Dawning awareness: Who are you?
Correction: Spoken “Footnote 1” should be written “Footnote 2.”
I just had what must be a rare event for a student of awareness. (1)
I caught myself “in the act,” something a student of awareness prizes doing because it allows them to experience a whole hidden side of themselves.
By the way, people, speaking of others, can be heard to say that this hidden side is “who they are, their true colors.” Not at all.
It’s what our ego has done with our childhood trauma. (2) The ego eventually calms down and becomes a servant, but never leaves us completely. (3) It now tells us when to cross the street and how to pay for a purchase.
What did I see? I “saw” myself pushing myself. The moment I “saw” myself, I found I could become that self that I saw and experience it.
So there I was now, pushing myself. Instead of reacting to feeling pushed, I was now doing the pushing!
I’ve found the head vampire.
The one pushing is the villain with the long mustache and the one watching is the poor maiden tied to the railway tracks. I became the villain. And that was enough. I didn’t need to stay there.
However now I can feel him when he’s here. I now disallow him permission to assume the driver’s seat whereas before I assumed he was “me.” Not so.
This is also a rare event from another perspective. Usually in eastern spirituality a householder devotee is regarded as being subject to so many distractions that it’s felt that they can’t concentrate.
A monk, meditating long each day, would be expected to have many more of these spiritual moments, I’d imagine. But a householder devotee, which a lightworker usually is, is not expected.
I actually caught the ego in a moment of reflection and his “vibe” was radically different than the consciousness state (relaxed) that I was in at that moment.
I see that he’s always with me. I see it because I’ve “isolated” him among all the vibrations we’re regularly bombarded with of a day – the high-pitched ring of Aum that is always there, the noises outside of me. I now know what I feel like when he’s wanting the driver’s seat.
He showed up and started cracking his whip. That’s all fine and dandy when you’re a graduate student or writing your first book. But, when everything grows and ramifies, that commanding voice becomes a source of irritation and inner conflict.
Before I called it my temper. Now I see it as an organized response that has command of all my defensive resources; i.e., a core issue or vasana. But because I’m aware of that persona, I can now choose not to be in it when I feel it arising.
It having been seen, I now have choice restored. I can choose not to go with something I know. I lack that choice if the response mechanism is hidden from me.
Footnotes
(1) See Let’s Go! Let’s Grow! Vol. 1 Awareness at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Lets-Go-Lets-Grow-V1-Awareness-R13.pdf
(2) See Vasanas: Preparing For Ascension by Clearing Old Issues at https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Vasanas-Preparing-for-Ascension-R16.pdf
(3) Sri Ramakrishna: The ego does not vanish altogether. The man coming down from samadhi perceives that it is Brahman that has become the ego, the universe, and all living beings. This is known as vijnana [i.e., Ascension]. (Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 104.) (Hereafter GSR.)
You may reason a thousand times, but you cannot get rid of the ego. The ego is like a pitcher, and Brahman like the ocean — an infinite expanse of water on all sides. The pitcher is set in the ocean. The water is both inside and out; the water is everywhere; yet the pitcher remains. … As long as the ego remains, “you” and “I” remain. … The ego cannot be got rid of; so let the rascal remain as the servant of God, the devotee of God. (Sri Ramakrishna in GSR, 708.)