My Ego and Everybody thinks they are "the one"

[GentleStrength]

The question I would pose to you is this...

If you could help someone heal themself or provide an insight that would change someone's life in a positive way would you do it even if someone else would get all the recognition and credit for it?

If yes, then your positive intention to help others is more important to you than your ego's desire for adoration/recognition.

If not then your ego will actually restrict how much you can give of yourself depending on the credit you must receive as your "due".

The real tricky part is what happens when you offer advice/ideas to help someone but they see it in a negative way or attack you in response. Can you still at that point feel good about your attempt to help another without needing to try and convince them or force them to accept what you tell them as valid? Accept that their reality is absolutely valid for them and not "wrong" because you believe differently?

Those who don't care about recognition, I believe, have the highest ability to heal/teach/support everyone and raise the vibrational frequency of the world.

My 2 cents

Love and Light

Originally Posted by themaster

We have always been big, we've never been small...

Reminds me of the delightful Marianne Williamson poem, ‘Our Deepest Fear’ from ‘A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles,’

‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves,
who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,

Our presence automatically liberates others.’

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marianne_Williamson

[Orbie]

Another brilliant question ZPF thanks for posting it and being brave to put it out there. The responses, Im sure, have helped many, myself included x

[Internal Queries]

hmmm maybe the entire human collective gets the same message, the same call to evolve and to cause evolution in our species, a prime directive. and then some folks, due to Divine Circumstance, become symbols of that innovative drive to evolve by getting more notice from the collective than is average. we call this "fame" "success" "notoriety", which would be the human collective recognizing and praising itSelf.

just a thought.

Originally Posted by mattie

Reminds me of the delightful Marianne Williamson poem, ‘Our Deepest Fear’ from ‘A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles,’

‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.


Inspiring and yet so true for me personally.

[Perspective]

Originally Posted by ZeroPointField

Ok, I'm gonna take a bit of a risk with this thread and I hope at least some other people are honest enough with themselves to realize maybe they have this issue as well and not think I'm a big jerk. Hopefully?

Actually, I especially respect & trust those who are honest about both their strengths & weaknesses, as you have been.

Originally Posted by ZeroPointField

...Anyway, my point is that I think this is one of the biggest hurdles to spiritual development in general - constantly working to understand and deeply integrate the idea that we are both brilliantly special and completely insignificant in the big scheme of things, WITHOUT either hating ourselves for the bad things or putting ourselves "above" others for the good things.

I've heard that the spiritual cause of bi-polar (either "all good" or " all bad") thinking... is "an extreme expression of our desire to do right & our denial of wrong doing."
Another "thinking distortion" that may contribute to this... is "fallacy of fairness" - which is rooted in truth. When we're born, our survival depends on being "important enough" to be cared for. If others are cared for instead of us, we may be neglected & die. Of course, as adults, we are responsible for our survival & thriving.

Other related thinking distortions that I've been trying to think better about are... taking things personally, jumping to conclusions, over-generalization & always being right.

Anyway, I think our ego gives us necessary illusions that help us have confidence in exploring higher truths, while also keeping us humble.

I agree with you to a point, I too want to be the best "the one" as you put it, and somtimes veiw myself superiour to everyone but also like you said, I know im not. and I hate many aspects of myself deeply. ironicly, one of those things is that i like to think im superiour.

But if you take the two together, they cancel each other out, create the balance, yin and yang.
its not that you always think you ARE the best but by WANTING to be the best, you strive and work to acheive somthing that may benefit others- world healing i think was your example. And if you have a little self satesfaction there then you deserve it.But at the same time as wanting to be/ acting superior, you know you are not, you may have superior knowlage in one area and have acheived something brilliant but you are not the only one and you achknowlage that. you know what you have acheived is not because you are better, but because you worked harder. thus the two are balanced, and in that resepect a little ego is good. it enables progression.
True egotism, I think, is when people truly beleive they are better than others. it exists in people who do not have that doubt, that logic. the ones that do not have the balance, have the yin but not the yang.
So, dont worry about your ego untill you have removed all trace of your own insignificance :-)

ps. this is just my take, no ego here lol

I'm absolutely loving this thread! Hearing everyone talk about both their good and their bad sides - being proud of successes and ok with and honest about flaws. It was a late night and a lucid moment when I posted this, but I don't think it's very often I could have been that honest publicly without the worries about what people think, etc. overpowering the desire to be honest and just speak my truth whatever it is. And yet, here you all are being so honest - HUGE respect for all of you!

I feel cheesy saying all this(my ego I guess, lol), but still. It's easy to forget that I don't think anything every touches me so deeply as hearing or speaking the total, naked truth. Great work! This is TRUE spiritual work in what many of you have said. Awesome!

Alright buddy, the thing about the ego, is like the body, as long as you are here in this form so to will the ego be here with you.

These thoughts are perfectly natural. in fact some may find that the more spiritually adept they become, the more pronounced (or the more aware of it) they become.

You will not subdue it or iradicate it any more than you would the body. the key is in knowing, like the rest of the body, it is a functional mechanism.

The heart pumps blood, the stomach digests food, and the ego produces thought in the form of symbolism.

It is not you.

That little bit of detachment is all you need. Take your awareness and put it on the point of your finger. notice how it comes alive? put that awareness on any point of your body and it comes alive.

The prime misidentification comes about when we mistake our thoughts for being ourselves, in which case we encase them with the majority of our awareness. Thus as we grow older, individuals tend to spend more and more time in their heads than experiencing the incredible sensory stimuli that is constantly flooding us. That is where delusion, anxiety come in. That is when people identify with a belief, because it is a construct of the mind and they believe the mind is them, so strongly that they will kill each other.

So know the mind for what it is. In knowing what it is in its most primitive form you can then step back and see it from another vantage point.

you cant study the car if your busy driving it.

Does that make sense? Yes, if i thought i was my ego,

i would be in jail in a straight jacket on death row for God only knows how many things.

But im not. And neither are you.

What we wish to do then, is having that vantage point, and having familiarized ourselves with the way in which the mind functions, we train it to behave in accordance with not belief, but what we know through direct, mutually observable, direct experience to be absolutley true. Not your "own truth" but rather A few fundamental laws of creation that can be observed in all phenomenon by all people. Things so simple as to be literally hidden in plain sight. The mind is a conditioned mechanism. Wipe out the old ruts in the road, and with understanding, realign it.

In doing so, it becomes more quite by default. It is a science, but one that can be learned. Thats why they say meditation is not enough if it is not unified with insight. That is the process by which through meditation we observe and reafirm to the mind in clear focus what has been learned in terms of a few simple fundamental laws. Impermanence, conditioned existence and things of that nature. Think of these fundamental laws as the key hole, realization as the door, and the ego as the key itself. We shave the key in so that it may fit the keyhole so we may open the door to broader understanding and ultimately....well that highest place we all seek.

We know it, we train it, and the rest takes care of itself.

By the way, i absolutely ROCK.

and so do you partner

thats the ego, thats what it does, dont sweat it. your perfectly healthy and normal.
you absolutely ARE the one. And so am i. the ego only makes the mistake of thinking
it is alone in this perfection as opposed to someone else.

i hoped i didnt go too far off on a tangent. oops

zpf .. what a brilliant thread! and soo brave of you for posting. One of the hardest things is to truly look at 'self' and admit to your own faults (for want of a better word!) - but it's the only way to recognise who and what you're NOT before fully accepting and knowing who you ARE.

there's nothing wrong with wanting to be the best you can be. Providing it's for the right reasons and not to be selfish then that's absolutely fine. Find the true you and BE the person you want to be, working to the very best of your ability.

Namaste
Jue
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