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How to defeat your ego
Rav Ashlag, the founder of The Kabbalah Centre, says there is only one thing we can do to defeat our ego – recognize it. The moment we see it, the Light comes in and sucks it out of us. When we give up our ego completely, when we achieve the level where we can do true letting go of our agenda, that’s immortality in all parts of our life.
Today, recognize everything about you that is opposite of the Light, and connect it to your ego. Whatever hurts you, whatever ticks you off, whatever saddens you, whatever insults you, whatever worries you, whatever frightens you, know that it’s simply your ego doing its job of blocking your Light.
Seeds of Agenda: What’s In It For You?
Rav Ashlag, founder of The Kabbalah Centre, said that ego-less sharing is almost impossible.
When a person wants to change and transform themselves, they will never do it unless they gets something out of it.
The energy needed for the sharing and caring must come from their ego.
There is a paradox, no doubt. On one hand giving and sharing and caring sounds like it’s not selfish. On the other hand, without a selfish motive, no one will ever share. Mother Theresa, or anyone! But if the giving is selfish, the rewards are all ego-rewards, short term high, long term low…
But here is a move that will surprise you: when you acknowledge your initial selfish motives, the rewards of your giving are longer lasting. But when you think you are doing it out of the goodness of your hearts, there will be a short-circuit at some point in the process.
So, how do you do it? Be ruthlessly straight with yourself and find and acknowledge the ego root, the seed of agenda, in your “generous” behavior. Say, out-loud what’s in it for you.
For example I always say why I teach, that I won’t do anything that I don’t enjoy, that I only want students that I like and want to work with because I love myself… I never pose as a giver, I always position myself as the one who gets more out of each transaction that what I put into it.
Ever since I’ve been doing this, about a decade, the Light has been generous with me, my health have been much better, I sleep better, feel better, and life is working a lot better for me…
That acknowledgment transforms that same very seed into a seed of selflessness. How is that for an unexpected move… and paradox?
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What’s the meaning (purpose) of life
The two sources that helped me define what life could mean to me are Wallace D. Wattles and The Zohar, the definitive book of Kabbalah.
According to Wallace D. Wattles (of The Science of Getting Rich fame) is that life wants more life, and your job (YOU! Human Being) is to align yourself with that. More life means being able to have all the tools that you are capable of using, being on the cutting edge of thinking, etc. This has been really very inspiring to me.
I have worded this MY WAY: our job is to be God’s self-expression. God doesn’t have a thumb, but we do. And we are causing full self-expression to God when we use what we were blessed with, our bodies, our minds, our emotions.
Kabbalah is similar, in a way, saying that human beings are a part of the vessel the Light created (eons ago) to receive all its blessings, but (unfortunately and unintentionally) the Light’s desire to give got transmitted with the light that was giving fulfillment to the vessel, and at some point the vessel said: I don’t want to eat bread of shame any more, I want to be able to earn the light I receive, and be a giver, not just a receiver.
That is what caused the physical universe to spring into place, so that the vessel, (that broke into chards into the billions of souls) can earn its light in an environment of seeming scarcity, by becoming like god: giving of themselves.
Of course, physicality and scarcity are powerful forces, so it is not easy for the souls to “tame” their physical hosts… and only very few people in every generation elevate themselves much on the scale of 0-1000 (100% scarcity/ego to close to godliness).
So, in my life, this moment to moment to moment transformation of the selfishness and the full expression of what’s god (without being religious) is the purpose of living, i.e. the meaning I give to life.
And by selfishness I don’t necessarily mean material selfishness: generosity of heart is the opposite: I want for everyone what I want for myself. But I won’t give it to them and I won’t do it FOR them. I inspire them… by MY ACTIONS.
Now, this is a full blog-post… where is my blog… darn… when I need it? lol
Sophie Benshitta Maven
Uplifting
I watched a movie last night. The Big Blue. a French movie about a deep see diver who dived deep into the ocean without an oxygen tank, just him with the one breath of air he took before he dived in…
Now, this type of movie is not my favorite type of movie, what made me watch it is Dr David Hawkins’ recommendation.
In his book, Power vs. Force he says that the movie calibrates at 700 on a logarithmic scale of 1 to 1000.
Einstein only calibrates at 499…
So I went out, and searched for it. Lots of opportunities to download pirated versions, I chose to buy the movie used… hey, if I am going to use it to move my own consciousness up the scale, might as well be high minded, right?
I watched the movie, and I didn’t understand it. In the end, the hero chooses to go back into the depth of the sea instead of staying with his pregnant girl-friend.
I wanted to look it up on google, maybe I misunderstood… but instead, in my sleep, it came to me: above a certain level in consciousness, where people rarely get, life is like deep down in the see. Rare thoughts, if any, dreamlike, you feel drunk with bliss. At least according to Dr. David Hawkins. He lives there, he says.
That is the world of the endless, the world of the soul. No wonder the ego, the always hurrying, always concerned, always opinionating ego drowns the few words the soul would say… no wonder our lives is so far removed from that dreamy, blissful state.
Then another part of the movie popped into my memory: the doctor says that at the depth these divers descended to, at 500 feet, the oxygen is so compressed, it doesn’t have the energy to lift these people up.
Lift them up…when they are the deepest in the water, where their souls are the freest, their body is the least able to uplift… the diver says, “at that level you need a really good reason to want to come back.”
I don’t like choosing. If you know me, you know that one of my favorite sayings is “have your cake and eat it too.” Choosing, for me, is like cutting off your arm, your legs, your head?
So how can you uplift your soul and not damage your body? How can you, on demand, elevate your soul? Be, at least a little bit, in that blissful domain of no worries and no concerns, in that domain of all knowing, in that domain of all-loving?
In the day-to-day, dog-eat-dog world, it can be near impossible. In that world, joy has to have a reason, and lasts for mere seconds. In that world loving is a deal: I love you and you love me. You break your word: too bad, the deal is off.
Then I thought that appreciation and gratitude are the instant shoe-lifts for your soul.
Don’t believe me? Try it. Attempt to be grateful, for anything, for a moment. You’ll experience a sudden elevation in your state. If you can.
If your vibration level is too low, it may take many attempts. At first you’ll want to appreciate something that you can see that you have a reason to. After enough practice, you’ll be able to appreciate and be grateful for its own sake.
Another book I read recently says: one can start to elevate themselves from slavery and poverty the moment they start noticing and appreciating beauty.
As I am sitting here, in front of my panorama window overlooking a valley in Syracuse, NY, with the streaked sky that looks like my hair when I get up: no two hairs go in the same direction… with the few yellow leaves still clinging to the bare branches of the trees, with the silence of the fall crisp air, my heart fills with gratitude. My eyes well up and I experience instant take-off.
A lift from the mundane to the dominion of the sacred.
If this were taught in schools, the world’s population’s vibration would rise from the current 207 into the late 200’s or maybe into the 300’s. And guess what can’t live in that rarefied world? Thoughts of greed, murder, abuse. Just like most people would die at even 100 feet deep in the ocean…
It takes practice. And it takes a liberation of the soul.
Is it worth it? Yes, take it from me. I have managed to go from wretched to a mostly happy, mostly pleasant individual. Now, that’s something. How did I do that? Exactly how I am telling you… with gratitude and appreciation. And with pulling responsibility towards me… but that will be the topic of another article… You can wait, right? You have work to do. You need to appreciate the world around you, the people, the sky, your cat, your food, your beauty.
Now go, start. Start today!