“Ego is your enemy.” Look at that curious thing... This is a common belief. We haven't investigated it, we haven't verified it for ourselves, we don't know it directly, we haven't experienced it, but we have this belief, we have this conclusion. After all, what is the ego?
People say, “Ego is the enemy, ego is your enemy.” What is the ego? We never come into direct contact with it, we never approach the ego directly. We don't know what the ego is; we have ideas and beliefs about the ego.
We don't realize that, in reality, everything we express as thought, feeling, emotion and sensation is present in this body-mind because of this concept, this belief: the belief in an identity present.
This identity expresses itself. We are the ones who are giving that power of expression to this identity, to this egoic identity, this “I,” this “me,”. When we delve deeply into this, look at what we are here and now, we realize that this identity is one that separates itself from experience, separates itself from thinking, feeling, emotion, to control it.
So, yes, the sense of “I,” the ego, is the enemy. If it can be seen, it can be ruled out, so there isn't any enemy. A human being goes through life identified with the sense of an identity.
This identification with thought, with feeling, with emotion, with sensation, with perception, in relationships with others, with the world, with life, constitutes an illusion, but an illusion on which we have based our lives, our existence, and this constitutes, yes, contradiction, conflict and suffering. It is only in this sense that the ego is the enemy.
There is a duality in us, the desire to become something other than what we are here and now. Whatever is showing itself here and now… There is this desire, this motivation, this hidden feeling to resist it, to fight against what shows itself here and now. So, there is this inner duality.
So, the sense of the ego is the sense of an identity present in living, in speaking, in hearing, in feeling, in emotion, in sensation, in feeling, and as long as this duality remains, suffering will remain. Suffering is established while the one who suffers is present; it is the sufferer who sustains suffering, it is the thinker who sustains thought, it is the rabid one who sustains anger, it is the fearful one who sustains fear.
That is not the Truth about your Being, which is Consciousness, which is Happiness. This is straight from Vedanta. Your True Nature is Being-Consciousness-Happiness. The human being does not live like this because he does not know what Life is. What we call life is this contact we have as people, who we believe we are, with the world around us. What we call life is the illusion of a present thinker, of a present doer, of that “someone” in that feeling, in that thinking, in that speaking, in that acting – that we call life. We call life this relationship between this “me” and mine: “me and my house,” “me and my business,” “me and my dreams,” “me and my desires,” “me and my expectations,” “me and my frustrations, my disappointments,” “me and my desires,” “me and my fears” – this we call life.
The sense of “someone” present in this experience is, basically, suffering – this we call life. We don't know what Life is. Our approach is based on this element of experience, knowledge, memory, remembrance, action, positioning… all of them based on the illusion of an identity present, which is the ego, which is the “I.”
There is no identity present here and now. What formulates existence, what establishes the existence of this identity is the mistake, it is the illusion about who – or about what –, in fact, we are. The Truth about what we are, we don't have; about who we really are, we don't have.
Self-enquiry, which Ramana Maharshi called Atma Vichara, is the approach to that “Atma,” that “I.” The direct observation of this movement of the “I” is Atma Vichara. To bring awareness into this present moment is to drop that identity which is the “I.” This “I” is the state of collective unconsciousness. The human being… is in this unconsciousness in a superficial or deep way.
So, there is this superficial unconsciousness and there is this deep unconsciousness. This superficial unconsciousness is this unconsciousness that we experience in everyday life. This unconsciousness of speaking, thinking, feeling, doing, relating, without the perception of the Reality that there is not this “I” present – this is the superficial unconsciousness. And there is a deeper, more acute unconsciousness, the one that presents itself in us with frames of suffering, attachments, desires, fears. These fears have different names: anxiety, depression, phobias...
So, we live in an unconscious way when there is this identification with the sense of the present “I.” This sense of the present “I” is because of this unconsciousness. When we bring awareness to this present moment – and this is possible when there is self-enquiry, self-investigation, an approach to oneself through this Attention, this Full Attention, this Mindfulness of feeling, thinking, acting, listening, speaking… Putting Attention in this moment, on what we are here and now.
How to put it into practice? How to practice Full Attention? Notice, Full Attention is Presence of Consciousness. This is not a mechanical thing, it is not a technical thing, it is not a habitual thing. All that is habitual, technical and mechanical is part of unconsciousness. When we talk about Full Attention, we are talking about bringing light to this movement of the “I” here and now, in this moment.
So, how to practice Full Attention? I would say that Full Attention is in practice, here and now. It is that which is present when there is this observing. All you need is a deep, genuine interest, a true interest in understanding yourself, in seeing yourself in this moment. And when this is seen, this “enemy” disappears, because this separateness, which is the “I” in experience, disappears; and when that disappears, experience also disappears.
What I am saying is that if there is fear, it is because there is “someone.” Fear does not appear without being in a relationship with the “me.” Fear is always related to something. “I'm afraid of what they think of me” – so, there’s this “me,” which is a story, a narrative in people’s heads, and this “me,” what people imagine of “me,” which is this “I.” So, the “me” and fear, the “me” and experience, which is apparently the reason, the cause of fear.
Fear of… “of being abandoned,” “of not being accepted,” “of not being loved,” “of being rejected,” “of me and someone talking badly about me” ... This relationship of duality is always present; it is always the “I” and fear.
So, the experience of fear disappears when the experiencer of fear disappears. So, if “I” disappears, fear as an experience disappears. There is no experience without the experiencer, just as there is no thought without the thinker.
Now, look at this interesting thing: the idea is that I am producing thought and, here, I am saying that thought… it is thought itself that separates to be the thinker. So, we have the thought and the thinker. When you have a thought in your head, there is no thinker; it’s just a thought. If you don't put in that thinker, who is the one who wants to do something against that thought or in favor of it... if you don't put in that thinker, that thought disappears. All thoughts work like this: they appear and disappear.
Notice that all thoughts that stick and cling to you…it’s because there is an internal resistance of an identity fighting against that or appreciating and holding on to that thought. So, you give an identity to that experience, which is the thought, when you reject the thought or when you identify with the thought, but it is thought itself that is creating that identity. This needs to be seen. When you observe it, in that Full Attention, it disappears.
People want to break up this pattern of psychological restlessness and mental chatter. Thoughts are obsessive, they are repetitive, they are negative, they produce, bring with them, feelings, emotions, memories… and people want to get rid of it. But they don't understand that resisting it, fighting it, trying to do something, only strengthens that model, that condition, because that gives an identity to that experience.
Are we together here?
This might seem a little strange. Perhaps you are hearing this for the first time. You have to watch more! Watch this speech again, this video. We have a playlist about True Meditation here on our channel; it is the right Meditation, the real way to approach ourselves.
So, when you approach it through self-enquiry and self-observation, through this True Meditation, which is accessing it through Mindfulness, you break this model.
Then, this experience of fear dissolves, because there is no longer this “I,” there is no longer this duality. This experience of thought, in this accelerated, obsessive, chatty, restless format, vanishes, because there is no longer an identity present.
So, this contact with yourself, with the truth of this “me,” this “I,” without fighting, without resisting, without getting confused, just observing each thought that arises, each feeling that arises, each emotion, each experience that arises, without putting a present identity on it, just observing... this completely undoes this model of egoic identification, of unconsciousness. Then, there is an end to this superficial unconsciousness or this deeper unconsciousness, the one that presents itself with these frames of unhappiness, anxiety, depression, fear, phobias... and everything else falls apart, because all this content of egoic consciousness is being seen.
That which is most conscious and unconscious is being realized in this Full Attention, without a present identity. This is True Meditation, this is the True Realization of the Truth of your Being, Consciousness and Happiness. So, there is no such thing as this “enemy,” this “me,” this “I,” this ego.
This is the work we are doing here together, within this channel: presenting you with the opportunity to go beyond the ego, beyond this “me,” this “I,” to go beyond this “enemy,” beyond this egoic sense. The Realization of That is the Realization of God, the Realization of the Truth about Yourself, about who You are. This is possible here and now.
Therefore, that’s the subject here on our channel. If this is something that makes sense to you, leave your “like” there, subscribe to the channel… I want to remind you: we have online meetings and also face-to-face meetings and also retreats, where we can work on this together. OK?
Here is the invitation and see you at the next meeting.
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