You eat what you are?

So much more to us than meets the eye...

This was inspired by the recent debate (over on Elephant Journal, where I'm a regular columnist) on garlic. If you missed that, and would like to ‘catch up’, you can follow the links at the foot of this piece.

To cut a long story short: someone said that garlic is bad for meditation (he went so far as to call it a ‘brain toxin’). A lot of people were pretty upset about it; someone else wrote an article refuting their claims, and extolling the health benefits of garlic; then there was a refutation to the refutation, and so on.

Here’s what I think:
Garlic is toxic, but not to the brain – to our higher, subtle awareness. That awareness is not brain centered, although most people think it is.

SELF-AWARENESS

The purpose of life.

We all know that moment of bliss, where our ego melts away and all that is left is a feeling of absolute unity, complete perfection, perfect love. We all know it, because it's in all of us - it's our nature; our essence.
The real question is - how to expand that moment until it becomes our primary experience, rather than just a fleeting, occasional glimpse...?

EGO 2 - don't fight it!

Ok, so in the first article on ego (EGO 1) I said that the ego is not real. I said that ego is really an illusion. I also said that "much of the spiritual 'work' that many people do and have done for many years, is almost a waste of time."

I have to qualify my statement that the ego is not real. So first, I need to speak about reality:


Reality is subjective. But it's also absolute!
What do I mean?
I mean that there is a subjective reality, and an absolute reality.
Two people experience one event and remember differently what happened - memory is subjective. But it doesn't mean that two different things happened does it? It means that in reality, experience is subjective.
The reason for this subjectivity is that we don't experience reality as it is - we filter it. We have a filter between the world and our brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). It literally filters the information that comes to us from the outside world.


If you have never heard of a car called a Saab before, then you don't see Saabs. As soon as you hear of it - as soon as it enters your awareness, you begin to see them!
How is this possible? One minute (in your experience) the car doesn't exist - the next minute they're everywhere!!...

EGO 1 - What is ego?

I want to talk about ego, and whether or not it is real. This will be a series of articles. First, we'll discuss 'What Is Ego?'
In the next article we'll talk about the implications - namely, that much of the spiritual 'work' that many people do and have done (including myself) for many years, is almost a waste of time.
It's a complex subject, so I will try to keep it as simple as I possibly can. I also want to keep it interesting, so that you stay with me to the end!


The reason I want to write about this now is that I see so many people struggling with what they think is ego - so many people get caught up in the idea that we have an ego, and that we have to 'conquer' it, and that it's difficult. This is simply giving power to the thing which they think are fighting with!
My belief is that the ego is nothing. It doesn't exist. It's not real. It's just a mistaken belief that we get caught up in, and because we get caught up in it, we fight it, and the more we fight it, the more real it seems... like being caught in a net - the more you struggle, the more you get caught up...