Ego - the origin of fear

The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia and so on.

This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now. You are in the here and now, while your mind is in the future. This creates an anxiety gap and if you are identified with your mind and have lost touch with the power and simplicity of the Now, that anxiety gap will be your constant companion. You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that in only a mind projection – you cannot cope with the future.

Moreover, as long as you are identified with your mind, the ego runs your life. Because of it's phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is also the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.

Now remember that an emotion is the body's reaction to your mind. What message is the body receiving continuously from the ego, the false, mind-made self? "Danger, I am under threat." And what is the emotion generated by this continuous message? "Fear".

Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego's fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life. For example, even such a seemingly trivial and "normal" thing as the compulsive need to be right in an argument and make the other person wrong – defending the mental position with which you have identified – is due to the fear of death. If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this and countless relationships have broken down.

Once you have dis-identified from your mind, whether you are right or wrong makes no difference to your sense of self at all, so the forcefully compulsive and deeply unconscious need to be right, which is a form of violence, will no longer be there. You can state clearly and firmly how you feel or what you think, but there will be no aggressiveness or defensiveness about it. Your sense of self is then derived from a deeper and truer place within yourself, not from the mind.

Watch out for any kind of defensiveness within yourself. What are you defending? An illusory identity , an image in your mind, a fictitious entity? By making this pattern conscious, by witnessing it, you dis-identify from it. In the light of your consciousness, the unconscious pattern will then quickly dissolve. This is the end of all arguments and power games, which are so corrosive to relationships. Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within, and it is available to you now.

The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. The more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering – and free of the egoic mind.

If you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others, if you no longer want to add to the residue of past pain that still lives on in you, then realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life. Whereas before you dwelt in time and only paid brief visits to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and only pay brief visits to past and future when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation.

(Source: http://youtu.be/WlhxujIurCM)

Origin of fear - Jiddu Krishnamurti

Comparison, imitation and conformity are contributors to fear, as they are a meaning of becoming something, which implies the fear of not becoming it.

Click here if you'd like to find the video on the website of the Krishnamurti Foundation India.

Happy Frog

Is spirituality something special?

Q: Do you think spiritually and spiritual people are something special?

A: No, spirituality is all about leading a completely normal life in tune with our inner Self.  There is nothing special about it.  (Mata Amritanandamayi)


Notes:

But what does it mean by “completely normal life.”  One way of looking at it is doing whatever every human being is doing in the normal course of life, but doing it with a different consciousness in harmony with the inner self.  The other way is the Indian spiritual conception of normality.  In this perspective our present ego-centric existence is a state of insanity, madness, abnormality and living in our false self.  Spirituality is the path for rediscovering our true self, become what we are in our essence and recover our perfect sanity and normality in a state of Sahaja, which means effortless case, freedom and joy of living.  So if one says I am not interested in spirituality, he is telling I don’t want to recover my sanity in my soul and remain in a state of madness in my ego.  Can there be a greater madness than this?  When someone said to Osho, “I agree I am ignorant and a little mad.  But I am happy” he replied, “You are telling I am happy with my ignorance and madness.  Your happiness is the happiness of a pig wallowing in its own filth.  You will become a little more wise if you become unhappy with your piggish happiness.”  So brutally true.

Robert Kegan - In Over Our Heads

Dr. Robert Kegan - author of the book "In Over Our Heads" - is a pioneer of human development, perhaps best known for his work on Orders of Consciousness and Subject-Object Theory.

A tremendous amount of cross-cultural evidence shows that various capacities of human beings develop through several distinct stages of psychological maturity. But our culture seems to know almost nothing about human development during adulthood. The fact that human development is a life-long journey can be essential to find solutions for the most pressing global problems. Human development, particularly adult development, is an idea that could change the world.

The "Subject-Object Theory" offers insight into the actual mechanics of transformation, both psychologically and spiritually. Essentially, the subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject of the next stage. The process of "subject becoming object" does not just describe the process of "vertical growth" through psychological stages of consciousness, but also "horizontal growth" through states of spiritual awareness and awakening (e.g. meditation is a practice of making subject into object: witnessing our own subjective minds with non-attached equanimity, experiencing our subjective thoughts, emotions, sensations, and impulses as objects in our awareness, like clouds floating through the empty expanse of the sky). With enough training and practice, the spiritual path ultimately leads us to the point of "Absolute Subjectivity"—that point where we are completely "emptied out" and there is no more subject left to be made into object, and all that remains is the effortless and seamless embrace of nondual awareness.

In Dr. Kegan's work, he outlines Five Orders of Consciousness:

• First Order: Impulsive — Perceives and responds by emotion.
• Second Order: Imperial — Motivated solely by one's desires.
• Third Order: Interpersonal — Defined by the group.
• Fourth Order: Institutional — Self directed, self authoring.
• Fifth Order: Inter-individual — Interpenetration of self systems.

At each step, the subject of the preceding stage becomes the object of the following stage.

• Subjects of the impulsive stage (Order 1) are the individual's impulses and perceptions, whilst its objects are the reflexes.
• Subject of the imperial stage (Order 2) are the individual's needs, interests, and desires, whilst its objects are the individual's impulses and perceptions.
• Subject of the interpersonal stage (Order 3) are interpersonal relationships and mutuality, whilst its objects are the individual's needs, interests, and desires.
• Subject of the institutional stage (Order 4) are the individual's authorship, identity, and ideology, whilst its objects are interpersonal relationships and mutuality.
• Subject of the inter-individual stage (Order 5) is "the interpenetrability of self-systems", whilst its objects are the individual's authorship, identity, and ideology.

Loosely, one can think of ...

• the first and second orders as egocentric (me),
• the third order as ethnocentric (us),
• the fourth and fifth orders as worldcentric (all of us).

If one grows from egocentric to ethnocentric, one doesn't stop caring about oneself, but that care and concern is now extended to one's family, community, nation, and so on. Likewise with the growth from ethnocentric to worldcentric, that care is now extended to all people regardless of race, class, creed, gender, etc.

One of the most complete ways to illustrate how levels of developmental complexity exist in the subjective, intersubjective, objective, and interobjective aspects of reality is the diagram:

The Five Orders of Consciousness exist in the intentional (I) quadrant, but their influence permeates the behavioral (it), cultural (we), and social (its) quadrants. Likewise, those domains can influence the speed at which one does or does not evolve through the Five Orders.

(information and inspiration from http://integrallife.com/ken-wilber-dialogues/over-our-heads)

A real seeker after truth...

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Heile dich selbst und heile die Welt

Click here if you'd like to find the video on YouTube.