The brain references itself, and the body, as the “Me” and creates several thoughts about this “Me” thought based on its observation, interpretation, belief and conditioning. There was a phase in your life when the brain had a very vague sense of “Me”, this was during your childhood when the brain was just getting acquainted with its surroundings and itself – at this point there was very little “self awareness” in the brain. During this time the brain had very little judgment, it did not have many “opinions”, it did not hold a strong sense of separation, it expressed itself freely/innocently – this is the reason why a lot of people sense that they were carefree, lively and spirited during their childhood.
However, with age, most brains develop “self awareness”, some slower than the others depending on their brain’s intelligence (for example, in a so-called “retarded” brain there is much less self-awareness than other brains, because there is a lack of development of certain centers of cognition in such a brain). This “self awareness” becomes the birth of the “Me” thought – what is also called the “Ego”. The creation of “Me” thought is normal, natural, “as per design”, and inevitable, and it serves a very valuable purpose in your experience of physicality. The only problem is that your awareness gets so hooked up with this “Me” thought that you fuel it with all your attention thus giving it a huge momentum, and making it a “rock solid” thought, to the point where it feels like an entity inside you – this is what is meant by a strong Ego (Any thought you give attention to gets amplified and that’s what happens to the “Me” thought also).
This “Me” thought gathers a lot of force due to your constant attention to it, soon it gathers a huge momentum, and starts acting as if it has a life of its own. This “Me” thought starts gaining so much intensity, and animation, owing to your focus on it, that it starts feeling like a force living inside the body – and soon you feel at the mercy of this “Me” thought, and its intensity makes you a prisoner to it movements. This strong identification with the “Me” thought leads to the creation of a concrete Ego, that soon becomes dysfunctional because it’s based in separation and lack; it starts seeing itself as separate from life, and gathers enough force to oppose the pull of your life-stream – this causes the birth of strong insecurity, isolation, comparison, over-possessiveness, jealousy, greed, inferiority and a disconnection from your natural expression – all the ingredients of psychological suffering.
Dysfunction of over-identification with “Me” thought
If the “Me” thought is your only sense of identity, you can’t help but be rooted in insecurity and isolation. There is not a “Me” thought, in any of the brains around this world, which is free of insecurity (because this thought originates in the brain, and the brain is a survival machine rooted in fear). The intensity of insecurity can vary from person to person, depending on a lot of factors like conditioning, genes, social-acceptance and maturity, but no “Me” thought can ever be free of insecurity. Some “Me” thoughts can become extremely negative especially when they are denied social acceptance, approval and attention from outside – the whole deal of a “Me” thought soon becomes about “What others think of me”, and hence if you are accepted and appreciated your “Me” thought feels some temporary sense of happiness, if not it feels insecurity, dread, anger, hatred and inferiority.
When you are popular in your social circle, where you are admired, loved, appreciated, idolized, envied and sought after, the “Me” thought in your brain obviously feels “bloated” and happy for a while, but soon you become so addicted to wanting social admiration that it becomes a noose around your neck bringing deep insecurity and dread of the future – you can see this behavior explicitly in some “stars” who fall out of public admiration after several years of popularity; they become extremely disoriented and dysfunctional. Most resort to self-sabotaging behaviors (doing drugs or alcohol), while some even commit suicide unable to cope with sudden loss of social appreciation which they had become addicted to. The temporary “high” of popularity is basically a setup for the Ego to come to a crash when this popularity is no longer around.
When you stay fully identified with this “Me” thought, you are at its mercy – one day you feel good, the next day you feel bad, totally depending on how your “Me” thought feels about itself, which largely depends on how you are treated by the outside. When you are appreciated you feel good, if you are not appreciated you feel bad, and thus you become addicted to seeking appreciation/acceptance from the outside becoming a prisoner to it – this is the plight of anyone who is totally identified with the “Me” thought. You become a highly unpredictable person when you are lost in your “Me” thought, your moods and outlook can swing into extremes from moment to moment based on how your external reality is operating – this causes you to be a prisoner to circumstances, reacting to the outside and feeling constantly insecure.
Low vibration created by the “Me” thought
Awakening in its simplest sense is to have a sense of yourself beyond just the “Me” thought of the brain. Your life becomes extremely limiting, your perceptions extremely narrow, and your outlook highly shallow, when your only sense of yourself is the “Me” thought. The “Me” thought easily has its identity defined by your culture, country, race, gender, physical looks, mental capacities, belief-systems, status, personal memories and past-story – and hence it creates a very narrow, and distorted, lens to view life with. This “Me” has a place in that it allows some structure to your physical experience, and it provides for an “individuality” and personal perspective, which has a value in the scheme of things, in the wholeness of life – but if your sense of identity is fully taken up by the “Me” thought, or Ego, in the brain, it disconnects you from being in touch with the intelligence/wisdom of life and the sense of wholeness inherent to the space of “being”
A strong identification with the Ego (the “Me” thought of the brain) is basically at the root cause of all psychological suffering, inner resistance, anxiety and sense of isolation. The vibration of the “Me” thought is very rarely on the positive side in most people (usually not for long), it mostly has a strong sense of “negativity” based on its fear of future, self-hatred, bitterness, comparison and general insecurity arising from the fear/hate dimension in the brain. When this “Me” thought has a high momentum in your space of being, you mostly are rooted in this low vibration, leading to the attraction of negativity of different forms and a general resistance to the inherent well-being in your life-stream.
Knowing yourself beyond the “Me” thought
When you know yourself beyond the “Me” thought, as the wholeness of life, you get connected with your true nature. You are not the “Me” thought in actuality, you are the space of being/life-energy in which this “Me” thought operates, in which the brain operates. When you close your eyes (sit with yourself) you get a sense that all thoughts and emotions are happening in an alive “space” of silence which is actually the body of life – this space is your true body, and resting as this space allows the mind’s momentum to come down and also allows the dissolution of negativity within, simply because this space connects you with the intelligence of your wholeness, of totality. Resting as this space is what I refer to as a “relaxed awareness”, or openness, or “letting go” – it basically is all that’s needed to start freeing yourself from the accumulated negativity, resistance and the momentum/intensity of the “Me” thought.
When you find some grounding in the space of being, you find that the “Me” thought does not have such a strong grip on you (its momentum reduces), thus you feel more resistance free and receptive to inner guidance, you stop feeling like a prisoner to the vacillations of the ego in the brain. Since the “Me” thought has a huge momentum, it can easily take a few months before you start finding some space of freedom from its pull, the more you rest in the space of your being the faster you come to this inner stability – there is no short cut to coming to this place of wholeness, it follows pure “physics” that the momentum gathered by the past negativity takes time to ebb away. You can’t make this acquired momentum “disappear” suddenly, it has to go through a gradual dissolution as you stop fueling it.
At one point, you will start sensing a “balance” in you where you can enjoy the perspective of the brain (its preferences, wants, inclinations and desires), while also not being “tormented”, or moved, by its negativity. Also, a lot of the deluded desires in the brain (that were create from a narrow/shallow perspective) fall away as you start connecting with your inner guidance, and what remain are aligned desires that are congruent with your natural expression. This state is a harmony, where you have a clear mindedness/focus towards your natural expression in this physical plane and are also rooted in an inner wholeness on a permanent basis.
Sen this is absolutely beautiful. I feel like each article of yours that i read gets me so much closer to awakening..
One question i have been in the process of allowing all the negativity to come up and release itself without resisting it, but are insecurities be they physical or of another sort supposed to be coming up and if they do how are we supposed to react to them
Rossana, it’s normal for deep seated insecurities to come up into your awareness when you stop distracting yourself and allow your awareness to touch your inner space. If you stay open, and allow them to arise, they will gradually dissolve on their own – don’t try to figure it out, don’t get too impatient or panicky about it, just be open to allowing them to arise. They will dissolve on their own in this open space of allowing – scientifically this is because when you are fully allowing, your life-stream’s intelligence can touch these insecurities and bring a solution to them.
When one is in phase 3 the fear and saddness have been observed and now has ebbed away. Will there always be a few episodes of saddness and fear, observed and observing it passes away like a wave of energy.Or does one come to a phase when no episodes of saddness or fear passes through. thank You
You do come to a point where the intensity of fear or sadness reduces to such an extent that you no longer find it disturbing in your being – they just become subtle movements without any intensity – this happens towards the end of phase 3 (of staying allowing in open awareness). The mind will always have some fears and sadness, but when they have low intensity you don’t feel disturbed by it, your being feels spacious and is not penetrated by the mild surface level movements.
Sen –
Thank you for this article. I have been following the practices of awareness, and am beginning to see spaces of freedom from negativity. I can go a whole day in peace, but then a trigger hits, and I am hooked again by the ego and it’s negative messages. It is as if my true being is fragile, and can only take so much on, and as soon as the fear arises, the ego rushes in to dump a pile of negative messages into the mix. And then I have to stop myself and try again to find the peace. Somedays are more difficult than others. Does this make sense?
– mgal
It takes a while before you gain a sense of stability in your being as you start growing stronger in the space of your awareness. Till then, it’s natural to sense these fluctuations which are part of the release of negativity that’s happening. Just stay open and allowing of this release, and it will soon come to an end.
I’m 20 years old, and am a very studious person in general. But there are these phases I go through when I feel that I’m the only one not going out/partying/enjoying. I feel that every one of my friends has that perfect ideal life (the good things in life) that everyone so craves for. Is this kind of life even possible or is it just an illusion that the “me” thinks of? I feel so hopeless when I see that I’m not having fun. If the things in life are preordained then what is the point of ego? Sen, how do I get out of this mode of comparison forever. I dont want to mind the things that happen to me. Let anything happen, but I just want to be centered in the “eye of the storm”, permanently!
Syed, each of us have our own uniqueness, and it’s not about conforming with what others are doing but about aligning with this uniqueness within us, so that you live out your natural expression, the intention in which you were born. If you want to start aligning with your natural expression you will first need to let go of your brain’s perspective on “what it should be doing” based on its external conditioning, and allow yourself to connect with your heart’s calling, or the inspiration of your life-stream. You can read this post – the art of letting go for a deeper perspective on how to let go into your natural expression.
Sen , it seems to me as if phase 3 is the longest and can seem like the most complicated of all for those of us going through it. Maybe on one of your next posts you can write about the different phases within phase 3 itself? just a recommendation
Once we are in this phase 3 is there anything that can possibly hinder or even completely stop us from moving into phase 4. Or is the transformation almost inevitable at this point? Just asking because i feel as if i am stuck in tis phase 3 with very little or almost no movement towards this final phase
Robert, the part in you that’s impatient to see results is the part that is standing in resistance to fully allowing yourself to let go into your life’s pull. This part is the force of ego (or the force of “Me” thought) which constantly sits in judgment about what’s its getting out of this process, without realizing that this process by itself is about freeing you from the egoic pull and aligning you with the pull of your life-stream. The ego force is basically being deconstructed so that it no longer stands in resistance to the natural pull of your life, so that you don’t have to constantly deal with inner resistance while living your natural expression. It takes time for the egoic pull to dissolve because it has a lot of past momentum, plus the fact that you are still hooked on it with your focus which keeps giving it new fuel. Letting go happens in layers as you constantly let go of your resistance created by egoic perspective, and allow yourself to surrender to your life’s pull, this is an act of unconditional surrender where you are not “testing” life but are willing to trust life. If you have the attitude of “testing” life you will constantly sit in judgment of what’s happening without seeing the deeper shift that’s taking place in you – in your maturity, outlook and vibration. The inner space needs to come in harmony first before you see yourself moving into your natural expression in the outside world.
Sen,
Your writings are absolutely wonderful! You saved me in several ways, and I hope to be able to give back!!! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I was raised by my mother in a pretty destructive religious sect, where fear and thinking about destruction is repeated thousand times, through talks, media and so forth. I have liberated myself from them. In the process my wife left me and took our only child with her.
Now my mother accuses me of being selfish….I should “give myself” up and go back, suck it up, because of our child.
I don’t want to go back, liberating myself was the most important decision I took in my entire Life. The thought that we should NOT look for our own happiness and our own life path is very strong, and the “sacrifice yourself for the group” is strongly present in my thoughts. Doing something for myself feels guilty……I am in the process of learning.
Is it correct to give yourself up for the well being of others? Everybody accuses me of “robbing them of their happiness and joy, because of my decision” the pressure is very strong…..and exhausting. In past times I thought to kill myself….because I couldn’t find a way to “please everybody” and at the same time pursue my own life.
Please share some wisdom about: ME versus GROUP (others, family, society, etc.) Pleasing others sacrificing ourselves???
Peter, you can’t give to others what you don’t feel yourself – so if you can’t feel a sense of inner joy, in yourself, how can you ever bring joy to anyone? So when you try to sacrifice yourself (sacrifice your heart’s calling, your inner joy) for the sake of outside pressure, you basically have no real value to contribute the outside or to yourself. When you align with your joy, you eventually will get aligned with your natural expression or life’s calling in you – the only way to align with your life-stream is to consciously align with your joy until all your inner resistances dissolve, after which you naturally get into the pull of life-stream.
It feel tough initially, and it can be highly challenging, when you start aligning with your heart having lived a disconnected life for long. During this transition period, the people, and circumstances, of your old reality are still around but dissolving, and it can feel a bit disorienting since you can try and cling back to the old reality out of fear of the unknown (since you don’t know the new reality that’s taking form right now). The pressure that you feel from outside to get back to your old way of being, is basically just a reflection of the conflict you feel within yourself where your mind is still holding patterns of negativity that makes you fear a surrender to your heart, to your joy, to your life-stream. You are on the right track, just continue on it, without being afraid of the fears that are projected by your conditioned mind or by the outside. In your heart you can sense your inner inspiration, and you can also sense “instinctively” the realities that are no longer congruent with you. You’ve come a long way in your journey of alignment, and now you just need to let go further into surrendering to your inspiration by sensing the pull of your life-stream.
It’s not about Me Vs the Group, because the Group by itself is the reflection of your own mind. It’s always about “inner calling” Vs the negativity – if you stand true to your inner calling you will no longer feel the pressure of the group, it’s your own inner fear that makes you fear the pressure of the group. When you are clear within towards your surrender to your life-stream, your inner resistances will dissolve and with it this “group”, that was reflective of your resistance, will also dissolve from your life – you will just be moved out of incongruent realities.
Thank you for this..
Thank you Sen for the quick and profound answer! 🙂
It took me tremendous amounts of will power to leave a sect that was holding me “hostage” for over 20 years! This was without knowing the things that I have read on this site. Now, since I started reading your articles, things feel effortless, I don’t need to apply “raw will power” (which is exhausting to say the less) but feel pretty “light weight” in what I am doing. I still continue to get phone calls from my family members creating pressure, but you are right.
Tony Robbins wrote one time: “Nothing has any power over me other than that which I give it through my conscious thoughts.” You are right, I am the one that gave them way too much power over me and my Life, giving in to fear. They use strong fear tactics to keep the members “in line”.
Freedom DOES taste sweet. Humans have given their Lifes for freedom. Here I am, still alive (stepped back of taking a pretty final solution) and enjoying consciousness!
Thank you for the love, goodness and light that you spread into the world.
Sen
Thanks for this. I keep thinking i need to “be me”. but this has opened up a new dimension I had not thought of before. It’s so much more in tune with our inner selves. Truly more food for thought here
Thanks
Noch Noch
thanks Sen