationships with other persons, places and things. Our love is the basis of how we see and experience the world.
Naturally, when we consider that love is an act of inclusion, our growth and development through the ‘I’ and ‘WE’ stages of ego-healing or development leads to healthy love of ‘ALL’.
When we reach that state, we are very likely to have deep and profound experiences of Oneness with all life.
It is also natural to look back on your life and laugh when considering how much we have grown in both our viewpoints and our ability to love and accept the perfection that creates the Universe.
Then, when interviewed by Oprah, if I were asked, “Do you think being gay is a sin?”, I can authentically respond, “Oprah, the scriptures, if read literally, suggest that it is. Yet, from my own experiences, I’ve come to realize that the only real sin is not loving when we truly know what Love is. From the perspective of Love, there is no sin, only experiences and it is up to God to determine what is and isn’t a sin.”
To take this from a different angle, I was watching an interview on Spiritual Cinema Circle where the interviewer was talking about Matt Damon’s first experience working under Clint Eastwood as a director.
He said that Matt Damon had been working on set for a month or more and had received no input from Clint Eastwood and was wondering if he had any feedback!if he’d like him to play the role differently than he was.
Matt Damon approached Clint and said (in paraphrase), “Is there anything you’d like me to do differently? I’m feeling a little unsure because you haven’t said anything to me through the entire shoot this far.
Clint Eastwood replied, “I cast you son!”
You see, Clint “cast” Matt Damon because he knew he was perfect for the role and therefore, there was nothing to fix.
Well, if there is a God, then God cast us all!
Enjoy your ego. When you feel a lack of love in your life, it certainly isn’t because love is lacking in the world.
It is merely a growth impulse, an invitation to perceive differently, to perceive more.
When the ego reaches the point where it truly understands what the word “GOD” means, it also knows at once that what you are looking for, is what’s looking!
Enjoy the view!
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
