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thoughts?

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Icelander said:
I don't see the "ego" the way you describe it.  I did many years ago however.  Now I prefer the term "personality structure".  This structure is what I call "me", whatever it is that interacts with my environment internal and external. It's simplistic but it works well.

I see it an a repository of all things that I would term good, bad, or neutral. It is a convenient creation of my brain for survival in my particular environment and that's about it.

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Pretty much what I was getting at

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FishOilTheKid said:

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thoughts?

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Although I understand your view and agree that along with much of the new age talk about the ego can offend one's intellect...  But there is something very real here about the structure of our minds that is rarely addressed.  Ego death and the collapse of the ego are very real.

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The Chronic said:


Questioner:"How is the ego to be destroyed?"

Ramana Maharshi: "Hold the ego first and then ask how it is to be destroyed. Who asks the question? It is the ego. This question is a sure way to cherish the ego and not to kill it. If you seek the ego you will find that it does not exist. That is the way to destroy it."

Ramana also used the analogy of a thief dressing up as a policeman pretending to try & catch the thief that is himself.

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+100 points for bringing Ramana Maharshi into this.

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The Chronic said:


Questioner:"How is the ego to be destroyed?"

Ramana Maharshi: "Hold the ego first and then ask how it is to be destroyed. Who asks the question? It is the ego. This question is a sure way to cherish the ego and not to kill it. If you seek the ego you will find that it does not exist. That is the way to destroy it."

Ramana also used the analogy of a thief dressing up as a policeman pretending to try & catch the thief that is himself.

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I'm out of questions.

yeah i don't think it really exists

it's just a convenient figure of speech for communicating, though sometimes this becomes internalized and stengthens the illusion of there being an ego i think

if there was an ego, how could it be gotten rid of? you can't actually destroy something, you would have to break it into pieces, and where would those pieces go? something 'in existence' can't travel to 'not existence', there's always conservation of energy. so ego is not like structure, it's just a confused misperception, like misperceiving a mirage in a desert. it seems real so long as it appears, but upon analysis it's never really been there.

and of course, a quote from the diamond sutra!

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The Illusion of Ego

Subhuti, what do you think? Let no one say the Tathagata cherishes the idea: I must liberate all living beings. Allow no such thought, Subhuti. Wherefore? Because in reality there are no living beings to be liberated by the Tathagata. If there were living beings for the Tathagata to liberate, He would partake in the idea of selfhood, personality entity, and separate individuality.
Subhuti, though the common people accept egoity as real, the Tathagata declares that ego is not different from non-ego. Subhuti, those whom the Tathagata referred to as "common people" are not really common people; such is merely a name.

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and just as there's no ego for persons, there's also no egos or characteristics for objects and phenomena for the same reason. this is the twofold selflessness of objects and persons, or something

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Icelander said:
When you say all this are you meaning that all material objects are made up of the same stuff and are indistinguishable from each other on the energetic level?

I'm trying to get my head around this.

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LunarEclipse said:
I tuned out at the part where the ego doesn't exist.

Well sure "it" exists.  When one allows one's pride jealousy lust betrayal and misplaced love coupled with OCD that would appear pretty egotistical of me. 

Interesting how the pieces all fit together on that situation yesterday and my ego finally in check as well.  Funny how I basically had it called correctly from the beginning.  My wounded pride drove me to the fall.  It preceded it yet never became healed particularly after getting all scraped up.

But instead of picking myself up and throwing another jab I just laid there a while.  Licking wounds doesn't work put some salt in them and feel the burn.  The ego loves licking.  It hates salt...

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Interesting post, not sure how its relevant though Also don't know why you would "put salt in your own wounds".

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lolwut said:

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LunarEclipse said:
I tuned out at the part where the ego doesn't exist.

Well sure "it" exists.  When one allows one's pride jealousy lust betrayal and misplaced love coupled with OCD that would appear pretty egotistical of me. 

Interesting how the pieces all fit together on that situation yesterday and my ego finally in check as well.  Funny how I basically had it called correctly from the beginning.  My wounded pride drove me to the fall.  It preceded it yet never became healed particularly after getting all scraped up.

But instead of picking myself up and throwing another jab I just laid there a while.  Licking wounds doesn't work put some salt in them and feel the burn.  The ego loves licking.  It hates salt...

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Interesting post, not sure how its relevant though Also don't know why you would "put salt in your own wounds".

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LunarEclipse said:

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lolwut said:

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LunarEclipse said:
I tuned out at the part where the ego doesn't exist.

Well sure "it" exists.  When one allows one's pride jealousy lust betrayal and misplaced love coupled with OCD that would appear pretty egotistical of me. 

Interesting how the pieces all fit together on that situation yesterday and my ego finally in check as well.  Funny how I basically had it called correctly from the beginning.  My wounded pride drove me to the fall.  It preceded it yet never became healed particularly after getting all scraped up.

But instead of picking myself up and throwing another jab I just laid there a while.  Licking wounds doesn't work put some salt in them and feel the burn.  The ego loves licking.  It hates salt...

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Interesting post, not sure how its relevant though Also don't know why you would "put salt in your own wounds".

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Perhaps it's relevant because to me the notion that the ego doesn't exist is laughable.  So my ego tunes out when it reads that sort of thing.  Maybe I misread your thread title or something.

Hmmm why would you want to actually heal your own wounds as opposed to letting them fester?  You got me there.

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deff said:
really all you ever experience is your mind, not the material objects

when you think of a specific object, with it's specific qualities - this is really just a conceptual model - if it's made of any energy it's made of the energy of your own awareness

i'm not saying much about the 'external world' because we never deal with it directly, instead everything (that we deal with) is mind. but what you say is true too and is another way to approach this, that everything is just energy, so where can the qualities and characteristics come from? they must be projections of our mind! so the object itself is empty of the qualities we project, otherwise we wouldn't need to project them. this is why buddhists say everything is like a dream, because it's all mind-generated. we really cannot say much about 'objective reality' as that requires an observer, and an observer is always a subjective experience. even saying something 'exists' requires a mind to perceive its existence, as it requires space and time to hold it, which are really mental experiences not objective measurements i think.

a good way to approach the egolessness of objects is to mentally break them into pieces. does each piece hold its essence? if not, where did the essence come from? its all coming from the mind! the problem is that we are often unaware that our entire mental experience is mind-generated, we assume it's a "real" representation of "out there" - so we don't realize how malleable our experience is (or the fact that it's possible to 'wake up' from the dream of things)

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Good good, I actually understand all that. Of course it begs the question for the curious, "what is actually going on here"   What creates the mind?