a center for
personal and planetary
awakening

Mystic River Yoga
214 Crosby St.
Arlington, MA 02474

781-643-0117
info@MysticRiverYoga.com

12 Principles of Awakening

Spiritual Foundation

Scientific Foundation

Embodying the Practice

Collective Awakening

  Understanding the Ego / The Fundamental Problem

                                   self / not self

    Who (or what) am I? According to the Vedic teachings, in the beginning of our enquiry into the nature of reality, and more specifically into the nature of myself as a spiritual being, we can divide the whole world into two parts: myself (I, me, the subject, the seer) and everything else (other, the objects, the seen). This is the fundamental experience of all human beings as we gaze out into the world from our observing self. Everything we experience fits into one of these two categories. The Vedic/Sanskrit terms are atma and anatma.

   On the first level we notice ourselves this way. If a baseball comes whizzing past my head, just missing me, I say to myself, thank god that didn't hit me. From this poit of view, my 'self' ends at my skin. Outside my skin is not self, inside my skin is self. I feel safe and relieved for the moment.

  On another level, if my son gets hit with a hard thrown baseball, I can feel a very real sense of pain. Not the same as my body being hit, but nonetheless very tangible. I see that my sense of self has extended to include family and loved ones. I 'identify' with them. They (other) become we (part of me). My son is on a baseball team and during the season, my sense of self, my sense of identification expands to include the team. My emotions rise and fall with the success and failure of the team.This self sense is pliable, changeable.

  As I grow and mature I notice my self sense expanding to include members of my town/country, my religion/belief system,  possibly all humans. As my maturity enters the spiritual dimensions I 'identify with' all living beings, and ultimately, all of creation and the formless, the non-dual view. It is an evolutionary journey to expand our self sense until there is no 'other'. Awakening, enlightenment, or the end of suffering as the Buddhists would say is nothing but a full realization that I, the 'self', am the non-dual wholeness of all arising forms and the timeless, unbounded formlessness. Always was, always will be.  Nothing excluded, no other, no 'not-self'. This is not just a good idea, but an all encompassing 'knowing' that is beyond words and concepts. In the very beginning of his Yoga Sutras   Patanjali defines yoga as the dissolving or dissolution of any confusion about the nature of the "I am" and goes on through 196 sutras to unfold just what this means and entails..

   This is also the great spiritual teaching of Jesus, the Buddha, the Vedantins and other awakening beings. This level of awareness is not at all obvious or easily sustained even after we have glimpses of it because our biology is clearly based on the reality that my body is very definitely separate from others. If I am hungry, watching someone else eat does not satisfy my needs. These biological realities lie at the beginning of our self sense as it emerges in our minds in infancy and proceeds to grow and develop.

  Yogis define the aspect of mind that builds a 'self' out of experience as the ahamkara, the self-maker. We are going to use the term 'egoic self' to refer to this arising self sense that inherently excludes aspects of reality and explore how we can use a new understanding of the habits, tendencies and manifestations of this ego to help accelerate the expansion of self-sense, both for our own happiness and the health of society as a whole. This egoic self has limitations, but, with some basic understanding that it is not the 'true self', does prove to be useful in the process of development and maturation. (The word ego was originally used by Freud to denote aspects of mind that attempt to organize and control our behavior. In modern times 'ego' has many connotations and implications depending on the context.)

                     The Egoic Self and Time

   According to contemporary spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, the egoic self, as an embodied form of 'separateness' is the fundamental obstacle to the emerging new mode of consciousness. He defines the egoic self as " a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment." In his breakthrough book, 'The Power of Now", Tolle describes how the 'present moment, the 'Now' is the portal or gateway into self-realization, into seeing that the Self is inherently whole, complete and unbounded. Losing its sense of being in the groundless ground of Timeless Presence, the ego aimlessly wanders between past and future, desperately seeking to overcome its feeling of inadequacy, of being less than whole.

   The egoic self , the false sense of I, is based on a deep sense of alienation from the present, and an identification/addiction to past and future. It requires the past for its identity and the future for its fulfillment, and thus can never settle down in the present moment. By entangling itself in the world of transient forms (my needs, my story, my pain, my problems), the ego generates a seemingly non-stop flow of compulsive mental activity. Its fundamental belief, that I am limited, inadequate and incomplete right now, (alienation), drives a constant mental stream of thought, seeking fullness, wholeness, and a relief from the burden of inadequacy through identification with objects both gross and subtle. As Mick Jagger sang, "I can't get no satisfaction". That is the voice of the ego and mistaking this voice, this conditioned mind pattern, for the true nature of the self, the I, is the fundamental problem facing the human.

  As Eckhart Tolle describes in his new book " A New Earth", the egoic self has both content and structure. The structures are universal throughout the human race while the contents will vary from individual to individual and collective group to collective group. Awakening requires an understanding of the egoic structures and their functioning to catch them as they arise in the mind field and to not invest them with an undeserved reality, with energy that helps sustain their continued functioning. The egoic self is mutable and clever, popping up at any time, looking to stake a claim on whatever is arising. It is a parasite, sucking away the vital energies of the mind field in its relentless need to sustain its own existence through suffering. However, and this is the key to awakening, the ego as the identification/alienation principle cannot survive in the light of awareness, in presence. With the light of consciousness, the egoic structures can no longer pose as a false sense of I, but are recognized as compulsive thought patterns to be noticed, like you would notice any other object, gross or subtle, and deeply investigated. It takes a strong sense of presence, discrimination and wisdom to stand up to the deep seated powerful habitual influences of the egoic self. It takes deep compassion and patience to stay the course in attenuating the momentum of the egoic structures. Spiritual practice, the bodhisattva path, is about cultivating this power of wisdom and compassion.

                                Egoic Structures

  There are three major structural manifestations of the egoic self: attachment, judgment, and resistance.

  In attachment, the ego sustains itself by identifying with objects, equating being with having. There are many categories of objects that the ego can attach to including physical objects (my toy, car, my property), ideas, opinions (my thoughts, my beliefs), and roles (I am a father, son, student, spouse, victim). One obvious manifestation of attachment is ownership, making something '"mine". The thought form I merges with the thought form of the object. Patanjali refers to this in YS I-4, "there is identification with what arises". Having frequently morphs into wanting, a much more powerful form than just having. The ego is always wanting more. It has an addictive need for more.The Buddhists refer to this egoic structure as the hungry ghost with an enormous belly and a mouth the size of the eye of a needle. Patanjali lists relentless desire, raga, of one of the kleshas, Y.S. II - 7, the fundamental impediments to awakening.

Another fundamental structure is judgment. I have more than him. My (fill in the blank) is better/worse than yours. Complaining, comparing and resentment are common egoic activity. The ego always needs to be right, to have the last word, to find fault.

Resistance is refusing to accept what is actually arising in the here and now.

            Egoic Structures and the Big Mind Process

   Gempo Roshii, a realized Zen master and student of Western psychology, has created a system he calls The Big Mind Process to examine various egoic structures through pointing out instructions and monitored dialogue. Through skillful questioning we are made to recognize the roles the egoic structures play in limiting our self sense, but also how they can usefully participate in maintaining a healthy mind state when integrated into the BigMind/BigHeart. In this way, we can recognize that many of the unhealthy, compulsive, time-bound, limited mind states can be just unintegrated, but useful and necessary psychological  tools for maintaining a healthy mind.

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