EGO DYNAMICS: Master Your Contextualized Experience

The ego-self is nothing more than a comprehensive and all-encompassing experience of the 'world' and the 'others' who seem to inhabit it.

It’s not “real’ in any absolute sense, except in the context of an ego-self demanding and contextualizing it as ‘real’ (I am assuming that you consider your ‘self’ real).

This experience of ‘reality’ is what the ancient wisdom traditions refer to as “illusion.” However, for centuries this reference has been rather inconsequential to the grand scheme of reality as the same experiences are compulsively repeated, on and on, ad nauseam. This is because the so-called “illusion” is contextualized by the ego-self (“you”) as a ‘reality’ that is deeply engaging and, therefore, is experienced as anything but illusory. This creates expectation as to the parameters of your experience. Consider how rarely your experiences deviate from your repertoire of expectation.

Teaching that your experience of reality is an “illusion” encourages disengaging from the richness of that experience because, as they teach, it is not ‘real’ but an “illusion.” Yet, the teachings essentially seek to aid you, because within this "illusion," that the ego-self contextualizes as “real,” comes a great deal of attendant suffering. Suffering that you experience as personal and as related to others and the world. Therefore, it would seem logical that the less engaged you are with the “illusion” of reality the less suffering you will experience. Anyone who claims that seeking "enlightenment" has nothing to do with an escape from suffering is fooling you and merely demonstrates that they are compromising with truth in their addiction to the ancient "enlightenment" agendas.

Nevertheless, the contradiction is that any reduction of suffering through disengaging merely further reinforces the experience of suffering as 'real.' Why else would you desperately seek a way out, if the suffering were not so vividly 'real'? From these ancient teachings, we have large pockets of the collective participating in 'insight practices' to aid in understanding this ancient teaching of illusory reality (maya).

But what drives them to seek an exit are the experiences of suffering that they have made real.

Note that to contextualize your experience of reality as "illusion" you must detach from it through practices that essentially seek to aid in attaining insight into the nature of reality as “illusion.” Once again, this engages you in a reinforcing circularity. Seek to understand it as illusion and you make it real simply through the desire to know it as not real or illusion.

However, what you may come to realize is that 'reality' is nothing more than experience (internal and external) that you have contextualized as 'real.' This does not deny your experience but puts it in the proper perspective.

Although the insight practitioners feel the outcome is worthwhile, the world is seemingly unaffected by these ancient esoteric wisdom teachings which attempt to countermand and essentially annihilate all your attempts at controlling your ‘reality.’

Control is anathema to the eastern religious ideologies. Yet, non-control is anathema to the ego-self.

This hypocrisy is unavoidable as you engage in practices that seek to inform you of the "illusion," yet still find yourself destitute due to the current "economic crisis." If you have a family to maintain, embracing the ideology that reality is an illusion does little to alleviate your fears for the future. Such fear can only obstruct your plans to attain some awakening insight into the actual nature of reality.

I would suggest that if you decide to invest belief in an illusional reality, get some good life insurance for your family. Thus, when you finally exit the 'world,' at least they will be protected. In addition, if you wish to follow the ancient teachings I would advise you to physically disengage from your family and the world at large and seek residence at a local monastery where you can, based on the teachings by others who supposedly disengaged, physically and mentally disengage with the world you so desperately seek to exit.

CONTROL VS NO-CONTROL

Or you may wish to consider that reality is nothing more than experience that you contextualize as ‘real" and that it has no other 'substance' or' form' other than what you project upon that experience. In so doing you can seek variable degrees of control to that experience and your meditative insight practices can be tailored to this effect simply because:

You are cause.

All religious-spiritual paths assert either ‘control’ or ‘non-control’ in the search for greater insight into your “true-nature.” Yet, both seek to change your current experience from one of suffering to one of bliss. The problem with 'non-control' is that it contradicts your current efforts at seeking control and thereby reducing suffering through various actions upon 'reality.' These actions serve to magnify and reinforce your further attempts to reduce suffering through acting upon your world.

Did you consolidate all your credit cards to reduce your debt? Problem solved. Did marriage therapy help save your eroding marriage? Problem solved. Did medical treatment alleviate your symptoms? problem solved. Did you apologize for your error? problem solved. Notice how your acting upon reality and seeking to control conditions contradicts the eastern teachings that “thoughts arise,” and experiences simply occur, so just forget about it, you have NO CONTROL.

"But wait, I just got a new better paying job, so how can I have no control?"

You cannot avoid feeling hypocritical in your attempts to control parts of reality, while engaged in practices that assert non-control of the whole. In altering physical reality, what you are acting upon is nothing more than your ‘experience’ of a world, since ‘reality’ is nothing more than experience and has no physical properties other than the contexts and concepts of the ego-self.

Surrender 'sensation' as conduit for experience and seek change at the source.

Your experiences are impermanent and therefore, extremely malleable, but only by attaining the deep insight of yourself as causative agent can you 'act' upon your experience in knowing that the ego-self is causative agent of all your experiences.

However, the rub is that the ego-self employs the parameters of past experience to engage with future experiences of ‘self’ and ‘world’ and this speaks to the adage that “there is nothing new under the sun.” Therefore, the only way to engage with any changed experience of ‘reality’ is to disengage from past experience as that which informs the ego as to what can be expected in the future.

You may contend that you often engage with experiences that seems wholly unexpected. Yet, I would respond that every experience you have ever encountered is completely predictable and not unknown to an ego-self that only realizes itself through ever-changing experiences within the realm of expectation (death is the only experience the ego-self cannot predict, yet it does vigilantly prepare through various means for that end).

However, if past experience is composed primarily of denying ‘self’ as cause, why would that not continue to be the primary factor in all future experiences? In fact, discarding expectation built on past experience will eventually culminate in the most unexpected and surprising experience that could ever be constructed.

That of God.

You may ignore this theoretical proposition as patently absurd. However, keep in mind that what you consciously ignore now is solely based on expectation from past experience. The past informs what can be currently accepted as conventionally “real’ in this present moment. The ego-self allows nothing more than what it expects and prepares for and this severely limits what can be experienced now. Unfortunately, you will not resolve your experience of suffering by employing the same experiences that caused the suffering in the first place. You will need to leap beyond what you know and experience beyond the boundaries of everything you have ever been taught to experience as 'real.'

Nevertheless, what all the ancient masters teach is that eventually you will understand reality as nothing more than your self-constructed experience of a reality that essentially does not exist, except as an experience in your mind.

Master the dynamics of the ego-self and master your experience of reality.

Good Luck With That!