The Insidious Masks of the Ego
By Filippo Falzoni Gallerani | Feb 1, 2014
… Investment in samsara is futile; it is the cause of every anxiety.
Since worldly involvement is pointless, seek the heart of reality!
In the transcending of mind’s dualities is Supreme vision;
In a still and silent mind is Supreme Meditation;
In spontaneity is Supreme Activity;
And when all hopes and fears have died, the Goal is reached.
Beyond all mental images the mind is naturally clear:
Follow no path to follow the path of the Buddhas;
Employ no technique to gain supreme enlightenment.
Mahamudra, Tilopa
A Little Story of Awakening
A several years ago in India, I had an experience that, although at first sight might seem like a trifling thing, proved to be a memorable teaching.
I think it exemplifies in very simple terms, through a trivial episode of daily life, one of the crucial mechanisms by which the mind deceives us if we do not recognize the difference between thought and actual awareness.
Since the late ’70s, I had spent all my winters in an ashram in India situated in a beautiful valley at the foot of the Himalayas, crossed by a pure stream. There, I met Sri Haidakhan Baba, whom many know simply as Babaji. After he left his body, I continued to spend two or three months there every year.
I do not intend to tell my whole long story; I’ll get right to the comical circumstance that, once again, showed me the deceptions of the ego, which are—as we can see—very common on the path of spiritual seeking.
One evening before bed, I listened for a couple of hours to a recording by Eckhart Tolle, the author of The Power of Now.
Many people know that his teachings—topics I largely agree with—have had great international success. He covers the subject of pure awareness and liberation from the illusion of a separate self. In many ways, he is in line with the message of Jiddu Krishnamurti and Advaita philosophy.
I find figures like Tolle interesting because they are ordinary people who, after periods of neurosis and depression, awakened to a new state of consciousness characterized by bliss and serenity, without particular techniques and without a Guru.
Ramana Maharshi and Sri Aurobindo, for example, seem to us exceptional people with a special destiny, favored by their social and historical contexts. These “new masters,” on the other hand, are ordinary people of our time, living within our culture, without any religious stigmata, who look entirely normal.
In simple words, Tolle was speaking of “awareness beyond all thoughts” and total immersion in the here and now, in a way I appreciated.
Listening to Tolle that night, I remembered the experiments I did as a boy: trying to remain conscious during dreams, or cultivating mind control by focusing attention on every movement, much like the conscious walking of Zen. As they say: “When walking, just walk,” and other similar things.
In those days in India, I was in a very clear and peaceful state of mind. I was feeling really at home, and the environment made it very easy to live in the here and now without any mental conflict. I used to spend many hours a day in meditation, studying the best Indian philosophers, or translating Upanishads, and so on.
But that night, I decided that it could still be “good for me” to intentionally apply the practice of attention that Tolle suggested, with an ongoing commitment for the following hours.
When I turned off the light, I consciously moved from wakefulness to sleep.
As I had promised myself, a certain presence remained in the background of my sleep. I woke up at 3:29 AM (one minute before the alarm clock), feeling that I had been aware of dreamless sleep.
I got out of bed with the intention to keep doing my best in practicing mindfulness.
I put a special awareness into every movement: awareness of the toothpaste carefully spread on the toothbrush, the coffee pot filled without spilling a grain of coffee, the gas stove lit with the first piezoelectric spark, and then the conscious feeling of every sip of the steaming black drink.
It is ten minutes to four o’clock, and I go out into the starry night and walk—a conscious walk—through the mango grove, past the nine temples and the dhuni, and down the stairs that lead to the rocky bed of the river, attentive to every step, every sound, and every feeling.
The moon and the stars are reflected on the surface of the pool created by the dam of stones I had built in previous days.
I take off the jacket, the heavy wool kurta, the two sweaters, the t-shirt, and the woolen tights and pants, all necessary in these cold days of January.
Every gesture is tasted with awareness. I carefully put my clothes neatly folded so I can wear them quickly and not get cold after my bath, making sure not to get stuck in an inverted sleeve or swap the front and back of a sweater.
I’m paying attention to everything and I am very concentrated. Now I am naked in the chilly night, ready to dive into the crystalline waters of the Ganga.
A biting wind from the North enters the valley just as I’m about to dive into the deep pool… and here… I realize with amazement that for the first time in thirty years, I forgot to bring my bathrobe with me!!!
The bathrobe is the hardest thing to forget because we always remember that, just out of the cold water, having something dry is fundamental.
The funny thing is that I forgot it on the very day I had committed more than ever to cultivating attention!
In trying to “live in the present,” I left out the most important thing, and, by searching, I lost touch with the present that is actually always and already there.
A lightning bolt flashes through my mind! I understand that I had touched upon one of the classic paradoxes of the ego in its quest for self-improvement.
My uncontrollable laughter echoes through the valley. My God!
I am already Awareness, and I strive to become it?
Isn’t the thought and the effort to be aware an obstacle to the very awareness that comes from a clear mind, free of purposes and not divided by self-observation?
The Map is Not the Territory
I felt like never before the stupidity of searching for mindfulness through thought, and at the same time, I understood that realizing the deception of one’s own ego—which “wants” to “be present”—is an act of intelligence. The ego and thinking are the products of the movement of time and memory, and they do not lead to that which is beyond conceptualization and planning. The filter of thinking divides perception into “observer and observed,” while there is only observation, there is only That.
It is so difficult to recognize because this is a collective illusion shared and promulgated by the society in which we live, which is based on ego and thought (and we see the results: a world where conflict and confusion are rife at all levels).
To overcome the deceptions of the mind, we have to expose ourselves and realize the paradoxical nature of this challenge, which ultimately leads to surrender and genuine transcendence of the ego and psychological time.
“Nothing is easier than to continue along known paths, or for children to return home,” said Jung.
This requires a radical change of perspective, not a gradual improvement within our egoic illusions.
It means doing away with the desire to change over time, and abandoning the effort of self-improvement that, from the ego’s perspective, proves self-defeating.
It takes effort and commitment to build a house with your own hands, but certainly not to be yourself or to realize your natural state. Must a wave make an effort to feel it is the ocean? Or should it simply recognize reality and drop the illusion of its own imagined independent nature?
How true was all that Krishnamurti repeated!
And how easy it is to betray in practice what has been understood on an intellectual level, as soon as the ego wants to “implement” itself spiritually.
We don’t realize how foolish it is to be fooled by these “trips” of thought that can never grasp reality due to the very nature of their limited boundaries.
Spontaneous awakening comes when there is no “I” pursuing it, and expanded states of consciousness occur in total inner freedom.
So: Who is trying to become more aware? Who wants to reach a particular state of consciousness?
As soon as there is the ego, consciousness is clouded by the thoughts of fear and desire.
The ego is made up of thoughts; it is the root of every thought and of the creation of past and future. While chronological time exists, psychological time is a mind creation. Awareness arises when the mind is silent. The mind is silent when we do nothing. In fact, we own nothing, so there is no one who wants silence. Action occurs spontaneously. We are one with reality because there is only This, and That You Are…
The non-dual Self appears spontaneously in a mind free from desire and fear, expectations and choices. Only when we are free from the compulsion to achieve something does the division into observer and observed disappear, and consciousness becomes one with the All.
Only when attention is spontaneous does meditation occur without divisions.
How many times have I repeated that the effort to meditate is antithetical to meditation, which is the inner silence that leads us to reality? Yet, the deception hides itself so well even in the “reasonable” goal to practice mindfulness.
This situation showed me once again the most subtle camouflage of the ego: the spiritual ego. Recognizing this mental trap seemed more illuminating than many hours of meditation.
Only when the sense of self dissolves do we wake up to reality.
Just by seeing the shadow clearly, we enter the Light…
Only by discarding mental illusions do we find Reality…
Just by dying to ourselves do we live in the Eternal Now…
