The Self and The Ego 2

The Soul is present inside, it does not have to be got from somewhere else. Its springs are hidden inside; only the obstacles in-between, the stones and the soil, have to be removed by digging then the springs of Soul will start appearing.

But one can have a well (which is Soul or Self), and one can have a pond (which is Ego). Making a pond is different. You do not need to look for springs of water to make a pond. The way of making a pond is completely opposite to that of making a well. To make a pond you do not need to dig out stones and soil, you have to bring them from somewhere else and make a wall of them. And when the wall has been built the water does not come by itself, you have to take water from other people's wells and put it in the pond. On the surface a pond gives the illusion of a well. It appears to be a well. You can see water in a pond and you can see water in a well also, but the difference between a pond and a well is the same as the difference between the earth and sky.

The first difference is that a pond has no water of its own. No thirst in this world is quenched by something that is not one's own. Whatever is in a pond is borrowed and soon becomes stale and rotten because that which is borrowed is not alive, it is dead. The water standing in the pond becomes stagnant, rotten and will soon start stinking. But a well has its own water source; the water never becomes stagnant. A well has its own flowing water.

Two different processes are happening with a pond (Ego) and a well (Soul). A pond is afraid that somebody will take its water away because if its water goes, it will become empty. And a well wants someone to take its water so that more fresh water can fill it fresh and more alive. A well calls out, "Take my water, I want to share it!" And a pond calls out, "Keep away! Don't touch my water, don't take my water!" A pond wants somebody who has water to bring it and pour it into it, so its wealth grows. But if somebody has a container, the well wants that person to take some of its water so that it can get rid of the water which has become old and get new water. A well wants to share, a pond wants to collect. A well has streams which are connected to the ocean. A well seems to be small, but deep inside it is connected with the infinite. And howsoever big a pond may look, it has no relation to anyone, it ends in itself and is closed. It has no streams. It has no way of connecting with the infinite.

If somebody goes to the pond and talks about the ocean, the pond will laugh and say, "There is no such thing as an ocean. Everything is a pond. There is no ocean anywhere!" A pond has no idea of the ocean.

But if somebody praises the beauty of the well, then the well will think, "What is mine? Everything comes from the ocean. What am I? Whatever comes to me is connected far away with something else." A well cannot have any 'I' , but a pond has 'I am'. And the interesting thing is that a well is very big and a pond is very small. A well has its own wealth but a pond has no wealth of its own.

Only a wealth which grows more by sharing is really wealth. The quality of wealth is that it should grow by sharing; if it becomes less by sharing then it is not wealth. And someone who is afraid that their wealth will disappear through sharing must take great care of their wealth.

The accumulation of facts and other people's opinions is not a sign of knowledge, it is only a sign of ignorance. A person who is conscious and awake is free of all this 'knowledge'. There is no question of him collecting any more facts he knows himself. With that self-knowledge the mind is not a disturbed hive of honey bees, it is a mirror.

There is no difficulty in throwing away garbage, but there is difficulty in throwing away gold. As long as you feel that your ego is correct, you cannot throw it away and your soul will remain troubled. You may try thousands of ways to calm it but nothing will work because deep down you want the ego to remain because you think it's gold. The greatest difficulties in life arise from the misunderstanding that we think something is which it is not. Then all kinds of troubles arise. If somebody thinks that a stone is a brick of gold then problems start. If somebody realizes that a stone is a stone, then the matter is over.

Man is caught in a universal deception. And when everybody is caught in the same deception, it becomes difficult to see. You have to find out if the clothes of knowledge which you have thought of as clothes are really clothes, or are you standing naked in invisible clothes? You have to test each of your thoughts according to this criterion "Do I know it?"

we have the habit of comparing we even compare small children with each other. We say, "Look, the other child has gone farther than you. You are left behind." We are being unjust to the child because the other child is the other child and this child is this child! There is no possibility of comparing the two. Their beings are totally different. They are completely different in their uniqueness, in their authenticity; they have no relation to each other. We have habits of comparing our educational systems teach comparison, our systems of thought involve comparison. Without comparing we cannot evaluate. And the result is that we do not understand anybody or any thought directly. Many things stand in-between.

If I am standing in front of a rose flower and if I remember the flowers that I saw yesterday, and if I start thinking of how much similarity there is between this flower and those flowers, then the observation of this flower will stop. One thing is certain the shadow of those flowers which come in-between will not let you see this flower. And if I want to see this flower which is in front of me, then I need to forget all those flowers which I have ever seen. To bring them in between will be unjust to this flower. And there is no need to carry the memory of this flower otherwise tomorrow, looking at some other flower, this one may come in-between.

.

The Self and The Ego 1

The Ego is the part of the Self that most people present to the world. The Self whispers while the Ego SHOUTS . When I refer to the "self," I am referring to the "higher self:" , Your soul, Your center. The ego and the Self stand at two opposite ends of our spiritual journey. Our inquiry begins with the ego and culminates in the realization of the Self.

Man is afraid of aloneness. He becomes afraid of aloneness because in aloneness he will find a reflection of his real state, he will come across the reflection of his own face. And it will be very frightening, very scary. So, from getting up in the morning till going to sleep at night, he uses all kinds of methods to escape from himself so that he doesn't have to face himself. He is afraid that he may see himself.

We want to forget the state which is inside; we don't want to see it. It may be possible to convince our mind that something which is not visible is not there but that does not mean that it has gone away. There is no relation between not being visible and being non-existent. If something had been visible then perhaps we could have been able to change it, but as it is not visible, change is not possible. It will go on growing inside like a wound, like an ulcer which we have hidden and do not want to look at.

What people are hiding inside and what they say on the outside are very different. What you see outside on their faces is completely different from what is going on inside them. It is possible that outside they are talking about love but inside they are full of hate. They may be saying to somebody, "Good morning! I am pleased to see you. I am happy that I met you this morning," but inside they are saying, "Why do I have to see the face of this stupid person first thing in the morning?"

The image formed in other people's eyes deceives us and we become afraid to look within. We want to see the image people have of us, not ourselves. What are people saying? We become very interested in knowing what people say about us. There is nothing else behind this curiosity to know. We think we can recognize ourself through the image formed in others' eyes. This is very surprising! Even to know ourself we have to look into another person's eyes.

Man is afraid that people might say something bad about him. He feels happy if people say something good about him because his knowledge of himself depends on their opinion. He doesn't have immediate knowledge of himself; he does not have any direct experience of knowing himself. This experience can happen, but it doesn't because we try to escape from it.

The first thing in encountering the mind is not to bother about what others say or how one appears to others; rather, one has to have a direct encounter with what one essentially is. In one's aloneness one has to open one's mind totally and see what is there.

A young monk lived in a village in Japan. He was very famous, and had great reputation. The whole village loved and respected him. Songs were sung all over the village in his honor. But one day everything changed. A young girl in the village became pregnant and gave birth to a child. When her family asked her whose child it was she said it was the child of the young monk. How long does it take for admirers to become enemies? How long? It does not take even a short while because inside the mind of an admirer condemnation is always hidden. The mind just waits for a chance, and the day admiration ends, condemnation begins. Those people who show respect can change in one minute to being disrespectful. The people who are touching a person's feet can within a moment start cutting the same person's head off. There is no difference between respect and disrespect, they are two faces of the same coin.

The people of the whole village attacked the monk's hut. For a long time they had been showing respect to the monk but now all the anger that they had suppressed came out. Now they had the chance to be disrespectful, so they all ran to the monk's hut and set it on fire and threw the tiny baby at him.

The monk asked, "What is the matter?"

The people shouted, "You are asking us what the matter is? This child is yours! Do we have to tell you what the matter is? Look at your burning house, look within your heart, look at this child and look at this girl. There is no need for us to tell you that this child is yours."

The monk said, "Is it so? Is this child mine?"

The child started crying so he started singing a song to make the child silent, and the people left him sitting by his burnt-out hut. Then he went to beg at his usual time, in the afternoon , but who would give him food today? Today every door he stood in front of was slammed shut. Today a crowd of children and people started walking behind him, teasing him, throwing stones. He reached the house of the girl whose child it was. He said, "I may not get food for myself, but at least give some milk for this child ! I may be at fault, but what is the fault of this poor baby?" The child was crying, the crowd was standing there, and it became unbearable for the girl. She fell at the feet of her father and said, "Forgive me, I lied when I gave the name of the monk. I wanted to save the real father of the child, so I thought of using the name of this monk. I don't even have any acquaintance with him."

The father became nervous. This was a great mistake. He ran out of his house, fell at the feet of the monk and tried to take the baby from him.

The monk asked, "What is the matter?"

The girl's father said," Forgive me, there has been a mistake. The child is not yours." The monk replied, "Is this so? Is the child really not mine?"

Then the people of the village said to him, "You are mad! Why didn't you deny it this morning?" The monk said, "What difference would it have made? The child must belong to somebody. And you had already burnt one hut , you would have just burnt one more. You had enjoyed defaming one person, you would have enjoyed defaming one more. What difference would it make? The child must belong to someone , it could also be mine. So what is the problem? What difference does it make?"

The people said, "Don't you understand that everybody condemned you, insulted you, humiliated you very much?"

The monk answered, "If I had been concerned with your condemnation, I would have been concerned about your respect also. I do as I feel right; you do whatever you feel to be right. Until yesterday you felt it right to respect me so you did. Today you felt it right not to respect me so you didn't. But I am not concerned with either your respect or your disrespect. The people said to him, "Gentleman, you should have realized that you would lose your good reputation."

He replied, "I have dropped this idea of seeking to be good and bad in people eyes. I have dropped all concern in becoming good because the more I tried to become good, the more I found that I became bad. The more I tried to escape from badness, the more I found that goodness was disappearing. I dropped the very idea."

The journey of a seeker is not one of becoming a good man in others eyes ; the journey of a seeker is one of becoming a sage or wise.

.

Handling Guilt or Shame

She had been a stripper, prostitute, drug addict and demon-possessed witch. It was hard to imagine a perversion or Satanic form of depravity she hadn't wallowed in. Two thousand years ago, Christ agonized on a Roman cross, shedding his life-blood for those very sins. She continued in her extreme degradation. Finally, she joined herself to Jesus, by faith trading her wickedness for Christ's holiness. One day Jesus appeared to her and said, ?You are a chaste virgin in my sight.'

None of us have an infallible conscience. In fact, most of our consciences are at times wildly inaccurate. If you want Scriptural proof of this, you'll find plenty.

So when facing guilt feelings, the most important thing is to establish whether your guilt is real or imaginary. Tragically, most people stand guilty before God and are hardly aware of it. They wrongly imagine that if there is a heaven, they have a good chance of going there. On the other hand, there are countless thousands whom God regards as spotlessly pure and innocent, and yet are riddled with guilt feelings.

We must clearly differentiate between deceptive feelings and spiritual reality.

You have every right to feel guilty and fearful before God if:

1. You have not asked God's forgiveness for your sin, trusting Jesus to have paid the full penalty for your sin by dying on the cross for you. Christ alone is capable of the divine miracle needed to wipe out all guilt.

2. You do not want God to take your sins from you. To refuse to be delivered from your pet sin is like a drowning man stubbornly refusing to let his rescuer drag him from the water. If you have no intention of giving up a particular sin, you'll die in that sin. The sins you love are as deadly as the sins you despise.

Everyone who is not trusting Jesus for forgiveness, or does not want a sin-free life, is guilty before the Judge of the universe, regardless of how they feel.

If, however, you have met these two conditions, God's smile is upon you. Any pangs of guilt or fear you suffer are simply an illusion like fearing there's an intruder in the house when it was only the sound of the wind. The feelings might exist, and they might be most unpleasant, but they are groundless. They have no correspondence to reality.

Just to be sure, let's briefly expound these conditions for spiritual cleansing. Then we'll move to some exciting facts.

1. You must believe the Scriptures that teach that Jesus, and only he, can remove your sin. (He alone can pay sin's penalty because he alone has no sins of his own for which he must suffer.)

2. Once you put your faith in God, trusting that he is infinitely wise and good and always has your best interest at heart, [more] the only logical thing is to resolve to follow his leading on every matter, regardless of how scary and costly it may sometimes seem. This is simply a decision. A state of mind. It means that despite some sins still seeming attractive, you decide that God's way is best and sign over to him control of your life. It means refusing to enjoy the ?benefits' of past sin. You will repay money you have stolen, not let people to continue believing a lie you have told, and so on. And it means shunning the hypocrisy of wanting God's forgiveness while refusing to forgive someone else.

Sin's full penalty is death, and the sinless Son of God died for you. Why punish yourself? He's already taken your punishment! Are you morally bankrupt? No way! Paid in full is stamped over your every account. By joining yourself to Jesus, a divine exchange takes place in which Jesus takes your sins upon himself (that's what killed him) and his perfection becomes yours. The holiness of Jesus floods your entire being, flushing out every trace of sin. That makes you spotlessly pure and perfect in God's eyes. Almighty God can embrace you and delight in you as intimately as he does his own eternal, sinless Son. Every whiff of sin is obliterated because Jesus died for your every sin. This central spiritual truth is expounded over and over in Bible. Scripture repeatedly promises this to you, but no where does it say you will feel that it has happened. The whole of Christianity is about choosing to believe spiritual reality instead of your inner feelings.

It is worth prayerfully studying, and even memorizing, the Scriptures listed in the above link, because this is a crucial area of spiritual attack. Just as Jesus was tempted in the wilderness and he overcame by believing and quoting the Scriptures, so you will be tempted over this matter and you can overcome by clinging to the dependable Word of God. Satan will disguise the true nature of the temptation, but it is actually a temptation to believe God is a liar. The Deceiver is trying to fool you into believing that God lied when he said that all your sins are forgiven, when Jesus said that all that come to him he will not cast out, etc. Don't blacken God's name by entertaining such a thought.

No one can be any more guilty than the nicest person

No matter how horrendously evil you might have been, by God's standards, you are no more guilty than anyone else. We were all dead in our sins, says Scripture. You can't get any deader, than dead! Without exception we were all a total write-off.

Relative to each other, some of us seem fairly innocent and some seem very guilty. But this is by our sinful standards. It's like someone who has murdered twenty people feeling superior to someone who killed two hundred people. Perfection is God's only standard. We get just one shot at living a perfect life and we have all blown it. We have all missed the mark. Whether we missed the mark by a millimeter or a kilometer, means nothing. We all missed, and that's all that counts.

On the other hand, when you receive divine forgiveness through Jesus, no one can be more forgiven than you. Although outside of Christ, we all stand condemned, in Christ, we each stand spotlessly pure before the Holy One.

Simple logic suggests that our spiritual enemy, whom Scripture calls the Deceiver and the Accuser, would muster all his evil cunning to distort this simple truth. If the Evil One wanted to keep people from the wonderful forgiveness that Jesus offers, he would try to convince them that they are not bad enough to need forgiveness. Or failing that, he would try persuading them that they are so bad that they cannot be forgiven. Either way, the result is the same. If he utterly lost that battle, and people became Christians, he would then try to get them to feel less sinful than others ? producing bigots, arrogant fools and hypocrites. For those resistant to this attack, he would try the opposite lie, hissing that they are too sinful to be fully blessed by God or be mightily used of God. Either way, it would render them powerless. So it's obviously to the Deceiver's advantage to make you feel that total cleansing is impossible for you. Don't let him get away with such lies.

If, after God has forgiven us, we won't forgive ourselves, we are implying we have a higher sense of justice than the Holy One. Anyone having the impertinence to make such an accusation is on dangerous ground. We are also implying that Jesus is inadequate - that he didn't suffer enough for our sins, or that his sinlessness cannot swallow up our sinfulness. There is no shame in a forgiven person feeling guilty. That is simply the Deceiver at work. For a forgiven person to believe he or she is guilty, however, is a concern.

Enjoy!

Some dear people are so aware of the seriousness of sin that they don't feel it's right that God should let them off scot-free and so they try to punish themselves! The most common self-imposed punishment is to deliberately feel miserable and deny oneself certain legitimate pleasures for a period of time. (This generally includes not allowing themselves the right to enjoy their relationship with God.)

On the surface, it seems a noble thing to punish oneself for sin and it indicates a strong desire to please God. However, it is important to realize that your life is not your own (1 Corinthians 6:19). You're God's child (John 1:12) and you belong to him. The way a parent disciplines his child is solely the parent's concern. Just as it would be wrong for you to interfere and punish someone else's child, so it's wrong for you to play God and try to punish yourself for your own failings.

Some people even punish themselves in the vain hope that it may help to secure their Lord's approval. But this only insults Jesus by implying that his death wasn't sufficient to gain your full forgiveness. Furthermore, believing you can help gain the Lord's approval by punishing yourself, puts yourself in a spiritually dangerous situation. It is vital to your forgiveness that you place your complete faith in Jesus alone. Only Jesus is able to obtain God's approval of you, and so you must place no faith in your own futile attempts to please God.

Unforgiven sin separates us from our Holy God (Isaiah 59:1-2). The sooner this rift is healed, the better. So if you happen to sin, return to God straight away, sincerely ask his forgiveness and trust him for the strength to overcome that sin, so that you will not commit it again. Once God has forgiven you, you are obligated to forgive yourself, because you should have God's attitude towards all things. To refuse to forgive ourselves is to imply we have holier standards than God!

Exciting facts

Let's explore some of the many wonderful word pictures the Bible uses to describe forgiveness. It could prove the most thrilling experience of your life.

Some of these word pictures are from the Old Testament, penned because in God's sight Christ was ?slain before the foundation of the earth' (Revelation 13:8). They were written under the inspiration of Almighty God, who knew how all sin, throughout all human history, would be finally dealt with by his eternal Son.

our sins have been removed / taken away [Scriptures]

If you had a limb surgically removed you might still suffer pain that seems to come from the missing limb. Phantom limb pain is the medical term. You could remember having that limb, but it is gone forever. It could still cause you pain, and yet it is no longer a part of you.

You can also remember your sins. Their presence can seem so real as to actually cause you pain. But despite what you feel, those sins are no longer part of you. They are gone forever. This is an important concept to grasp. Let it soak into the deepest part of you by taking time out to think about it.

In contrast to the removal of a limb, Jesus' removal of your sin does not leave you crippled. On the contrary, it heals you, like the removal of a tumor.

If you had a cancerous tumor, you would be alarmed. But if a surgeon said it had all been removed, you could have peace. You could not personally verify that every trace of cancer had been removed. You would have to take the surgeon's word. Your sins, more deadly than a tumor, have all been removed. The only way you can know this for sure is to take your Savior's word, and that makes it not just more certain than any surgeon's word, but more certain than anything in the universe. Jesus' word has more authority than that of any other being in any world. It is his word that spoke the galaxies into existence. He is truth. He, like no other, is utterly trustworthy. If he says your sins are removed, they are removed!

Your sins have been removed as far as the east is from the west

(Psalm 103:12)

To the Hebrew mind, you could travel east forever and never touch west. You were once in your sin. It was once part of you. But now, God has placed an infinite distance between you and your sins. The memory might still be with you, but the sin itself is no where to be found.

. . . search will be made for Israel's guilt,
but there will be none,
and for the sins of Judah,
but none will be found,
for I will forgive . . .(Jeremiah 50:20)

Your sins have been thrown into the depths of the sea

(Micah 7:18-19)

Almighty God trampled your sins under his feet, thus destroying them, then banished them forever by hurling them into the ocean depths. The Israelites' technology was such that anything below a few meters of water was utterly inaccessible. Anything dropped into the ocean depths was lost forever. No one would ever see it again. That's like what has happened to your sin. It's gone forever.

The Holy Lord has given his word to never remember your sins [Scriptures]

You no longer need try to justify your past, or apportion blame, because it is totally erased from heaven's data banks.

Retaining the blessing

The screams of a tormented conscience can be transformed into contented sighs. I've prepared more for you to ensure this becomes your experience. If your troubled mind is already so soothed that you feel no inclination to read further, that's wonderful. I beg you, however, to copy or print off this page and those listed below, in readiness for when the attack resumes.

The Evil One does not give up easily. No matter how much you feel the matter has been resolved, I assure you, the truths you have just read will gradually fade from your mind and a new round will commence in the fight for your spiritual peace and enjoyment of God.

I also suggest having in readiness many Scriptures on this subject. Mark them in your Bible. You might choose a chain reference system whereby you write next to one verse the Scripture reference to another related verse and keep adding cross references until you are back to the first one. That way, once you find one verse you can find your way to all the rest. I also suggest writing the references in the back of your Bible, displaying some on your wall, and also memorizing some.

.