Ego judges, awareness watches, insight liberates

Ego-centered behaviors

• An urge to judge
• A desire to be right
• Fear of the unknown
• Attachment to an identity
• Attachment to objects or people
• Feeling insecure when attacked
• Feelings of superiority or inferiority
• Tendency to never let go or surrender

Ego judges, awareness watches, insight liberates.

The Ego has no option but to judge. That is its conditioning, its structure its foundation. It’s the accumulation of the past through which we are seeing the present. When we see it this way, we can’t help but compare the present with the past. When we compare, a judgment is inevitable. This is the Ego.

Awareness has no other quality except watching this process of judgment. It has no other purpose. No desire to change what is seen. No desire to stop the process of judgment. It’s only a witness. To witness the present is to reveal the unconscious process of judging, to make it conscious. When the Ego is exposed this way it gives us an insight into its real motives, it’s true desires. This insight is self-knowledge - to know exactly what one is, without any desire to change it.

An insight liberates us because we have stopped wasting our energy in fighting what is and have begun to see. For instance, we realize that we aren’t angry at them, but at our inability to maintain control over our inner environment. That this anger is a way for us to take back what we are losing, inward control. This is Insight. Its nature is to liberate us from a persistent pattern. It does so not by rejecting the pattern, but by accepting it as a part of who we are, for the very first time.

When you are attached to someone, their actions will hurt you, their suffering won’t. When you love someone, their suffering will hurt you, their actions won’t.

Attachment creates expectations from others to act a certain way because their behavior provides us security. This is why a parent often wants their child to obey them. They are often blind to what brings the child true happiness but concerned only with how their actions can cause the parents suffering. “What will society think?”, is far more important than, “What makes you happy?”

With intimate relationships, it’s the same thing. “What are you doing for me?”, as opposed to, “How will you reach your full potential?”, or “How could you leave me?”, instead of “What brings you long-term peace?”

When we aren’t self-reliant for our emotional security, we have no choice but to outsource it to others. When we are in that state, someone or the other soon becomes an attachment.

First, discover the source of security the attachment provides, then, find that security within yourself through self-understanding. The third step is freedom, and it happens on its own when the absurdity of attachment is fully revealed.

However, with all that said, the Ego is not your enemy, it’s your teacher. The goal is not to fight the Ego, only to observe it. Fighting the Ego creates a new form of Ego, which is the spiritual Ego. It’s the pride of having lost your Ego, which is of course, ridiculous. Instead, as we observe our Ego we simply develop a capacity to not carry out the actions it intends to carry out. They seem to appear to create more suffering. And so naturally we stop them.

When I discover how silly it is to be proud of my house, my education, etc, I stop being proud. When I see how my identification with a thing makes me violent in my attempt to defend it, I stop being identified. Because I see that my defensiveness is perceived as aggression by another. So, I dissolve that identification. When all egoistic activities end, fear has ended too. When there is no fear, there is no violence arising out of false defensiveness. Then I can listen to you and understand you. When I understand you, I can respond without being violent.

The world becomes a beautiful place where we can all live and prosper.