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I have always been told in the course of my spiritual study that I must learn to get rid of the ego and suppress the ego. I’ve come to a different conclusion. I think that ego originates in the brain. The brain is temporal, it eventually rots and decays. That is where the memory is stored and the memory is where we get the points of reference that allows the “I” to exist. Now the personality could be said to rest in the brain, also. The personality, I think, is kind of like the stomping ground of the ego. Initially, this is kind of frightening. The thought that “I” is temporal. Identity is a kind of myth that we use to comfort ourselves with, I believe.
So, if the ego and personality are temporal, then that leaves us with the soul. I’ve always been told that our soul is the most valuable thing we have, or could ever have. I think it would more properly be stated that the soul owns this body, and this mind, and this ego. That these things are a temporary expression of the soul. So now, I can’t help but wonder, what authority should any of these things have over the soul? What ownership do we have over this essence that resides inside us or around us?
I have my doubts also that the soul stays in the same single essence after our deaths that it is in life. I think maybe that soul is a single essence in all of us. It is just an energy that has maybe always existed. I believe that it rests in all living things, not just humans. So, in that respect, I guess I believe in reincarnation. Maybe as the population of life on the planet grows we get less and less of this essence split among us all. This could be one explanation for the absence of the miracles all the old religions talk about, now that soul has thinned out, it has less ability to have profound effects on the material world. There are a lot of ideas to explore.
So maybe we should try to associate ego with the soul instead of the mind or the body. Try to understand that this life is just temporal. Why work on glorifying something that will be nothing but rotting meat one day? Why not try to cleanse and purify that which is eternal within us, instead? We need to try to understand that the aims and goals of our ego should be second to the aims and goals to the growth of our soul. That which is eternal certainly holds more importance than that which is temporal.
This isn’t to say that we should all be devout practitioners of ascetism and throw away all of our belongings and eat bark out in the woods. I believe that material comfort is, atleast to the majority of us, and important aspect in reaching higher states of consciousness. How can we, in discomfort, concentrate on higher aims than the here and now. Of course, there are a lot of different schools of thought and philosophy that will disagree with me, but unless you plan to wholeheartedly embrace these philosophies, then their concepts don’t apply to you.
There are some people who study “magick”, and see themselves as glorified wizards and sorcerers, and this to me is complete and utter foolishness. They choose to glorify their ego instead of the soulstuff that feeds their art, or as I see it, their service. This is what they should understand. All of their works should be aimed at the service of this soulstuff, because it is the closest interaction we have with Creation. And this really is what it is about, us being impermanent and to one day no longer exist have the opportunity to serve a force that is eternal or immortal. This is where the trade comes in, we get to touch immortality through our works as payment for our works.
I do not believe that we should forfeit our existence in the name of this service, but rather justify our existence through this service. I do not believe there is one single correct path, I believe that many paths lead to Truth. We have a really unconventional view on Truth, as a race. We fail to realize that we are only glorified animals. We have reasoning and our body is a good tool to implement this reasoning on the material world around us, but that material world around us will eventually die, and be nothing that we recognize.
Identity is nothing more than a comfort we are granted for the course of our lives, so that we can have meaning in addition to our service. This is so important, and people fail to see it. In a perfect world we could maybe see this, all of us, and learn to implement this into our motives. Ideally, we could race towards a common goal instead of separating into political, racial, cultural, and religious factions. This is a horrible division of the power that would otherwise be available to us. The search for earthly power that we so desperately cling to is blasphemous to Creation.
I will enter in the disclaimer that I do not claim to be free from error, or any other stupid human tricks that seem to dirty up every one of us. I am only saying that these are realizations I’ve had, and that I’m struggling to implement into my own life, and maybe I’m typing it out to better rationalize what I’ve seen to myself and maybe someone else who reads this will be touched by the truth of it and begin to struggle in earnest to find their own path. I am not trying to force any views upon anybody, and I mean no disrespect to anyone out there, this is only my personal views. A recent realization.
To sum it up, the only thing that is not impermanent about us is the Soul. The personality and the body, and the memory are not the soul, and they will one day perish. The “I” we are all so fond of is only a temporary tool of the Soul. I believe we should learn to support the growth of the Soul in addition to our mundane aims. And for all the wizards out there, try to work for your master. Refer back to the scene from Fantasia with the wizard and Micky Mouse. That is such a great metaphor for the human race.
To everyone who has taken the time to read this, thank you for your time. I hope you managed to keep an open mind, and leave with ideas to ponder. Later.