In between
One of the main difficulties in dropping the ego is the in between stage. You have understood what the problem is and you practice letting go of your ideas and beliefs. Inevitably you will see changes in your life’s. Since your ego controls your illusionary reality letting go of it and letting the universal intelligence take over will alter your experiences drastically. There will be a feeling of lightness, of more joy, of being in the flow.
But now you are in between worlds. You are not 100% in the world of illusion and ego any more but at the same time you have not transcended your self either. It is a difficult place to be in. You know that your mind is insane but often you cannot stop listening to it. It is still too strong, the programming too deep. You listen to your thoughts, you don’t choose joy, and you do whatever it suggests you to do. Growth is not only an ascending process either. You grow one step then you make three steps back, then another two forward. You have good days when you only listen to your inner voice and bad ones when you only listen to your mind.
You have to be patient and persistent. In our fast food culture nobody wants to invest time any more. Nothing worthwhile comes easy. Whatever you want to achieve, whatever you want to be really good at will take time and effort to learn. When you start to try to escape the illusionary self you might have spent 20-30 years imagining yourself to be a certain person. I do not want to be the bringer of bad news but it will take some time to let go of your ego that has been ruling your life for all that time.
And you will spent quite some time in the in between state. It is important to keep your focus during that time. The ego will try all it can to hold you back, to keep you under its control. Doubt will come up, fear, anger and a feeling of being lost. Don’t get caught in the doubts and the fear. Always focus on what you can find at the end of this process. Freedom! To find freedom you have to look at truth you have to see thing how they really are without your mind projecting unrealities onto them. You will find out that the saying “The truth will set you free” really is true but “but hurts tremendously” should be added to it. We are not allowing ourselves to see things how they really are as long as we are in an illusionary state. We make things look better and shut down emotionally to be able to survive. When you look at the truth you might find out that nothing is what you thought it was. Everything was imagined. Your family is not what you thought it was, your job, your friends, you yourself, everything has to be looked at with truth in mind. Don’t loose your focus; don’t let your ego win. What would you have going back? What does it have to offer? More pain, more suffering more survival?
Trying to transcend the ego is like swimming out into the ocean. At a certain point you do not see land any more. You do not know that where you are going. You do not know if you will find solid ground again. You have to let go of your fears and keep going no matter what. By going back you will survive. But survive for what? To suffer for the rest of your life? You have to be ready to risk your life, as you have known it, risk all you have and keep on swimming in the hope to finding land. At a certain point you will realize there is no land and you have come to far to swim back. You will let go of trying you will let go of wanting to survive, you will stop swimming and you as you have imagined yourself to be will die peacefully with a smile on your face. Your ego that was trying to survive will cease to exist. The real you will blend into the ocean and realize that you had been the ocean all along.
“In Between” Flat Iron Building/Manhattan/New York City 23rd Street and Broadway 01-26-08 at 04:36 PM.
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