Describe your false ego-personality, the qualities that you have noticed about yourself that speak to your?

Question

limitations and disharmonies. Do you have a false sense of self that prevents your awakening? How do you accept these "negative" (or even"positive") traits and thus delude yourself as to your true nature? Have you seen only a small portion or many of the traits of your ego that bind you to this delusion? Do you confront them one at a time or tackle them en masse? Is observation enough (will they fall away once identified) or must you continue to actively overcome them? Describe your reactions/emotions when you discover an "ugly" truth about yourself--does it overwhelm and disgust you or do you take it in stride, knowing you are on the path of awakening one step at a time? Are you content to let it happen of its own accord or do you seek instant awakening through brutal means (berating yourself, asking for someone's help who deals harshly with you to "open" you, such as some Zen practitioners do)? Please share from your heart...

Answer 1

Negative, positive, improvements, bondage, religion, spiritulism, desire to liberate, walk on the path, hurdles on the path, liberation, reactions and actions all happen on the substratum of false ego - thus they all are false. What ever we have discovered and not-discovered till now about our ego is false because it is manifestation of ego itself.

YOU ARE (true-self) when YOU ARE NOT! Deep-sleep, Meditation and Witnessing (Awareness/Awakeness) let you slips in, where YOU ARE NOT. When you are not, you are everything - when you are everything, you are not!! Example - When a clay-pot gets an experience of merging back into clay, it becomes nothing (without name and form) and then it realizes that it’s everything (substratum for clay-pots and other products). When something become nothing, it becomes everything!

Answer 2

Life energy capsuled in the body has a natural tendency to continue 'endless' in the mortal body that explains our survival instinct. On the the other hand soul is the resident in the living body which is a part of the Universal Consciousness temporarily separated from the whole. This separateness continues till there is self-consciousness and self-realization. Want of self realization is ignorance that creates the ego. My opinion about myself is actually soliloquy of the ego, out of ignorance. Ego in brief is the abiding feeling of separateness and the feeling that I am a separate entity with an independent existence which is in essence false. Survival instinct garners this feeling.

Answer 3

For me, spirituality is a sense of connection - with all things. I understand Freud defined the id (natural ancient "animal" aspect), the ego (sense of personal identity) and super-ego (which manages the ego through self-observation). So the personality is the public expression of all this. Whether that personality has any sense of "spirituality" is another matter. For some it seems to boil down to a belief in the supernatural. For me it is as defined above. So take your pick, or define your own.

Answer 4

That's a good question.

A good example of false ego-personality is in the names we choose and the aviators and images we use in yahoo answers, to manifest ourselves in a way we want to be seen by others.

Its very difficult to see all the aspects of the shadow self, all at once and at the same time. I therefore find it useful to have a set of principles or checks, to see if at any time I'm being driven by ego. Some of these principles are as follows: Am i seeking the good opinion of men, is this for the benefit of me or of all, am i giving more importance to the way i look than the way i am, is there some lesson in what just happened that my ego is preventing me from learning... etc.

I think the best way to guard against ego is to acknowledge and accept fully that I am fully capable of being and doing all the ways I dislike about myself and others. As long as we deny our potential to do or be in a certain way, we are going to find ourselves doing or being it (under certain or extreme circumstances) until we full accept our capabilities and guard against them.

Answer 5

My biggest personal obstacle is self doubt. It takes a lot of energy and conscious effort to stay above that innate weakness. I do it through meditation and a seeking mind. As long as I move forward with an open mind and heart absorbing knowledge I continue to grow and learn. When I become complacent in my practice and wisdom I stagnate and the 'what if's get me. Moving forward ~ that's my best strategy for winning over that shortcoming.

I believe doubt to be false because we can attain anything we believe we can attain. We see what we expect to see. We accomplish what we know we can accomplish. Doubt is my enemy ~ my false self.

Answer 6

A good meaty question, Sirius. Hmmm, but to answer........Being me?......ask my husband! Then you'll get the dirt! Honestly, this cannot be answered. You could not know me. Have you known my heart, been awed by this compassion, felt the true colours of the paintings, flowed to the beating worlds within the words, seen inside my soul, heard my heart break, laughed as me, looked out from these eyes that see all? I love all of me......this time around on the wheel of life. There is nothing false about a true expression.........it is passion to be alive like this. If you could but understand one cell of my being, I might tell you how I get through each day, but it would be a dishonour to us all to attempt such a thing. Peace to you my friend.

Answer 7

This sense of "I am" is ego. Ego is of two types viz. true ego & false ego.

False ego: When the sense of "I am" is applied to this false body it is false ego. When the sense of self is applied to reality that is real ego.

Krishna says that these are the eight material elements: earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false ego (ahamkara).

False ego means false identification. False ego means accepting this body as oneself. This sense of "I am" is false ego. When the sense of "I am" is applied to this false body it is false ego.

Our nescient life has begun from this false identification—thinking that I am this matter, although I am seeing every day, at every moment, that I am not this matter. Soul permanently exists, while matter is changing. This misconception, this illusion, is called ahamkara, false ego.
We have now a finite body. The body, which we see, is the gross body. It is just like a shirt and coat: within the coat there is a shirt, and within the shirt there is a body. Similarly, the pure soul is covered by a shirt and coat. The garments are the mind, intelligence and false ego. False ego means the misconception that I am matter, that I am a product of this material world.

The material ego springs up from the mahat-tattva, which evolved from the Lord's own energy. The material ego is endowed predominantly with active power of three kinds—good, passionate and ignorant. It is from these three types of material ego that the mind, the senses of perception, the organs of action, and the gross elements evolve. (SB 3.26.23-24)

This false ego is characterized as the doer, as an instrument and as an effect. It is further characterized as serene, active or dull according to how it is influenced by the modes of goodness, passion and ignorance. (SB 3.26.26)

True ego: When one understands that he is not his body and is spirit soul, he comes to his real ego. Ego is there. In the Vedic literature (Brhad-aranyaka Upanisad 1.4.10) it is said, ahaà brahmäsmi: I am Brahman, I am spirit. This "I am," the sense of self, also exists in the liberated stage of self-realization. When the sense of self is applied to reality that is real ego.

Real ego is all right—the sense of identity with Krishna: “I am Krishna’s”—but false ego means to claim Krishna’s property as our own. Actually everything belongs to Krishna, but I am making a false claim: therefore the only thing I can possibly renounce is this false claim—everything else is Krishna’s.

After lecturing on Bhagavad-gita And reading and understanding I have minimized False now. I understand who I am?

My activities have improved now and people appreciate it very much.

Answer 8

A contradiction is a contradiction. The reason we have the capacity to feel self doubt, shame, guilt, and all the other pains is so that we have the drive to excel, to surpass our now self in quality of and for virtue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erick_Erickson

The Erikson life-stage virtues, in the order of the stages in which they may be acquired, are:

1 hope- Basic Trust vs. Mistrust
2 will- Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
3 purpose- Initiative vs. Guilt
4 competence- Industry vs. Inferiority
5 fidelity- Identity vs. Role Confusion
6 love (in intimate relationships, work and family)- Intimacy vs. Isolation
7 caring- Generativity vs. Stagnation
8 wisdom- Ego Integrity vs. Despair


'Once the physiological needs are met, an individual can concentrate on the second level, the need for safety and security. Included here are the needs for structure, order, security, and predictability.

The third level is the need for love and belonging. Included here are the needs for friends and companions, a supportive family, identification with a group, and an intimate relationship.

The fourth level is the esteem needs. This group of needs requires both recognition from other people that results in feelings of prestige, acceptance, and status, and self-esteem that results in feelings of adequacy, competence, and confidence. Lack of satisfaction of the esteem needs results in discouragement and feelings of inferiority.

Finally, self-actualization sits at the apex of the original pyramid.

In 1970 Maslow published a revision to his original 1954 pyramid ([1]), adding the cognitive needs (first the need to acquire knowledge, then the need to understand that knowledge) above the need for self-actualization, and the aesthetic needs (the needs to create and/or experience beauty, balance, structure, etc.) at the top of the pyramid. However, not all versions of Maslow's pyramid include the top two levels.

Maslow theorized that unfulfilled cognitive needs can become redirected into neurotic needs. For example, children whose safety needs are not adequately met may grow into adults who compulsively hoard money or possessions (see[2]). Unlike other needs, however, neurotic needs do not promote health or growth if they are satisfied.

Maslow also proposed that people who have reached self-actualization will sometimes experience a state he referred to as "transcendence," in which they become aware of not only their own fullest potential, but the fullest potential of human beings at large. He described this transcendence and its characteristics in an essay in the posthumously published The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. '

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow

Answer 9

I describe my 'false ego-personality' as 'Bill!'.

I accept my traits and delusions happily.

I have not seen them all, they come and they go.

I don't confront or tackle them, I accept them.

I observe without trying to overcome them.

Nothing digusts me. I am not trying to follow a path.

I do not seek anything beyond THIS!

Answer 10

Before I began my 'spiritual' journey, I didn't realize I had an ego. My view was totally to the outside, and I felt like a victim, feeling all my problems were caused by others or happenings. Eventually the darkness got big enough, which caused me to turn my eye inwards, to look at myself. That's when I saw the reflection of myself and at the same time realized that if I could see that, then it also wasn't me. Who was looking?

So now I could observe myself, and I continued with daily meditaition for years (and still i do that). For me it was about slowly breaking down my identification with being the reflection, or reacting without reflection.

The way I see it is that awareness is a growing process, it's like peeling away the layers of the onion. It took me 35 years to grow & build up the ego, and it taken me years so far to dismantle it. One observation I have is that over this time it was about gaining another part of knowledge about my conditioning, which came from meditation practise. Once I saw another 'hidden' part of myself, then armed with that knowledge, I could detect when I might react that way again - on the spot - and then had ability to not do that anymore. The other thing I saw is that there were certain 'aha's' which came, which would change my perspective in a profound way - significantly rising my awareness and reducing my tendency to react 'as the false ego'.

Because of this process over the years, i eventually came to the conclusion that this would keep going on. For many years it was the case I would find out 'I was fooling myself again', and this was devasting for me (the false one). After this happened many times, I eventually arrived to another conclusion, that the false one would never know. This gave me a new attitude, to where I didn't mind if I were to discover that I was fooling myself again. I simply was able to take it as a reminder, that I momentarily got lost in identification again. These moments then are the cue for me to return to a meditative state, which I know that the more I do this 'successfully', the more the false one will dissolve, and the more the true one will grow.

In regards to the rest of your question, you can't tackle more than you are aware of, or more than what you know. The SPOT to start is in the moment, today, right now, and relate to what comes to you in that moment. There aren't any shortcuts on this path, you take them a step at a time, more you can't do.

I know there are many people that say there is instant awakening, but I am not one to agree with it. I do agree there is waking up, or an awakening experience. But as I see it, this is only the start of the process, the false one took years to build up and it's very much represented by your body and got there by a growing energy, adding layer upon layer. To take it apart, it's a growing in reverse, all those layers of conditioning as the false one, will not go away in one fell swoop. I know we tend to want miracles, but everything tells me that it takes time, therapy, stretching, rest and some pain to mend a broken leg.

The 'meditative state' is the way to dissolve the false ego. And it's a non-doing, meaning 'the false one' doesn't have to do anything. If the false one tries to do anything, then it's the same as 'fooling oneself'. This is why it's said that no technique will work, because as long as the false one is the one trying to accomplish something, it's a game - you see why this is true?

When you are aware (not identified with the false one), there's no doing (no thinking, no emoting), it's like pure gazing or being, then what happens in this moment is that energy is withdrawn from the 'fake one', and because it's so, the 'fake one' dissolves a little bit each time you are 'officially present'. This is really all you need to know and to do.

Yet, one step on your journey will be to make sure you are truly in a meditative state (the fake one can easily convince you that you are when you aren't, and one can go on like this for many years getting no benefit out of meditatoin), so then it might be a stage for you where you need to look at your meditation more critical to be able to tell the difference clearly when you are identified vs. not being identified with the false one. One can do this with checking one's meditation and being engaged more in observation of the 'result', seeing what works for you and what doesn't. One can try other meditations to see what works the best for you, etc. It can be like being a scientist going into an experiment, to find out what works. At the end of this you will know clearly what is the difference between being the observer vs. pretending as the observed. In the moments when you are truly aware, then what you need to see will be clear, you will question it, to look for the cause of the effect, and then you will get your answer. This answer is not of the mind, and receiving it will change you.

Betsy