The Ego and Nondual Meditation
The beginning of a dialog… with you.
Introduction
Hey everybody. So I wanted to make this incredibly beautiful video for you, but my setup didn’t want me to set that up today. So I’m just making this video for you. The topic today that I wanted to talk about is, no self or the role of the self with a small s, or the role of the ego in non-dual meditation. And I want to do this as a dialogue. So I’m going to do this very short video, like Less than five minutes, and then let’s see what your questions are. And then I’ll make another video, maybe with a different setup or maybe with the same setup that answers your questions so that we can have a kind of a video dialogue going here. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Woo.
Confusing and Unhelpful Ideas about the Ego
So there’s a lot of confusion and a lot of, I think, unhelpful ideas and maybe even ideas that are leading people astray and things that just cause more confusion than clarity around the idea of the ego. And so let’s just talk about this from my viewpoint and a practice viewpoint that’s coming from traditions like Nondual Shaiva Tantra or Mahamudra or Dzogchen, rather than other traditions, because this is not a monolithic way of working. It’s not like there’s just one view about this. Yeah, I think there can be this way of talking that comes from some of the traditions that the ego is a total fantasy. It is non-existent and therefore it kind of must be seen through or even like destroyed or like chopped down and that somehow you’re going to then go forward into the world without an ego. And, you know, we’ll let those traditions talk for themselves, but I don’t see it this way.
The Ego Is a Construction, Not an Essence
Yes, of course, the ego is a construction. Yes, we even watch it being constructed in people developmentally from the time they’re a little child. You know, if you have your own children or someday when you do have children, you will, if that occurs, you will see them in the process of ego formation. It’s a thing that we build over time. So it’s obviously a construction. It is not some kind of essence. Even though people, you know, you will see with children that they do kind of come with sort of a personality already installed. There is some of that there. But over time, you know, developmentally, we build this thing called the ego and add layers of ego on over time. And so yes, it’s a construction and we can see through that construction and we can see that, oh, whatever the greater, let’s say, awareness or whatever the greater organism or whatever the greater experience was that was, you know, kind of the framework, even the groundless ground for building that ego is the actual identity, if we want to call it that, non-identity or whatever. But that’s where we really exist. And the ego is like our, you know, persona, our mask that we use to navigate the world of human society. And of course, the necessary twin of the ego is the shadow, all the stuff that doesn doesn’t help us navigate society or that gets in the way. But, and is somehow inappropriate. It doesn’t have to be negative, difficult stuff. It’s just things that society doesn’t want to deal with, gets put into kind of the other bin called the shadow. But in any case, so we see that we have this structure of thought and feeling and body sensation and apparent location and all that that we can call an ego. And it can often sound like we’re supposed to get rid of that or destroy it or that it’s the enemy or that somehow it is a bad thing. And you know, of course, in meditation retreat, in deep meditation, sometimes in other experiences, through trauma, through car accidents, through drugs, through all kinds of things, we can have the experience of the ego not being there for a while, you know, actually disappearing. And that can be quite a relief. That can be quite pleasant. And, you know, sometimes that’s total, sometimes it’s partial, sometimes it lasts just for a moment, sometimes it lasts for a long time. But that can give us the sense of like, oh, I’m not my ego. And of course, that’s an important realization, right? That’s a very important, you know, you ought to remember that. You ought to remember that I’m not my ego.
Important Roles for the Ego in Everyday Life
But of course, when we then come back to try to deal with people, try to work in society, try to have jobs and relationships and, you know, hobbies and do stuff, there’s an important role for the ego. We need some kind of structure that helps us interact with humans, that helps us, you know, not just come off as like some kind of void zombie. And so egos are really useful and important with a couple of caveats. One, as I was mentioning, it has to be stunningly clear, over over and over again, stunningly clear, I am not my ego. That, and it’s not just intellectually, it’s something you’ve experienced in your bones because otherwise you, what will happen is when the ego starts to either you know, vanish temporarily or be seen through more permanently, we will experience that as death. You know, we will, or like we’re approaching death and we can get really panicky about it because we have our identity in the ego and the ego is dissolving. But once we have the experience, maybe over and over and over again, of the ego either dissolving
The Experience of the Ego Dissolving
totally or dissolving partially or simply being seen through as a construction, being seen through as empty. And that happens over and over again. You recognize nothing bad happened. I didn’t die. I didn’t get annihilated. I didn’t go away. Awareness, experience, Buddha nature, the source, whatever we want to call it, was still completely there and in fact was having a better time than, than we typically do when we’re locked into ego identification, which is a very tight straight jacket and a very narrow, constricted, unpleasant thing if we have it as an identity. It is, in fact, we can see why we might think of it as a bad thing because that’s where all the suffering comes from is trying to take this, you know, absolutely boundless, timeless, centerless awakeness that is spontaneous and joyous and just effulgent with meaning and with creativity and all that and pack it into this little weird, straight jacket, sock puppet thing of ego. And so we want to see through that and we want to see through that deeply and clearly and repeatedly till we no longer identify as this ego being, right? We don’t ever identify as that again. But,
The Ego as a Natural Function
you know, you don’t identify with your liver function very much. You don’t identify with your heart function as a pump, you know, very much, but it’s still important. It’s still doing its job. We want it to do its job, you know, and we don’t want it to just, you know, I don’t need a heart function anymore. I don’t need a liver anymore. Well, yeah, you do. And in the same way, unless you’re just going to sit in a cave, which is fine, some people that’s their lot, that’s their deal in life is to sit in a cave. But most of us, that is not our deal. We were not born into the society to do stuff like that. We’re going to get out there. We’ going to do things with people. We’re going to, you know, make stuff and do stuff and have families and have careers and maybe many careers and many interactions. And for that, not only do we need heart function and liver function, but having ego function going on is fine. It’s necessary. It’s beautiful. But two things again, we can, we, we, we don’t identify as it, at least not in any permanent way. We can temporarily inhabit it, but it’s not who we are. And also when it’s, when it is seen as, you know, continuously arising empty appearance that is this effulgent, exquisite expression of the source, we can to, to use really relative, dualistic language,
We can have a much better ego with fewer crappy edges and so on. And it makes it much easier to, you know, if we’re not in the death grip of this is who I am and this is who I am and this is who I am, you know, we can actually begin to improve our ability to function in the world because we have a much looser, more open, more like, oh, yeah, I’m improving my muscular function by lifting weights or I’m improving my cardiovascular stuff by working out or improving my lung function by doing pranayama or whatever. In the same way, I can improve my ego function in a whole bunch of ways that are no longer threatening because it’s not my identity. It’s just this thing, right? That is arising that helps, that is there for people, that is there for, because we are social beings, you know. So the ego is not something that needs to go away. It’s, I don’t even think, unless you’re alone all the time, I don’t even think it can go away unless you just kind of, you know, pretend to be void all the time or something. It’s, it’s got to arise the minute you start speaking, the minute you start interacting, personality elements are being co-created, you know, it’s a social construction, social co-construction, right?
Recognition of Non-identification Is Awakening
So it’s always going to be there. We just don’t want to believe it’s us. This is the important point. This is like what I would call first level awakening. Don’t believe that’s you. And have a deep, clear, absolutely fundamental experience that sure ego is something that arises within you. Ego is something that beautifully, you know, is the brocade of the shimmering, glowing existence of the creativity of the source. It’s there, but it’s not my identity. That’s what we want to get to or notice or, you know, recognize, to begin our journey of non-dual awakening.
So that’s what I want to say today. Let me know if you have questions about that. Put the questions in the comments and then, if any of those are interesting or I have something to say about them, I’ll make another video. Okay. So, thanks for listening to me rant today about this topic. And hope to hear from you. So, have a great one.
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