the ego. (read this)

[zen_tiger_claw]

two people have been living in you all your life. one is the ego, garrolous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whos still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to.

... you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide. because he or she knows you through and through, since he ir she IS you, your guide can help you, with increasing clarity and humor, negotiate all the difficulties of your thoughts and emotions...
the more often you listen to this wise guide, the more easily you will be able to change your negative moods yourself, see through them, and even laugh at them for the absurd dramas and rediculous illusions that they are...
the more you listen, the more guidence you will recieve. if you follow the voice of your wise guide... and let the ego fall silent, you come to experience that presence of wisdom and joy and bliss that you really are.

...continued...
V V

[zen_tiger_claw]

so ego, then, is the absence of the true knowledge of who we really are, together with it's result: a doomed clutching on, at all costs, to a clobbed together and makeshift image of ourselves, an inevitabily chameleon charlatan self that keeps changing and has to, to keep alive the fiction of its existance...
Ego is then defined as incessant movements of grasping at a delusory notion of "I" and "mine", self and other, and all the concepts, ideas, desires, and activity that will sustain that false construction... the fact that we need to grasp at all and go on and on grasping shows that in the depths of our being we know that the self does not inherently exist...
{the ego's greatest triumph} is to inveigle us into believing its best interests are our best interests, and even into identifying our very survival on it's own. this is a savage irony, considering that ego and its grasping are at the root of all our suffering. yet ego is so convincing, and we have been its dupe for so long, that the thought that we might ever become egoless terrifies us.

[Bon]

Good post(s)! :)

Whereabouts in Australia are you and what style(s) do you study?

[YODA]

Good stuff ZTC :D

Silencing the Ego and maing friends with your higher self is a valuable task - perhaps the most valuable task of all. It's no easy task though - I've been working on it for some years now - I've had some measure of success but that Ego is a tough cookie! Still - the small glimpses of "what is" spur me onwards!

[pgm316]

I always wondered what that other voice in my head was! :D

, good posts :)

[Solane]

Yoda try being nice to your EGO rather than putting it in a head lock. :)

[YODA]

A good book that deals with this very well is "Feel the Fear & Do It Anyway" by Susan Jeffers. She calls it "The Chatterbox" and has some good tools to deal with it.

[zen_tiger_claw]

i live in NSW and train in tiger claw kung fu and boxing. i also study eastern phillosophy.

try not to "put" the ego away as sutch. if you humble yourselves to even the ground you walk on, then the image of 'self' will dissapear.

strive for your real body, your origional mind. this mind has no form or characteristics, no cause or effect, no tendons or bones. it's like space. you can't hold it. it's not the mind of materialists or nihilists.
no one else-no mortal, no deluded being, can fathom it.

[chapskins]

I've in the past thought that the in brackets EGO was something to be like whipped into submision, not so, i take the veiw that it's more like an old way of habitually being, being pressent in all that we do old habits of being lessen :)

[woodrow]

Did you know that he concept of ego was developed by Sigmund Freud?

Did you know that Sigmund Freud was a cocaine user?

When have you ever heard of a cocaine user being listened to in your entire life?

Why do people base an entire "medical discipline" on the ravings of a cocaine user?

Did you ever wonder, would people purposely lie to you about things so that you cannot progress in life? Like telling you that the theories of a cocaine user were a good thing to base your ideas about life on?

[Sandus]

Did you know that he concept of ego was developed by Sigmund Freud?

Did you know that Sigmund Freud was a cocaine user?

When have you ever heard of a cocaine user being listened to in your entire life?

Why do people base an entire "medical discipline" on the ravings of a cocaine user?

Did you ever wonder, would people purposely lie to you about things so that you cannot progress in life? Like telling you that the theories of a cocaine user were a good thing to base your ideas about life on?

Did you know that Freud's theories have been subjected to a substanial number of case studies and experiments in an attempt to verify them and are often found pretty reliable?

Did you know that lots of people use(d) cocaine and are still considered intelligent people with valuable contributions to society?

Don't get on somebody just because you have a bias against his lifestyle. I'd be much more convinced if you could give me evidence against Freud's theories. Otherwise, I'll take the hundred plus years of support given to Freud's theories vs. the implication that cocaine users are liars and fools.

[YODA]

Did you know that he concept of ego was developed by Sigmund Freud?


That's like saying Franklin invented electricity.

[chapskins]

That's like saying Franklin invented electricity.
Could'ny have put it better myself, mentioning of ego has been around a whole lot long the freud,any Taoists in da house?