The ego's play of pain and pleasure ~ Atman Nityananda

The ego's play of pain and pleasure

Feeling uneasiness, insatisafcation, a sense of lacking are emotional expressions of the ego (the ego essnetially is desiring) by which the ego can easily drive us towards a pleasurable experience.

It is the main strategy of the ego to make us feel emotionally uncoftable in order to drive us to a pleasurable sensory experience.

The main desire of ego is experience some kind of pleasure or pleasant sensation. It is easier for the ego to impel us seek a pleasurable sensory experience when first makes us feel emotionally 'badly'.

It is the ego that creates the above mentioned emotions (more precesely it is the ego itself that asumes the form of instatsfaction, uneasiness, sense of lacking, etc.) , it is the ego that wants to escape from these emotions, it is the ego that wants to experience some kind of sensory pleasure or pleasant sensation.

The problem is that we identify with the ego and we cannot see cleraly all this play of the ego by which it traps and holds us under its dominion.

Moment to moment vigilance, Self-awareness (being aware of the silent space of awareness), self-observation and desidentification from thoughts, emotions, sensations, impulses is what is needed to dissove the ego.

The ego and its dissolution ~ Atman Nityananda

Medusa symbolizes the multiple ego

The ego and its dissolution

The separate I or ego is a kind of energy (not a thought) that creates the sense that we are the body; in other words that ''the body is me'' or ''the body is what I am''. Identifying with the body we feel and think that as a ''body-me'' we have a heart to feel and a mind to think, imagine, reason, etc.

We identify with the feelings, emotions, sensations, impulses and thoughts in the same way we identify with the body.

The ego is the factor of all identifications. The ego makes us identify with the body, with the psychological functioning and conditioning and the external objects, persons and situations as well.

The central way to dissolve the ego is to disidentify from feelings, emotions, sensations, impulses, thoughts and the ego itself (the sense I'') and identify with the silent space of awareness which is the ever present background of everything that it is manifested in us and all external (sensory) experiences.

The repetition of God's name or a mantra (Japa nama and japa mantra) is perhaps the most effective way (at least for the majority) to maintain the the mind focused and in conscious contact with the silence within, as well as to purify the mind and the heart and dissolve the egoic tendencies which are expressions of the ego itself, (that means that anger, pride or greed are not something differfent from the ego but is the ego itself appearing or assuning the form of pride, greed, lust, etc.).