 Ego
The whole concept of dissolving the ego is something I encountered 20 years ago studying books like "Be Here Now" and much of the eastern philosophy.
What I've seen with people who become bent on this concept is that they tend to then fall directly into a ranking system of spiritual advancement and start saying things like "I'm more spiritually advanced than you are."
I agree with you Steve that we must live in balance with our ego. It is when people are driven purely by egocentric motivations that spring up primarily from insecurity that we see the wildly imbalanced choice making happen en masse.
Learning to live with the ego is all about learning to accept and love yourself as you are, letting go of the need to seek permission or approval. Once you get past this hitch in your programming, you can then begin living from your essence because your choices are made on what motivates you, and it's no longer a "proving your worth" sort of motivation.
This was the original concept of "sin" in the Bible. I've taken it to mean an acronym for "self interested notion." If you look at most of the crimes in the world (both punished and permitted) they typically stem from actions the benefit the person committing them at the expense or to the detriment of the other parties involved. It is when we move away from that type of thinking that we become enlightened. In this agree with you Steve as well.
On the environmental side of things I find it interesting that there is so much momentum on ridding ourselves of CO2 which is what we naturally exhale and what plants need to breathe. Personally I think the global warming is real, however caused by solar activity. There is much science to support this idea, including research by NASA. While I feel it imperative that we stop being such a disposable society and begin looking at more harmonious ways of living, I do not believe that we are the cause of global warming. Much of what causes environmental problems is our trained and almost absolute dependence on government and business to provide our core needs like water, electricity, fuel and food. Going back in history a hundred or so years you would find this would certainly not be considered the norm.
The greatest thing we can do to lighten our impact on the earth is to begin a program of green self reliance right at home. I think we will begin to see a shift to more community centered living where there is less communting and more working from home or close to home. Everyone should be getting involved in bio-organic gardening to reduce dependence on current farming techniques which strip the planet of top soil, consume our potable water and adds pesticides to our water shed. Instead of compact flourescent lighting, led lighting reduces the load on the system by 4 times less than even the flourescents and lasts about 2-3 years longer as well. (That's 1/20th the consumption of Incandescent). Other things we can do are begin looking at thin sheet solar as it costs about 1/10th what normal solar does and so I'm estimating about $7500-10000 to implement on the average household.
I personally plan to implement the thin sheet solar, water from air water generation (at 800gpd) and bio-intensive gardening into my lifestyle completely within the next two years. Also on the burner is the French air powered car. (MDI)
All the best!
Bill White
The Synchronicity Expert  |