Moving Beyond Ego and Suffering

When we are

• identified with a separate self who suffers

• seeking better housing

• trying to get what we want

• seeing the world in terms of I-me-my

We are coming from

• an assumption of inadequacy

• a feeling of being “other than”

• a feeling of being separate

• seeing the self as a subject and everything else as an object

When we turn away from our heart, from our True Nature, we feel unequal.

Seeking better housing, and trying to get what we want, comes from an assumption that we don’t have enough as we are.

We have to strive constantly to do more, be more, and get more in order to feel equal to life.

We say, “I want to be happy and free. I don’t want to suffer.”

In order for us to know our adequacy, we must be willing to examine closely our egos, our conditioned minds.

The reason we aren’t is because that very examination results in a loss of identity.

Ego prefers to feel inadequate as an excuse to cling to its safe, self-imposed boundaries.

Ego sees scrutiny as death. ‘I’ dies, and “I” does not want to do that.

“I” would rather exist and struggle and suffer than experience itself as dying in order for there to be an identification with enough.

We would not die if we switched from identification with separateness to that which contains separateness.

It’s only the “I” that experiences itself as no longer existing.

This is because “I” is no longer perceived as the center of the universe, which it is when we identify with the ego.

The bind we are caught in is choosing something that is suffering and then trying not to suffer within that.

It’s endless frustration and disappointment and futility and there is no alternative unless we choose to let go of an egocentric life.

Letting go does not mean not having.

Although the egoic mind thinks it does…

• My life will be boring

• If I let go I’ll never get what I want

• I’ll sit around all day with nothing to do

• I’ll never have any fun

• No one will like me

We let go of our attachment to getting what we want.

We aren’t required to let go of the “what”, the object of our desire.

If we let go of that attachment, the odds of getting what we want will be just as good as ever.

The only real difference will be that we won’t suffer if we don’t get it.

What if you could be as happy as you can be and not be getting what you want?