The chains that keep you bound to the past are not the actions of another person. They are your own anger, stubbornness, lack of compassion, jealousy and blaming others for your choices. It is not other people that keep you trapped; it is the entitled role of victim that you enjoy wearing. There is a familiarness to pain that you enjoy because you get a payoff from it. When you figure out what that payoff is then you will finally be on the road to freedom.
If you love another person, you have to become a no-self, a nothing. When you love, you have to become a nobody. When you are a nobody, love happens. If you remain somebody, love never happens.One becomes afraid of love, because love opens the inner emptiness.Love is not an effort. If love is an effort, it is not love.It is the same case with the ultimate experience, it happens when you do not make an effort. Then you can simply float with the river to the Ocean.
You need nothing more than the experience you are having right now. It is enough. It is plenty. It is perfect just as it is. It was designed for you, given to you for your experience. All you have to do, and all you have ever had to do is accept this gift. Take it and let it in. Let yourself experience the present moment just as it is. It doesn't get any better than this. This is the simple truth the ego refuses to accept, and it will suffer as long as that is the case.
I don't want it to end, and so, as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end to its “problems” because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my self-image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego.
It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years.Wasn't it, after all, a kind of life?And there were houses, he knew it, that breathed. They carried in their wood and stone, their brick and mortar a kind of ego that was nearly, very nearly, human.
To get the most out of the relationship you are in, it won't be helpful to listen to the ego's stories about it. They will only bring separation and conflict. Essence would tell a different story about your loved one. It would probably be something like: "This person is in my life for me to love to the best of my ability. Let's see what happens if I do that." As Essence, we are here to serve others and serve life. The ego, on the other hand, is all about serving itself.
Deslumbrado y alterado por esa luz, pero también por ser únicamente el doctor Pasavento, quise creer que todo lo que me pasaba era, simple y llanamente, producto de una fuerte resaca. Porque si uno lo pensaba bien, ¿era verosímil que durante toda la noche un médico, sin duda monstruoso, probablemente un neuroquímico del cerebro, me hubiera implantado la memoria de doctor Pasavento?"Doctor Pasavento. Enrique Vila-Matas (Satán Vivo). p. 172.
According to Hugh Thomas, author of 'A History of the World', the greatest medical advance in history has been garbage collection. The greatest psychological advance in history is just around the corner and will also have to do with cleaning up. Cleaning up lies and "coming out of the closet" is getting more attention these days. Some day we will look back on these years of suffocation in bullsh*t in the same way we look back on all the years people lived in, and died from, their garbage.
Few approach Nick the rest of the night, I am the only one brave enough to take him his specially made tea. "Thank you", he said barely glancing up at me."You're welcome", I said waiting for him to look up at me but he won't. I have to force myself to say something before the doubt takes me over. " That guy was wrong, but you should have ignored her to begin with. She would have been humiliated enough by that alone. Your ego got in the way of your judgment." I said before walking away proudly.
Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life’s secrets. It’s the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divided, dualistic, cramped view of things. ‘We are too ego-centered,’ Suzuki tells Cage.’ The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away.
Because it's indeed difficult to portray, in any meaningful depth, another being, his appearance, speech, mentality, without to some degree, and often for quite trifling cause, offending him. The truth seems to be the nobody likes to see himself described as he is, or cares to see exactly set down what he said and did. Well, even i can understand that - because i don't like it myself when I am the sitter not the portraitist: the frailty of egos- and the more accurate the strokes, the greater the resentment.
I always feel when I meet people that I am lower than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon; so I say let me play the buffoon, for you are, every one of you, stupider and lower than I." He longed to revenge himself on every one for his own unseemliness. He suddenly recalled how he had once in the past been asked, "Why do you hate so and so, so much?" And he had answered them, with his shameless impudence, "I'll tell you. He has done me no harm. But I played him a dirty trick, and ever since I have hated him.
[Pascal] was the first and perhaps is still the most effective voice to be raised in warning of the consequences of the enthronement of the human ego in contradistinction to the cross, symbolizing the ego's immolation. How beautiful it all seemed at the time of the Enlightenment, that man triumphant would bring to pass that earthly paradise whose groves of academe would ensure the realization forever of peace, plenty, and beatitude in practice. But what a nightmare of wars, famines, and folly was to result therefrom.
In life there are often moments when the battle is between a relationship that means a lot and a small yet dangerous three letter word 'EGO'. Don't let this devil win and make you a loser. If there are certain things you would rather not loose then you mighty well not loose them. Remember there is always that thin line between ego and self respect. While you are busy nurturing your ego the relations that matter may feel the need for self respect and break away. It's always your decision on who wins. Your Ego or You.
It’s natural to think of one’s own life as a novel (or a movie or a play), and within that narrative we are always the central character. Thoughtful people try to overcome this compulsion, but they usually fail (in fact, trying makes it worse). In a commencement speech at Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace argued that conquering the preoccupation with self is pretty much the whole objective of being alive — but if we are to believe Wallace succeeded at this goal, it must be the darkest success imaginable.
