The War on Ego (Blog)

[Keith]

I was quite disappointed by this blog entry. I usually like Steve's blog articles because they're insightful and deep, but this one seems shallow and one-sided.

Steve seems to have set up a strawman image of a mystic for the sole purpose of knocking it down. Either that, or he just doesn't really understand what he's trying to disagree with. (I say "trying to" because a lot of his "alternate approach" is actually agreeing with his target, only in different terms).

For example:

Originally Posted by Steve

The irony is that those who suggest we must dissociate from the ego are still very much ego-associated themselves. They simply detach their egos from materialism and re-attach it to spiritualism. The identification with physical life becomes stronger than ever.

"Attachment to detachment" is a recognised trap of Spiritual Development to be avoided or overcome. Obviously if you take pride in your lack of ego, you're doing it wrong.

[Gotchaman]

I'd like to be open minded but I'm just confused and don't quite know who I should be listening to. Maybe you guys can tell me what's good about having ego. I have been reading Dr. Wayne Dyer's "Power of Intention" in which he clearly says that ego is something we must overcome. He doesn't say anything positive about ego. I quote what he writes about ego:

Ego is simply an idea of who you are that you carry around with you. As such, it can't be surgically removed by having an egoectomy! This idea of who you think you are will persistently erode any possibility you have of connecting to intention.

What I don't understand in Dr. Dyer's theory is that if nothing in this physical world determines who we are then what does? Who really am I if none of my accomplishment determines who I am? Character? Personality? Are "character" and "personality" considered as ego as well?

[munish]

Originally Posted by Angela

From what I've read of Eckhart Tolle's works, I'm pretty sure he'd agree with everything you've said.

Maybe also that waging war on the ego is more ego.

But his teachings are certainly waging " war on the ego" .

Eckhart Tolle's book on the subject, A New Earth, looks at this too:

To become free of the ego is not really a big job but a very small one.

That’s what Jesus meant, according to Tolle, when he said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

[Dharma]

Yossarian, two excellent posts!

[theknightwhosaysni-NI]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Interestingly, someone from Oprah contacted me a few weeks ago, asking if I'd be interested in helping to teach Tolle's material via their webcasts. I turned them down though. I'm sure they'll find plenty of people who can do that sort of thing; it's not a role I need to fill personally.

Really?! Oh come on it would have been so cool !!
I'm sure your approach would be a great supplement to Tolle's teaching, and many people would find it useful.
Also it probably would have been a great promotion for your website.

I understand it's your choice of course, but I'd love to see you on this show, I think it would be so cool !
Are you sure you don't want to review this choice?

[IntuitionWritten]

I just had a thought that made me smile. Prince (the music artist) tried to go nameless for a while and no one knew what to call him so eventually had to go back to being called "Prince". He cannot become nameless and formless on this planet of form and names and still survive being known (in his case - famous).

Steve's article just does not resonate with me, though. It might just be semantics, but it seemed left-brained and a little dark. Also struck me as an ego-driven article, maybe a defense against the success or prominence of Eckhart Tolle right now? However, the balance and alignment that Steve talks about is right on. Prince is a great example.

It is important to know and acknowledge your individuality so you can serve the greater good. I don't see a war, though, just a balancing act. Wars are created by thoughts in your head, not the world around us. So maybe somewhere in Steve's mind there is a War on the Ego?

I do think there is a lot of talk about the Ego lately. I think in this generally individual-based (ego) driven society it is important work. Wayne Dyer and Eckhart Tolle still possess and respond to individual identities - I believe their message is that we can choose to use those individual identities to expand our own consciousness and thus the consciousness of the people we come into contact with. They are not without individuality, but they have found the balance that Steve is talking about.

(I just had another thought).... Individuality is not to be extracted from who we are but I think the ego is individuality without thought of others. I think it is possible to transcend the ego either at certain times or at most/all times. I am able to do it at certain times. Based on my limited view of Eckhart Tolle I think he can do it at most/all times. My journey is my journey, though. I am where I am and I don't find fault with it. As long as I continue to grow and evolve in this life I will be happy with my journey.

[Dan.Linehan]

Steve, in this context you are basically a cell turning into an organ.

[Keith]

Originally Posted by IntuitionWritten

Steve's article just does not resonate with me, though. It might just be semantics, but it seemed left-brained and a little dark. Also struck me as an ego-driven article, maybe a defense against the success or prominence of Eckhart Tolle right now?

I would be very surprised if the blog entry wasn't inspired by this forum discussion.

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by Keith

I would be very surprised if the blog entry wasn't inspired by this forum discussion.

Some articles are inspired by forum discussions, but I can't say this one was. This one was on my "to blog" list for several months (maybe a year). For each new article posted, usually at least one person usually finds the timing synchronistic or coincidental in some way.

[IntuitionWritten]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

For each new article posted, usually at least one person usually finds the timing synchronistic or coincidental in some way.

I certainly felt like the timing had a lot to do with Eckhart Tolle on Oprah. Mostly because of the title "War on the Ego". I still don't know who Steve is saying is raging War on the Ego. It seemed because Eckhart is on Oprah Monday nights and many millions of people end up watching, that timing had something to do with the title. I just assumed - and I yes I know what they say....

[Steve Pavlina]

It's common for people to read something into the timing or content of my posts that's synchronistic with their experiences but not mine.

I don't watch Oprah, so I've never seen Tolle on her show (or online for that matter). The last time I saw Tolle speak was on a DVD recording a few years ago. Personally I found his pacing and lengthy pauses too slow for my tastes. I was doing polyphasic sleep at the time, and he nearly put me to sleep. He seemed to have a good sense of humor, and I liked his books, but as a speaker he quickly turned me off. Maybe he's more animated today -- I don't know.

I was so wrapped up in writing my book for the past several months that I honestly haven't kept up with what others in the field are doing.

[yossarian]

Tolle is not more animated, he's as dry as always. Very German

Since 11 million people have watched Tolle on Oprah in the month of March, and there is probably a significant overlap between your audience and Tolle's, I bet many of your readers took this blog post as a direct reference to Tolle.

[Bahadur]

When I set new goals or begin new projects, I think hard about making sure they’re aligned with helping both myself and others. I don’t see myself as a selfish person or a selfless person. I think both of those extremes are mistakes. I favor the path where selfishness and selflessness are aligned, so when I help others, I’m simultaneously helping myself, and vice versa.

Didn't you reply to someone asking about polarity that it was too hard to simultaneously optimize for both?

I find this to be an exciting mission that gives my life a very motivating purpose that I can’t achieve at the individual level. Living just for myself seems boring and pointless. There’s really nothing I can do as an individual that excites me as much as having a positive impact on the larger body of humanity.

Again, doesn't this conflict with polarizing?

[Steve Pavlina]

For most people it's too complicated and/or difficult in practice to immediately transition to a lifestyle that (near) optimally fulfills their needs while also contributing to a strong service-based mission. Polarity makes such transitions easier by helping people focus their efforts on one side or the other. For example, if you pursue your own personal happiness far enough (darkworker), you'll eventually learn that in order to be truly happy, you have to help others become happy too.

[wolfgang]

The ego is an illusion. Being a separate identity is fake. You can't have a war with it because it doesn't exist. Only the ego can fight itself.

Try to find yourself as you think you are, look for this thing called an ego. Can you really find it and point to it in any way? As this separate self we think we are? No we can't. It is always involved as part of everything else, of being in experience. It's duality itself. The ego is what mutually arises as the experience of duality. The duality of me and everything else. Transcending is realizing that it's a duality perception system. That illusion doesn't go away if transcended either. We just know that it's an illusion and don't buy into it in an addictive way any more.

[wolfgang]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Interestingly, someone from Oprah contacted me a few weeks ago, asking if I'd be interested in helping to teach Tolle's material via their webcasts. I turned them down though. I'm sure they'll find plenty of people who can do that sort of thing; it's not a role I need to fill personally.

WHAT?!! I don't understand this. Why would they want you to teach Tolle's stuff? What connection did they think you had to that. Is this really true? If so you made a big mistake not going. Were they going to put you at the table with Tolle and Oprah for the webcasts? That sounds really weird, why would they do that for a Tolle class? What would you have to offer unless they were trying to make it not just Tolle? And how didd they perceive you as a Tolle contemporary? I could see Deepak or the like but... Or were they just wanting to put you on skype for a bit? Strange, something doesn't make sense here.

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by wolfgang

WHAT?!! I don't understand this. Why would they want you to teach Tolle's stuff? What connection did they think you had to that. Is this really true? If so you made a big mistake not going. Were they going to put you at the table with Tolle and Oprah for the webcasts? That sounds really weird, why would they do that for a Tolle class? What would you have to offer unless they were trying to make it not just Tolle? And how didd they perceive you as a Tolle contemporary? I could see Deepak or the like but... Or were they just wanting to put you on skype for a bit? Strange, something doesn't make sense here.

They probably found me via the web or a personal referral. Lots of people in this field know about my website, so the fact they contacted me didn't surprise me. People contact me with interesting offers every week. One of my articles ranks in the top 10 for a Google search on "power of now," so that would have been one possible connection to Tolle.

I think they were looking to recruit additional trainers to help teach Tolle's material. Teaching someone else's material is the wrong path for me though. They'll surely find someone else who can do a good job as a Tolle trainer. That isn't the best way for me to help people.

I really didn't care what exposure or money was involved -- if the path is wrong, it doesn't matter if it's paved in gold.

[The Synchronicity Expert]

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

[wolfgang]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

They probably found me via the web or a personal referral. Lots of people in this field know about my website, so the fact they contacted me didn't surprise me. People contact me with interesting offers every week. One of my articles ranks in the top 10 for a Google search on "power of now," so that would have been one possible connection to Tolle.

I think they were looking to recruit additional trainers to help teach Tolle's material. Teaching someone else's material is the wrong path for me though. They'll surely find someone else who can do a good job as a Tolle trainer. That isn't the best way for me to help people.

I really didn't care what exposure or money was involved -- if the path is wrong, it doesn't matter if it's paved in gold.

I see. Too bad it wasn't part of your path - I think it would be cool if you got exposure that fit your path. Close.

I think they are off their rocker to try to find someone to teach Tolle stuff. It seems that isn't in keeping with Tolle's work either. I mean his ideas have to do with dispelling masters and apprentice and gurus and that there is only one way. I'd hate to see some multilevel hierarchy around these ideas. That would be back to having an ego structure to try to deliver a message about dispelling the ego.

And, Steve, your blog is saying the ego is good. No need to kill it. Well, that's a definition. The ego gets defined many ways. The ego as defined as what causes separation and being stuck in duality, is the part that drops away. We don't have to fight anything, since it's really a mis-perception to think or identify with that part of us that thinks we are separate. The more we fight that, the more the ego of separation gets fed. It is actually the ego doing the fighting if there's a fight about it.

What happened to SR? Isn't SR the view that our identity is not our little ego? That we are actually everything in our sphere of being (and more). And so in a way you are saying with SR to let go of the ego too? You are part of the war on ego by having a SR concept.

[Alexmm]

I see what you are trying to say in this post, but I was wanting a more specific definition of ego in the sense that you were talking about ego in the post. This post reminded me of something in the teachings of Arten, Pursah, and Gary Renard. On the CD set Secrets of the Immortal by Gary Renard he specifically talks about how some people teach that you should just become friends with your ego. And he says that is perfectly fine to become friends with the ego, but only if you want to stay stuck here. And when everything is going fine, staying stuck here doesn’t seem all that bad, but when the crap hits the fan, as it always does eventually in this dualistic world, getting out becomes very appealing. And to get out requires undoing the ego (undoing the unconscious ontological guilt as it is described in A Course in Miracles). I suppose it’s all about perspective and objective though. And it is also all about what level you are talking about, mind or matter.

[andyoyo]

Good read, I don't really care what happens to the body of people to be honest. If the body of people wants to see me as a parasite, that's cool. Go ahead, resistance will help me more anyways. I don't see whats so bad about cancer in the body, its time for this world to end imo, good run I guess didn't accomplish much except maybe imaginative outlets.

Hey so no April Fool's post? Lame.

[ZeeZoy]

I find this post rather interesting because Eckhart Tolle has cautioned people against discussing his work.

Is this because the work is rather useless and once people discuss this they will figure this out?

Or is it because everyone will interpret his work according to his or her own need and that interpretation may be different than the next person's interpretation?