The ego isn’t a thought or the identification with thoughts
by Atman Nityananda / blog
The ego is neither a thought nor the identification with thoughts but it is what identifies with them and uses the thoughts and imagination to express itself.
The ego is psychic vital energy in the astral body. The egoic energy is essentially desire and its modifications such as greed, avarice, gluttony jealousy, impatience, the likes and dislikes and the negative emotions.
The ego is also the factor that causes all forms of identification, with the most fundamental being identification with the physical body, making us feel and believe that we are the body.
The ego of gluttony for example uses the thoughts and imagination to satisfy its lust for pleasure through the food. Until the desire to be fulfilled, the desire assumes also the form of impatience, anxiety and uneasiness and if something prevents you to get what you want the desire modifies as anger. If the food is not up to ego’s expectations and imagination then desire assumes the form of dislike and dissatisfaction. The same happens with all others desires for pleasure, fame, recognition, power, comfort and possessions etc.
This mechanism of ego’s identification with thoughts and imaginations is unconscious, compulsive and mechanical. Its function doesn’t depend on our will and reason. Ego uses the thoughts and the intelligence of the intellect in order to find the ways and the means to fulfill its desires.
“Of course, we can gradually rid ourselves of this mechanism by developing self-awareness, detachment, and dispassionate self-observation. This involves inquiring into the nature of the ego and desire, understanding how identification occurs, and finding ways to stop the attraction and fascination that thoughts and emotions exert on us to reduce identification. Additionally, we must cultivate self-awareness, increase the sattva guna, and reduce the tamas and rajas gunas in the mind.
The thoughts may be charged up with positive energy (sattva, love…) when we are tuned with our true nature and our mind functions in the sattva guna mode and on the contrary with negative energy when we are identified with the ego and the thoughts are expressed by some egoic tendency, for example from jealousy.
Thoughts are also energy and have the power to create realities, but only when they are fertilized by emotion and we contemplate them from a higher state of consciousness. That’s why when we do positive affirmations (I am peace, for example) and contemplate in these thoughts we must feel what we say and be conscious of the center of our existence. Otherwise they will remain on the mental level.
The ‘secret’ to a plentiful life, a life of harmony, happiness and contentment is to have a sattvic mind free from desires and ego and to live in every moment in conscious contact with our true Self (Consciousness).
🌺 Peace, Love, Harmony
atmannityanada 