Realization Is the Best Ego Dissolver

Written on September 15, 2008 by Tom Stine

Creative Commons License credit: L. Marie

A while back, my friend Jonathan Mead over at Illuminated Mind wrote an article on enlightenment in which he said:

“Your realization that everything is non-dual will not break all of the previous self-limiting and fear-based beliefs you have with yourself. Breaking those agreements will require hard work and perspiration to change.”

I’ve intended for a while to write a brief article on this comment of Jonathan’s to offer a different perspective. So, here goes:

To be honest, his statement runs counter to my experience and that of others. When the realization of no-self dawns, not merely an intellectual understand, but a true realization, beliefs disappear. As Ramana Maharshi pointed out, the belief in a separate “me,” what he called the I-thought, is the root of all other beliefs. When it drops away, all beliefs are suspended. Thoughts might still arise, but they cannot be believed again. If they arise again, then the I-thought has returned.

To be awake, one would need to be free from the identification with belief. So, in a sense, the definition of enlightened would be “free from believing any thought.” So, I would have to disagree with Jonathan’s statement. Realization does, in fact, break the entire ego system.

I think the key word here is realization. What he describes in his post is, for me, more of an intellectual understanding which isn’t a realization. That’s how it appears to me.

That said, I have to agree with much of what Jonathan says elsewhere in the post. Enlightenment is, truly, no big deal and quite ordinary in a certain sense. But it does have incredible power to transform. But on its terms and by its agenda.

Personally, I’ve found realization of no-self to be an incredible “ego-cleaner.” It is as if someone has taken a roto-rooter to my mind. Nothing is allowed to remain hidden. The Truth is an amazing solvent, a powerful dissolver of the thoughts, feelings and beliefs we call “ego.” Everything must be seen through. I have no choice in this matter (because there is no I, to be sure!). It is a process that takes on a life of its own.

I’m beginning to think that if there is a purpose to life, it is this: to see everything more and more clearly. To penetrate to the truth of everything and know it fully, deeply. And that’s it, nothing else. It gives life a new flavor and savor to realize that.

Personal Note I’ve been a bit slow of late to post articles. I plan to get back to my regular posting frequency in a few weeks. My grandmother became sick a few weeks ago and then passed away. She was 93. While I can’t say that her illness and passing has caused me to post less frequently, it has resulted in a greater degree of introspection and all around distraction. Namaste.

Source: http://tomstine.com/realization-is-the-best-ego-dissolver/

A rocky first few weeks

Money by the barrelful, by the truckload. Mountains of money, heaped like gassy pyramids in the national dump. Scrounging packs of politicos, snapping, snarling and sending green bills flying sky-high as they root through the tangled mass with ragged claws. The stale hot air filled with cries of rage, the gnashing of teeth and dark prophecies of doom.

Yes, this grotesque scene, like a claustrophobic circle in Dante’s “Inferno,” was what the U.S. government has looked like for the past two weeks as it fights on over Barack Obama’s stimulus package — a mammoth, chaotic grab bag of treasures, toys and gimcracks. Could popular opinion of our feckless Congress sink any lower? You betcha!

Why in the cosmos would the new administration, smoothly sailing out of Obama’s classy inauguration, repeat the embarrassing blunders of Bill Clinton’s first term? By foolishly promising a complete overhaul of healthcare within 100 days (and by putting his secretive, ill-prepared wife in charge of it), Clinton made himself look naive and incompetent and set healthcare reform back for more than 15 years.

President Obama was ill-served by his advisors (shall we thump that checkered piñata, Rahm Emanuel?), who evidently did not help him to produce a strong, focused, coherent bill that he could have explained and defended to the nation before it was set upon by partisan wolves. To defer to the House of Representatives and let the bill be thrown together by cacophonous mob rule made the president seem passive and behind the curve.

Most mainstream American voters are undoubtedly suffering from economist fatigue these days. This one calls for tax cuts; that one condemns them. One says we’re wasting hundreds of billions of dollars; the other claims that sum falls pathetically short. A plague on all their houses! Surely common sense would dictate that when Congress is doling out fat dollops of taxpayers’ money, due time should be delegated for sober consideration and debate. The administration’s coercive rush toward instant action, accompanied by apocalyptic pronouncements of imminent catastrophe, has put its own credibility on the line.

But aside from the stimulus muddle, Obama has been off to a good start. True, I was disappointed with the infestation of the new appointments list by Clinton retreads and slippery tax-dodgers. Nevertheless, I was very impressed by Obama’s relaxed, natural authority with military officers on Inauguration Day, in contrast to the early Bill Clinton’s palpable unease and exaggerated posturing. I applauded the signal Obama sent to the world by starting the closure of the Guantánamo detention center. Contrary to the rote claims of conservative talk radio, there is as yet no public evidence that every individual being held at Guantánamo is a proven “terrorist”– whom we would all agree should be severely punished. That is the entire point of a rational process of indictment and trial. If Guantánamo became a symbol of un-American repression, it is the procrastinating, paralyzed Bush administration that should be blamed.

Source: http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/02/11/stimulus/print.html

3 Rules of the Internet

Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan: Betsy McCaughey

Commentary by Betsy McCaughey

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg)

Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.