Ego has me convinced that 'I' am a discrete, tangible being, separate from the world around me. But this is illusion. I am the sum total of sensations, feelings and thoughts which have occurred since I was born. I will cease to exist when I die. There is no 'I' separate from these streams of experience. In other words, I am what I have perceived, felt and thought, and those streams of consciousness are rooted in my physical being - they are in fact three aspects of the Tetrahedron: the Physical, Emotional and Intellectual.
What then of will, the very essence of ego?
Will has to do with the fourth node of the Tetrahedron, the Spiritual. In short, will is the movement of the eternal and infinite - or the undefinable - spiritual force within me. Will responds to and interacts with the sensations, feelings and especially the thoughts that are generated in the physical me and in-so-doing shapes the person I become and the types of experiences it will encounter. In other words, will is to some degree self defining.
So how can I even use the word 'I' in this context. This is the dichotomy or contradiction that is ego. Spirit cannot manifest except through what is called 'incarnation' in some traditions. Incarnation occurs in the form of discrete, physical entities. So spirit must take on finite forms in order to exist, but in doing so it never loses its connection to eternal and infinite reality (again, the undefinable from the perspective of 'I'). In other words, spirit does not exist outside its incarnate forms, but the incarnate forms do not limit spirit except in an illusory way.
Does this view lessen my appreciation of self? Not at all. Individuated spirit is God expressing him/er self and experiencing his/er world. God does not exist without the illusion of individuated spirit, which makes each and every one of us a miraculous spark in his/er eternal state of becoming.
Born with the body, ego dies with the body. In fact - and this is an idea I am not able to articulate clearly - ego is a temporal and spatial instance of spirit becoming. And that, quite simply, is our purpose: to become, and to affect others as we become, and to be affected in turn by others, and by our environment. We are each an individuated instance of Universal Spirit becoming. Ego is both essential and illusory. it is who 'I' am on the one hand, and the self-centered reality that limits me to puny individualism on the other.
ReplyDeleteThe great spiritual and religious figures throughout the ages have incarnated or expressed more of the universal spirit than the rest of their fellows. In fact, in the case of Christ, it is believed he made God incarnate and coequal in man.
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