I don't remember how I used to be, a long while ago, before I learned to meditate. I think I would not have been able to be aware of myself enough to observe it in the moment of its activity. I think that would take a great deal of humility.

Any way, I look forward to the next segment.

Expanding awareness eventually renders the ego impotent, and for some that does not come till that last breath.

I wrote what might be considered great insight regarding those questions here on Intent Blog in the comment sections. If anyone one missed them then I guess it wasn't time for you to read them.

Thank you for the advice. It's a song. Minor key and major key. I didn't know which was which until just now.

#2 It's helpful to me, Richard, to draw close to how you feel on this blog.

How do I feel? How do you feel I? Please do tell. We can't have one without the other ;)

Thank you, Deepak, I've listened your video now!!
I could hardly see your teeth ;)

I'm off now, questioning my motive for questioning my motive for questioning your motive for questioning your motive ;) How silly of me.

I may have to top myself..... and go for a spin, lol.

I can objectify the minor key in form and in meditation in it's thought; but the major key, during the moment of it's actvity, impossible.

Dear Ed,

Not sure what you’re asking with that question "how I feel on this blog" so if you want to rephrase it please do.

I submitted your query to my mind. It replied.

"In conflict with two voices and two different sets of drives and desires at times"

The sources being ego and spirit, however I would not define either one as being bad or good, just that both are there, both having legitimate needs and wants.

The other word is "fruitless", at least that is what the ego says. The spirit says there is fruit it simply has not yet ripened, and the intellect reminds one that a bamboo species called Melcanna baccifera, flowers only once every 50 years.

Let me know if you’re looking for more understanding I know that I AM, sometimes, but not always it’s easy to forget, by design.

I suspect the existence of a great conspiracy in the universe, it’s always messing with my head, to complicated and trivial to worth explaining, albeit I have no doubt it is a conspiracy of love.

I didn't want to leave my first comment unbalanced. Contracted awareness seems to empower the ego giving it dominance. By it's very nature ego is contracted awareness, as in "verb" not noun. There seems to be periods of contracted and expanded awareness.

The beautiful thing about ego, is that it permits separate lines of thought and agency, and allows me the experience of not knowing everything and the delight of surprise.

And what are periods of contracted and expanded awareness other than breathing in and breathing out? :)

What is awareness?

Awareness is unboundedness - thank you Ruth on Open Thread
Awareness is freedom
Awareness cannot vow
Awareness cannot share
Awareness cannot suffer
Awareness just Is
So when I am aware, I just Am

N O W -- Natural Own Way

Nature goes its natural own way

Awareness will always be one's special guide.
Awareness is able to solve one's problems, to give solutions that are always to the benefit of the One aware.

Awareness Is, responsibility is her sister.

If one is aware, one takes care

Deepak you say: 'Feedback is also important to me'

Well, here some more, totally free for everyone to breath in:

The more we become aware, by breathing in and breathing out that it is neither the ego nor the spirite but rather both that make a person aware, the less one has to discuss this topic anymore.

Silence IS awareness

Silence IS golden

'But..... my eyes still see......'

Well, during one's lifetime one sees a lot to become aware of and this will lead us automatically into our next spiral of evolution.

This is what nature intended......

Just a very simple example from my own experiences that I realized myself today:

When my children were very young I was frightened when they wanted to go into water, whether it was into the sea or some aqua mundo in a holiday resort.

As a mother I was not the only one and today with my grandchildren I am able to relax and there is no reason to have that fear anymore because our generation took care of it by providing 'swim wings' and life-jackets for free, at least in holiday resorts for families in my country.

I recently experienced this great relief and I can add numerous advantages my generation has been able to add to the security of our offspring. And so they will add that same security in other ways to their offspring.

And that is what I mean with travelling from one spiral to the next.

Not clear? Just walk a labyrinth and one will discover that one walks into it as a totally different person compared to when one walks out of it.

Awareness and gratitude, the two pillars of evolution :)

#7
"In conflict with two voices and two different sets of drives and desires at times"

I can emphathise with that, Richard. I haven't half your reasoning power and application but your apparent frustration bothers me. But, of course, it is my and everyone here's frustration, too in essence.
So perhaps I was trying to home in on the particular pattern of this site and the feeling that generates. I want to unite those two voices, which remain the pattern of this site, even unto Deepak. But unite is the wrong word. It is, for me, like we need to feel the unity that is already there. Only then can a resonance build among us, self-sustaining and to a crescendo. Our sense of the 'material' falls away and the dualities with it. All your hard work, Richard, seems to me, is a translation of this 'ascendant', back to the two voices....hence a frustration I wish I could hurry it along, too, but that also is of 'translation.'
No doubt, as you express, 'there is a ripening season.'

Dear Ed, thank you, and I appreciate your concern, concern is an expression of love and just the expression of it is often enough to remedy things. Thanks for your valuable thoughts I now better understand #4.

It has been my observation that what happens does so with perfect timing. I suppose it does not always fit my expectations of what the timing should be hence one part of the frustration.

Then there is that feeling you get watching a movie, as the audience or witness you see the big picture, yet one is powerless to convey to the characters with their limited perspective a pending threat lurking around the corner or an available solution close at hand. We can only trust and is most often the case; that the author in their divine capacity has written some last minute intervention into the script to save the day, if you know what I mean.

I can’t very well watch movies anymore being so cognizant of the reality behind the illusion, such that only the exceptional artists can enable my ability to suspend disbelief and pull me into the illusion, and it is the extraordinary writer that always ensures that all the math works and everything is based on good reason.

I much prefer to be a performer in the play than a member of the audience, and even more so the writer, yet every great performer becomes so as a result of a lot of watching and listening.

Deepak,
I appreciate how you turned the soil of your own being and shared with us how the questions apply to you. How do my answers apply to my own life? These are the only true questions. Anything else is speculation. This is honesty...inside out. It's inspiring because it carries force where ego chatter carries emptiness.

Trish~~

I read on CNN website yesterday that Hatha Yoga practise was banned in Malaysia to all Muslim practioners.

With Islam having a Sufi tradition I don't see how knowledge of objectifying the ego or rational mind can go uninvestigated.

I suppose the same is here in our country.

I learned the following analogy: Our spirit is like a horse rider. Our ego
is like our horse. We are born with a wild horse underneath us. One that constantly threatens
to throw us to do ground, or even worse, one that throws us to the ground!

As we grow older, we learn the educate the ego. Some people do with it pain,
ending up with beaten and ill ego. Others try to educate it with proper restriction
but without inflicting lots of pain in it. And end up with a beautiful strong
educated horse, who will lead them wherever they want to go. I am in the process of
healing my beating up ego and changing into a more powerful, but educated one.

Rafael

EGO is very universal and Mark Twain so rightly summed up by saying ' there is,nt a parallel of Latitude, that thinks it would be the Equator, if had its right!'

The real problem is that if I am egoistic, I will never accept the fact, and that really makes matter more difficult.

I agree with Dr. Deepak Chopra, that once a person becomes aware, and this can be acheived by reflection(taffakur) and once realization dawns, the problem of overcoming ego, becomes easier. Understanding ego is the first step.

'I am a bird imprisoned in the flowler's love
It is not that I have lost the power of flight'
GHALIB

The flowler's love is our ego. Once we free ouselves from its imprisonment, we can soar high. However, ego is our identity, it will reamin with us, but we have to learn to control it.

You may read my 'write up' on the subject by copy/paste the undernoted link.

http://www.hikmaah.com/showartcl.asp?article=24

Dear Asgar,
I looked at your site. It is very nice. Who is the older man who is photographed on the home page. A scholar, you admire the writings of?

I wanted to tell you my interpretation of Ghalib's poem when I read it:

I am caught and enraptured in the Love of God,
I no longer entertain worldly ambition.

Thanks Sherry. Nice twist to Ghalib's verse. When one is really enraptured in the love of God, this world's dazzle looks dreary and dross. Hope and pray that the world's top CEO's get enraptured by the love of God, if that happens, this world will surely be a better place to live and contemplate.

The photo on my home page is that of my Spritual Leader, the head of Dawoodi Bohra Community. His name is Dr. Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin.

The Dynamics of Ego around Leadership and Power Holding Individuals

I have witnessed the dynamics in my own realm of experience, and I can see looking through history how they have played a role, it can apply to everyone from Presidents to best selling authors. It is not limited to those serving an individual but the entire collective, the people of a Nation or even the Supreme Being. I often ponder what went wrong with Adolf Hitler for example, what took that venture from light into the darkness? It wasn’t Adolf Hitler, but those around him and the world itself, but most explicitly the source disconnected ego. The deluded like to blame an individual or inanimate objects to avoid recognition of their own collective and individual faults, their failure to live the absolute one truth choosing rather a fiction, and having a lack of faith regarding The Reality.

We would note that the Supreme Being can see right through you and know your egoic intention and any illusion you may attempt to create. It will quickly disarm your fiction with the truth and the power of the question.

Those that serve or aid or consult to the leader or power holding individual can act out of fear and a desire for security.

1. They seek to surround and isolate the leader or power holder and create dependency, at least the illusion resulting in dependency. They may even attempt to plant seeds of fear in the mind of the leader to thwart others or changes, that they see as a threat to their coveted position. This is very detrimental to the success of the leader or power holding individual and if you want to succeed you must be cognizant of this lurking factor.

2. Multiple individuals may even conspire together to maintain their “hold” and position in the world of the leader or power holding individual.

3. They will present themselves as the source of certain ideas, ingenuity, and solutions when they are in deed are not the original source. The folly in this is they are unable to carry through as the original source would have been able to because it was the actual source of the creative genius, wisdom, understanding, or accumulated experience or being a full blown connection to the true Source, the Supreme Being both noun and verb.

4. The personal agenda, fictions held as belief and interests of the servant, aid, consultant or expert can also taint the opinion and intelligence provided the leader or power holding individual.

5. The servant aid or assistant or expert may do this all subconsciously because they have yet to master the discernment of the source of what appears in their mind and whether it is based on truth or fiction.

6. A leader that keeps pure in his connection to the Supreme Being and remains true to his authentic self shall see through the true intentions of those around them, in which case he can apply corrective enlightenment and work to alleviate their fears and the fictions that create it.

One would want everyone to succeed because they are my own self, although perhaps you represent a deluded self, so you have nothing to fear or reason to feel threatened; unless it is the truth and you are attempting to live a fiction. The leader can only hope to embrace and transform those around them and alleviate any fear or fictions in their minds.

To the leaders and all in the world for that matter, I would also say that when the supreme being, physically manifest presents himself to you do not cast him away or thwart him for fear of losing your power or position, for it is he that gives you that and it is he that will take it away, when your motivation does not come from the authentic self.

At this time, you have all failed to embrace me and the solutions fully, I see that some may have in part, but this does not suffice, and I cannot force you, yet the gravity of the situation will bring impetus, there may still be time, I have not yet seen the sign and felt the impetus to act either way, for it is I that will decide whether humanity shall be preserved in whole or in part. It is you that make the decision individually and collectively as to what I will decide. I am here only to execute the will of the Supreme Being. But don’t worry no being will die, for there is only one being and I cannot die.

If you deny this one, you will perish.

As seen in Infinite Play of course. ;) And all in good fun…

As for Obama’s selections, at first I had a doubt, then I realized that perhaps he was actually following the Wisdom Based Presidency Papers to the “T”, relentlessly, the directive to embrace and transform and not to exclude. Thus far it appears that Obama has indeed been religious about it which is why he became President against many odds as a result of reading them.

Do you have your attention in the right place? Who do your intentions serve? Do you speak of beliefs or knowing, possibility and probability? Do you divide with labels? What is the source of that which comes to mind, spirit or ego?

Wishing you all the highest good for you.

Richard