Relating to the ego

Is the ego the enemy?  Is it to blame for all of our problems?  How does one on the nondual path deal with the ego?  At a recent training in Integrative Restoration (iRest) I had a few “experiences” that seem to provide some clues as to how we can relate to the ego.

In both experiences I was in a dyad with a partner.  We were taking turns teaching the iRest protocol to an individual.  In these experiences I was playing the “student” role.  

In one dyad I had a sense of myself as the ego.  I “took on” the ego and described it as being much like wearing a mask.  I then shifted to Pure Awareness and had a strong sense that the ego was not an enemy.  I experienced it with a strong degree of compassion and knew that it had “served me well.”  I was able to appreciate it.  I felt a sense of gratitude and noticed that the spaciousness of Pure Awareness and the gratitude that I was experiencing allowed me to view the ego in a way that I never had before.  I felt “friendly” towards it.  I actually saw the ego as a friend.

During another dyad I had a felt-experience of Pure Awareness as a loss of boundaries.  I felt completely merged with all that was around me and had no sense of my physical body.  At one point my partner asked me to “step back into” the experience of being a self, and I could actually feel my body re-materializing.  It was as if the back of my body, the part that was “against” the floor, was retracting (drawing in) from the floor and re-forming as my body.  I found myself laughing out-loud.  My partner asked me what I was experiencing.  I explained to the best of my ability and told her that I saw it as very humorous – the body re-forming out of emptiness, the ego re-asserting itself – it was all so funny to me.

Both of these experiences have helped me to see the ego – the sense of being a separate self with a separate body – as something to appreciate and as something to “in-joy.”  It is the play of form.  I try not to take it so seriously anymore.

Here is a great quote from Papaji (Wake up and Roar).  In this quote the waves of the ocean are the play of form.  The ocean itself is Source.  The ego exists in the waves.  I am is the Source from which the waves of form and ego emerge:

“To become something, to expect something, you have to do something.  To remain I am, you don't have to do anything.  Its fullness is emptiness.  I am is the ocean, and the waves are the cosmos, the universe, all happenings.  And you can enjoy.  This is called Leela's sport [God's play].”

Re: Relating to the ego

billy
i am quite interested in what you are saying here

i myself am doing a sort of counseling i devised on my own

i had not heard the term nondual psychotherapy
but it sounds much like what i do

i am sorry to see it seems this pod has not caught on well
it is very much up my alley

feel free to contact me independently

i understand what you say about the ego and it seems quite right

the ego is this and the ego is that
but the bottom line is that there is none

love to all