Inquirer: Once I have some breakthrough in meditation and surrender, the next day I’m all over the place emotionally. Ego is fighting back. Good. It has to come out to die out. I welcome these dark days, it means progress
Sundari: The ego will always fight back, and fighting the ego is an endless battle. We do not need to battle with it if we understand what it is. The goal of an inquirer is to efface the ego, but that can only be done by Self-knowledge, not the ego/doer itself, because it is the problem. That said, we need a functional ego to operate in the transactional reality; it gives us our ‘I’ sense and is supposed to function as a messenger from our ‘inner’ world, the Self, to the ‘outer world’ the apparent reality. There is no need to ‘bust’ it; only understand what it is and how it functions
Inquirer: I will comment again for clarity: who is it that wants the ego to surrender, and judges it for its failure to do so? This isn’t a dismissive pointer towards awareness, it’s a pointer to this specific ego-ego relationship. One part of the ego having an idea of how things should go, and punishing/judging the other part(s) for not doing so.
Sundari: Good point, see below. The ego is the voice in your head either praising or judging, true. All egos function in the same predictable way; in fact, there is only one ego and all embodied entities (jiva’s) share it, unless and until they know what their real identity is as Consciousness.
Inquirer: This relationship is self-perpetuating. Both the push towards surrender and the resistance to doing so are two sides of the same coin. It is just that we are temporarily identified with one side and excluding the other, and so remain unaware of the whole of it. Can we hold both sides of this dynamic in loving awareness? Can we give the resistant side of the ego out of full consideration, as well as the spiritually righteous side? Where are we now as we do this? Do things feel different?
Sundari: The discrimination is not between two sides of the ego because the ego is not real. Discrimination is between ignorance and Self-knowledge. See below
Inquirer: If that (the title of the post) then it indicates that the ego IS what surrenders to the Universe. So it’s a good thing you have an ego that can surrender to the Universe, otherwise you could never experience the joy of it.
Sundari: If it is the ego surrendering, there will be no true surrender, unless it is through discrimination, Self-knowledge. We need to ask ourselves what is an ego, actually? Simply put, the ego is the “I” thought wrongly associated and identified with objects in a mind ignorant of its true nature as Consciousness, under the spell of duality, (Maya). As Maya is inscrutable and it is impossible to determine what life will dish out to us from one moment to the next, the ego identity is rooted in fear. When we are identified with being a limited person, the ego is always worried because it is not in control of the objects or results of action. Only Isvara, life, or the universe, is in control. (An object is anything other than you, Consciousness, which includes both subtle objects (thoughts/feelings) and gross objects).
The ego is also a word that describes the thought that limitless non-dual Consciousness (you) is a limited separate entity. This thought gives rise to the idea that you are a doer: the one who owns action, objects and experiences things. As egos do actions to get something we think we want or need to complete ourselves or to get away from something we don’t want. It is thinking programmed by Maya, and the resulting actions that arise from the playing out of the guna generated Likes and dislikes or vasanas (in other words, ignorance).
The technical name for the ego in Sanskrit is ahamkara. In the spiritual arena, especially in yoga, the idea abounds that the ego is the problem and must be ‘busted’ or surrendered. Vedanta disagrees. Surrendered to who and by who? The ego cannot and will never surrender the ego, not for long, anyway. There is nothing for it to gain by surrendering, or so it believes, when rooted in duality.
If we are honest, it is everyone’s experience that we cannot permanently surrender the ego. It always comes back, no matter how hard we try to get rid of it with any practice such as meditation or any other yoga. It takes a while to really understand the truth that no action taken by a limited entity (the ego/individual identified as a person) will produce a permanent and limitless result, i.e. freedom from limitation, from suffering. As a doer you might get a temporary reprieve with the idea that you have surrendered the ego, which feels like grace flooding in, but the ego is still there, make no mistake about it!
Even though there is no such thing as an ego in reality – it has no existence other than as a thought arising in you, Consciousness — nothing gets rid of the ego because it is not possible to get rid of it. It is a thought that belongs to Isvara, not the doer or jiva. It can only be negated through Self-knowledge, never removed or ‘surrendered’. Unless understanding of what the ego is takes place in a qualified mind, the binding vasanas that condition the mind (your likes and dislikes/conditioning), and the identification with the doer, are still there. So, suffering is still there.
Lucky for us, the ego is thought that arises out of Consciousness, is made up of Consciousness and dissolves into Consciousness with the removal of ignorance by Self-knowledge. The ego has no effect on Consciousness because it is not real. Real being defined as that which is always present and unchanging—a definition that only ever fits Consciousness, nothing else. And if it is not real, how can it be busted—or surrendered? It can only be understood for what it is. In truth, the ego is not the problem. It is only identification with the ego that produces suffering, meaning, the misapprehension or lack of appreciation of yourself as whole and complete, non-dual, ever-present, unchanging, limitless, actionless and unconditioned Consciousness—the KNOWER of the ego.
One of the common symptoms of Self-knowledge working on the mind is when knowledge blinks on and off, what we call the ‘fire-fly’ stage of self-inquiry. This stage often causes considerable agitation in the mind as the ego is adjusting the way it usually relates to its environment – through the lens of duality/doership. The road to freedom is not easy for the poor jiva, it has a really hard time disidentifying with its identity as a doer. Though we need a functioning ego as jivas to live in the world, it must be demoted as the one in charge, a job it does very badly, to being subservient to our primary identity as the Self. This is where all the teaching takes place in Vedanta, because ego identification is another word for Maya, beginningless ignorance.
For most inquirers, the ego identity becomes much more subtle with sustained inquiry, but sadly, it can and usually does, survive moksa, Self-realization. This means that there is still some residual ignorance which is capable of blocking access to permanent satisfaction, or Self-Actualization. This is why the last stage of inquiry, nididhysana, is the longest and toughest for most inquirers. Dismissing the remaining ego identity is no walk in the park. It may not be real but it is a highly resilient idea which is very hard to uproot completely. And yet, while it is very important to fully understand the ego identity, especially the most resilient binding vasanas and personality tendencies for moksa to be permanent, the jiva is made the way it is made. We cannot change the jiva blueprint or perfect it not only because it is not real but it ‘belongs to’ or originates from the Causal body, Isvara. So though the ego idea must be as good as non-existent for moksa to permanently obtain, it does not mean the jiva has to change. But the egoic doer program must be understood in light of Self-knowledge so that ignorance is no longer capable of clouding the mind. In this way, the jiva will improve as an indirect result of Self-knowledge, not as its aim.
Much love
Sundari
