Enlightenment for the Ego
In the West, we seek enlightenment as freedom from psychological pain. We maintain our ego-based identity, staying true to its paradigm of separation and selfishness, hoping in desperation that we can add something to the ego-complex to fix its imbalance.
“Surely, this next book will contain the answer I’m looking for, even though I’ve already read dozens of other self-help books. I just need one more meditation tape. Maybe this incense will do it, or this bell. This bell has such a magical sound, and it is different than all others I’ve tried.”
This thinking that we need only to “add the missing element” hints at a superstitious past and also betrays a presupposition that the nature of things is somehow defective or incomplete. Partly out of fear and partly in an attempt to “fix” things, we take matters into our own hands. Taking matters into our own hands leads to imbalances of its own. It has led, for example, to an excessive emphasis in the creation and belief of the need for drugs.
Even though most drugs don’t work, and their side-effects are often as damaging as the diseases they claim to solve or mitigate, we continue to hope for that miracle cure. We really haven’t changed any since the days of the alchemists. We’re still looking for the fountain of youth. We’re still looking for that magic elixir, hidden somewhere in the world, that will solve all of our ills.
The thinking that we can find a “miracle cure” reinforces our deep-seated quick-fix mentality, our hope in a never-ending womb-like comfort (along with the ego’s self-gratification in its own cleverness). What we’re really hoping for is that we won’t have to change ourselves, that we won’t have to do the real work. The truth is that you don’t have to change yourself and you have to do the real work.
Of course, it’s your true self that you don’t have to change. The false self, the ego, the personality, will have to undergo many changes. All that’s needed, however, is for you to focus on your true self, and to allow any falseness to fall away in its own time and of its own accord. This is a very natural cleansing process.
That the “real work” entails suffering is a matter of perspective. The falseness is just dirt on the gemstone. There was never anything wrong with the gem, it was just covered with grime from the road of your travels. The more you are identified with the “dirt”, the more releasing the “dirt” will seem like work. All struggle will originate with the lack of clarity that you have between your true self, that which you have always been, and your false self, the ideas of yourself that you have fallen for along your way.
So, you can trust the nature of things completely. The universe is almost infinitely smarter than your ego. As Jesus implied, you have to give up who you think you are to become who you really are. The ego is who you think you are, the concept of yourself. You are just yourself. Do you want to be yourself, or do you want to live one step removed, through an idea?