Enlightenment and Spirituality - The Ego
A common theme in mental or spiritual training is to become aware of the ego and what is ego driven.
Ego has many meanings. It's one of those words known as a nominalization which means it's not a noun but it acts like one. It's important to be aware of nominalizations because what the word means to one person will mean something a bit different to another. It's a good idea to define some words when entering a discussion about their concept.
The ego, in this case, has to do with your identity and what things you say to yourself that make you feel good about you. Ego is neither good or bad - it all depends on how you use it.
One trap that many fall into is using their spirituality in an ego-driven way. They feel superior to others because they think they are privy to special knowledge and powers. One sure way to know if one's spirituality is tied to ego in an unhealthy way is when someone challenges your beliefs. If you get angry or hurt - chances are, your ego feels threatened.
Spirituality is a personal journey. Spirituality is not something that can be bought or sold. It's even meaningless to discuss with someone else because it doesn't mean anything to anyone but yourself - and that is how it should be. One person is not more spiritually aware than another. There is no way to measure the amount or calibre or importance of ones spirit.
Past lives and age of the spirit - even if these things exist - they are not relevant to this life. The purpose of this life is to live it in the here and now. You are wasting your gift of life if you spend all your time thinking about what may have happened before birth or after death. These things do not exist. All that actually exists is what is going on right now in this moment. If there is life after death, you'll find out soon enough. If you miss out on paying attention to the now - you will miss it and a moment is something you will never get back.
Even your memories are not real. Our minds do not record incidents like a camera. What we see, feel and hear gets processed and made sense of by our brain. Every time we recall a memory, we alter it with our current perception. This is a useful thing to know.
It's a good idea to take your beliefs out of the closet every now and then and write a statement that expresses that belief and then spend the next week thinking about whether this belief has some truth to it (fact) or if it's based in fiction. If you feel threatened doing this, then you really need to look at the reasons why because it's an indication that there is something else below the surface that you may want to work through. This isn't an easy process but if enlightenment is the goal - then I would think that one would want to do the necessary work to find that Philosopher's Stone.
Enlightenment is knowledge and knowledge wants to be scrutinized and proven to be true or false. The scientific method doesn't have emotions invested in the outcome of the experiment. That is how we should look at knowledge as well .
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Originally Posted by thewolfrey
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