[HealerW]

In hindsight, I should have posted this thread in meditation and named it: "When Ego hinders meditation"...

But I'll add a thought or two to try to make more clear the main point of it, which is to clear the debris from one's mind so that proper meditation can occur, or at least, you've made a start to have the right environment.

I said that thoughts are the words of the language(s) that you speak. I mean by this that fundamentally, your thoughts were learned. I love the example of a newborn baby. I have a 2 week old girl. She is lying fast asleep next to me at this moment.

A few minutes ago, she was looking at me and making, as you might imagine, some adorable faces.

When I talk about the concept of thought, I mean those things that come into the mind and vie for your attention as an individual "I". Babies don't "think" in this way. They simply are. They are the love, awareness, and bliss that we all strive to achieve through our meditative practices. They have no concept of an individual I. In fact, when my daughter and I look at each other, eye to eye, I understand a separateness that she doesn't. To her, she and I are one. To her, there is no "out there". At two weeks old, she is all there is.

She knows no language, so she cannot formulate thoughts. She knows no separateness, so she has not encountered her ego.

She is as close to oneness in meditation as she will ever be in her life. This doesn't mean there aren't categories of influences like instincts and reflexes that cause her "sorrows" now and again. But this is the best way I know how to describe the major players (and complications) on meditation.

You and I simple were before thoughts came into our mind by the ego. When Jesus says, I Am, this is what he means. We all are. We just don't realize it because the ego brings separateness.

On a more philosophical level, I believe the ego separates us on planes much higher than the physical. The individual ego gets its start on the fifth plane (four above the physical plane). This is a topic for another thread.