The Christian Church has hitherto. . . [recognized] Christ as the one and only God-man.
But the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the third Divine Person, in man, brings about a Christification of many, and the question then arises whether these many are all complete God-men. . . .
It is well to remind ourselves of St. Paul and his split consciousness: on one side he felt he was the apostle directly called and enlightened by God, and, on the other side, a sinful man who could not pluck out the “thorn in the flesh” and rid himself of the Satanic angel who plagued him.
That is to say even the enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries, who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms of the earth and vast as the sky.
~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 470.
Showing posts with label ego. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ego. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
Saturday, October 29, 2016
One Great Dream of a Single Dreamer
by Paul Levy
The Buddha, which literally means “the awakened one,” said “My form appeared like a dream to sentient beings who are like a dream. I taught them dreamlike teaching to attain dreamlike enlightenment.” When we begin to awaken to the dreamlike nature of reality, we realize we are all characters in each other’s dream. Like reflections in a mirror, we are all interconnected aspects of each other’s being. To recognize the dreamlike nature of our situation is to recognize that we don’t exist as isolated entities separate from the universe, but rather, as relational beings who only exist relative to each other. We are all related, parts of a greater family, the living multifaceted expression of a singular divine being. When we begin to awaken to the dreamlike nature of the universe we realize that the “dream ego,” which is who we’ve been imagining we are is only an un-reflected upon and assumed model of who we are and is not who we really are, but is itself being dreamed by a deeper part of ourselves.
There is a deeper Self which is dreaming us. Like emanations of a meditating Buddha, we are the dream of something deeper, what I call the “deeper, dreaming Self,” which is who we really are. There’s only one deeper, dreaming Self and it is dreaming the whole universe. We are its dream. The deeper, dreaming Self expresses itself through and is not separate from the forms of the dream; we are simultaneously the dreamed and the dreamer. In the words of the German philosopher Schopenhauer, “one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too.” The deeper, dreaming Self is having a dream, and we are it!
Waking up to our identity with the deeper, dreaming Self, we snap out of the self-perpetuating, egoic delusion that we exist in a way in which we simply, in reality, do not. The question then becomes: how do we best serve who we have now discovered ourselves to be? How does the deeper, dreaming Self which is dreaming us want us to dream itself into incarnation? How does the dream itself want to unfold through us?
People who are imagining that if they became lucid in the dream they would become a billionaire, or lose twenty pounds, or something of that nature are still caught in the dream of ego which imagines itself its own master. They are still attached to, animating and monopolizing a deluded identity of being the commander-in-chief, the one in charge, which is the ultimate power trip. Trying to manipulate the dream is a compensation for and expression of the fear of the separate self. In attempting to control the dream, one is still acting out of an assumed reference point where one imagines oneself to be an objectively existing entity whose situation is seemingly binding and problematic and whose agency is apparently separate from the whole.
Both the dreams of our ego and the dream of the deeper, dreaming Self, when invested with our attention, can materialize in, as and through our lives. The difference is that when we dream up our egoic fantasy into reality, it doesn’t ultimately alleviate our suffering, but rather, reinforces it. When we are the vessel for the dream of the deeper, dreaming Self to incarnate, however, we have gotten out of our own way and become an instrument serving the whole. The energetic expression of this realization is compassion, the hallmark of lucidity. The whole universe, which we are a part of and not apart from, heals itself in the process.
Awakening in and embracing the dream, instead of trying to strategize and control the dream, we can get in phase with each other, I imagine, and co-operatively offer ourselves in service to the highest intent of the deeper, dreaming Self, whatever that may be. Our awakening is always a mutual and reciprocally shared co-awakening due to our infinite interconnectedness. Moved by something greater than our imagined self, we become an instrument of something much vaster than our own limited version of ourselves. Recognizing the dreamlike nature is the very act which empowers us to become in-sync lucid dreamers who can change the world. To quote an indigenous elder, one who is fluent in the dreamtime, “There’s a dream dreaming us, and we must get back to that dream, and the vision, the power, and the energies at the disposal of man’s dreaming self will help us to win the battle.”
The Buddha, which literally means “the awakened one,” said “My form appeared like a dream to sentient beings who are like a dream. I taught them dreamlike teaching to attain dreamlike enlightenment.” When we begin to awaken to the dreamlike nature of reality, we realize we are all characters in each other’s dream. Like reflections in a mirror, we are all interconnected aspects of each other’s being. To recognize the dreamlike nature of our situation is to recognize that we don’t exist as isolated entities separate from the universe, but rather, as relational beings who only exist relative to each other. We are all related, parts of a greater family, the living multifaceted expression of a singular divine being. When we begin to awaken to the dreamlike nature of the universe we realize that the “dream ego,” which is who we’ve been imagining we are is only an un-reflected upon and assumed model of who we are and is not who we really are, but is itself being dreamed by a deeper part of ourselves.
There is a deeper Self which is dreaming us. Like emanations of a meditating Buddha, we are the dream of something deeper, what I call the “deeper, dreaming Self,” which is who we really are. There’s only one deeper, dreaming Self and it is dreaming the whole universe. We are its dream. The deeper, dreaming Self expresses itself through and is not separate from the forms of the dream; we are simultaneously the dreamed and the dreamer. In the words of the German philosopher Schopenhauer, “one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too.” The deeper, dreaming Self is having a dream, and we are it!
Waking up to our identity with the deeper, dreaming Self, we snap out of the self-perpetuating, egoic delusion that we exist in a way in which we simply, in reality, do not. The question then becomes: how do we best serve who we have now discovered ourselves to be? How does the deeper, dreaming Self which is dreaming us want us to dream itself into incarnation? How does the dream itself want to unfold through us?
People who are imagining that if they became lucid in the dream they would become a billionaire, or lose twenty pounds, or something of that nature are still caught in the dream of ego which imagines itself its own master. They are still attached to, animating and monopolizing a deluded identity of being the commander-in-chief, the one in charge, which is the ultimate power trip. Trying to manipulate the dream is a compensation for and expression of the fear of the separate self. In attempting to control the dream, one is still acting out of an assumed reference point where one imagines oneself to be an objectively existing entity whose situation is seemingly binding and problematic and whose agency is apparently separate from the whole.
Both the dreams of our ego and the dream of the deeper, dreaming Self, when invested with our attention, can materialize in, as and through our lives. The difference is that when we dream up our egoic fantasy into reality, it doesn’t ultimately alleviate our suffering, but rather, reinforces it. When we are the vessel for the dream of the deeper, dreaming Self to incarnate, however, we have gotten out of our own way and become an instrument serving the whole. The energetic expression of this realization is compassion, the hallmark of lucidity. The whole universe, which we are a part of and not apart from, heals itself in the process.
Awakening in and embracing the dream, instead of trying to strategize and control the dream, we can get in phase with each other, I imagine, and co-operatively offer ourselves in service to the highest intent of the deeper, dreaming Self, whatever that may be. Our awakening is always a mutual and reciprocally shared co-awakening due to our infinite interconnectedness. Moved by something greater than our imagined self, we become an instrument of something much vaster than our own limited version of ourselves. Recognizing the dreamlike nature is the very act which empowers us to become in-sync lucid dreamers who can change the world. To quote an indigenous elder, one who is fluent in the dreamtime, “There’s a dream dreaming us, and we must get back to that dream, and the vision, the power, and the energies at the disposal of man’s dreaming self will help us to win the battle.”
Sunday, February 15, 2015
The Ego and the Universe: Alan Watts on Becoming Who You Really Are
The cause of and cure for the illusion of separateness that keeps us from embracing the richness of life.
During the 1950s and 1960s, British philosopher and writer Alan Watts began popularizing Eastern philosophy in the West, offering a wholly different perspective on inner wholeness in the age of anxiety and what it really means to live a life of purpose. We owe much of today’s mainstream adoption of practices like yoga and meditation to Watts’s influence. His 1966 masterwork The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (public library) builds upon his indispensable earlier work as Watts argues with equal parts conviction and compassion that “the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East.” He explores the cause and cure of that illusion in a way that flows from profound unease as we confront our cultural conditioning into a deep sense of lightness as we surrender to the comforting mystery and interconnectedness of the universe.
Envisioned as a packet of essential advice a parent might hand down to his child on the brink of adulthood as initiation into the central mystery of life, this existential manual is rooted in what Watts calls “a cross-fertilization of Western science with an Eastern intuition.”
Full essay at: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/01/27/alan-watts-taboo/
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