Am I ? or I Am.
We think we met Mr. Ego, on our way while growing up and he just piled on to us, ever since. Wrong.
From the moment we first kicked in our mother’s womb, ego was born. When we identified with that little body that had to survive in this big wide world, ego came to our rescue, our defense mechanism to face any good or bad situation.
We often use the expression — “I asked myself…”
Have we ever wondered, who is the “I” and who is the “self” here?
A person cannot be split into two identities. One must be the real identity. When we attach “self” that’s the ego or false identity. The “I” or “I am” is our true identity. To spiritually awaken is to identify with the “I am” and not with the conceptual “self”.
We are not our thoughts; rather, we are the entity observing those thoughts, listening to the voice in the head, and perceiving everything else going on in life.
The voice in our head is mostly insane.
Let’s spend the next five minutes saying aloud everything that runs through our heads. Can we even imagine how terribly embarrassing and annoying that would be! Yet we find it perfectly sane and normal to not only take those thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions seriously but to react to them equally vehemently. We believe the voice in our head to be us, the ‘I’ or ‘Me’ and that’s our Ego. Unfortunately, this ego-driven state is what leads to a roller-coaster of drama, suffering, and a whole lot of miseries.
The mind will continue to do what it does, but we don’t have to take every thought seriously. We can learn to differentiate between the ‘egoistic’ thoughts coming from the mind vs the ones coming from our intuitive heart and drop the former. The thoughts need to be observed and recognized for what they are — merely a tool for the mind to function.
We are not our mind. We are consciousness, the awareness, Life itself.
Is it too much ‘gyan’? ‘Gyan’ that’s making no sense?
Whatever I have penned down here is the little that I have understood at the meditative retreat I have recently returned from.
We used to do lots of active meditation there…Sufi whirling, free dancing, zikr meditation. It would leave our minds with brief moments where there used to be ‘no thoughts.’ An Empty Mind. Though the mind would quickly get filled with a barrage of thoughts but Meera, our Guru would constantly hammer into us to drop our thoughts, to not chase a train of thoughts, to just BE.
Back into the real world, I’m striving to live out of my mind and from my heart and I tell you, it’s a beautiful feeling — to live in the moment. And as I am learning to drop the thoughts, it’s becoming so simple to drop the ego too.
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