175. The 4 rivers leading into the garden

This is for those of you who genuinely want to undo the root cause of all suffering – the ego. For those who wish to step onto the real spiritual path and remove the stronghold their ego has on them and at the same time unite in a common goal, we provide a guide that will lead to awakening.

Awakening occurs through the conscious application of 4 major principles being thankfulness, forgiveness, self-inquiry and awakening in the eternal now. You will come to see that ego created this separation, an illusion of separateness. Humanity fell into a dream of this present world of time and space, a dream of duality. The mission is to awaken from that dream, not to get lost in it or to even try to excel in it. This is a fundamentally different approach that will completely change the journey of awakening. If you believe that God created this world, then you’re bound to experience some serious inner conflict which will manifest itself as adversity or scarcity of some kind in your life. Why? Because if an all-loving God is responsible for creating this world of duality, including fear, hatred and death, then you haven’t got a chance of escaping and then you are truly at the mercy of the devil/ego, a victim, a slave! We will guide you to the door of spiritual awakening in a way that can be simply applied by anyone at any time, no matter what the circumstances. By understanding thankfulness, forgiveness, self-inquiry and the principle of the eternal now and by offering ways to practice. It is about unlearning who you are not so that who you really are can be revealed and realize awakening.

The ego is the belief in separation. It is the “I” you think is real, while participating in this dream world. It is really a mass of uninvestigated beliefs riddled with fears, phobias and illusory memories. The ego projected this reality in order to escape the massive unconscious guilt that it acquired from the separation. If you think you’re at the mercy of a force outside you that ultimately controls everything, then you are in a position of “effect”; you are at the mercy of something (ego) outside of you that you think is the “cause”. All of a sudden, every disappointment in your life, from minor to major like death, is seen as being done to you, making you a victim. If on the other hand, you begin to embrace the idea that you (personally and collectively) made this reality, and that it is but a dream, then you’re in the miraculous realm of realizing that it is all a projection of your mind. This perception invites a conscious awareness that in Truth, the world is really being done by you, and not to you. Then you can move into a position of “cause” and no longer at the mercy of “effects”. Through applying thankfulness, forgiveness, self-inquiry and being in the now, you learn to change your reaction to and experience of events. You learn to “Love what is” and your perception will free itself of bondage. And because you’re realizing that projection makes perception you’re effecting a change at the base level. You will no longer take things so personally, old patterns and habits will drop off and you’ll have more compassion and forgiveness. As you progress, your ego will begin disappearing and the blocks and limitations to experiencing profound love along with it. You’ll be free of the need to judge, defend, protect, sacrifice or control. Struggle also disappears as it is replaced by an abundance of inspirational motivation that always leads you to exactly where you’re supposed to be. Undoing the ego delivers you from your severely delusional will. Once this “ego” will surrender to Truth, we find that the Universal Inspiration’s Will is all we are and all that we could ever want. On a practical level (the level of form) your life will reflect this integration in all your relationships with people, things, places and circumstances. The ego controls our every waking and sleeping thought and action. 99.9% of your time is spent labouring through life with the ego’s perception, can you imagine what life would be like once you surrendered that burden? To surrender judgment and control is to experience intimately an indescribable joy that consistently permeates your perception.

But remember awakening is not a glamorous affair. It is really a demolition project. The ego loves to spiritualize the whole awakening process by suffusing it with the special beauty or power of certain objects, places and practices. It thrives on intellectual knowledge and is enthralled by amazing phenomena. It will collect or reject according its fear and desire. While some of these are OK in themselves, they often develop into spiritual bypass mechanisms if they become one’s focus, instead of the job at hand which is awakening. You need to remember that all these things, as great as they are, are still projections coming from our own minds and are occurring at the level of “form”. If you truly wish to undo the ego then you need to return your thoughts/intentions to the only level that’s real: the mind.

Everything that exists in your perception is “caused” by your mind, so any real changes must originate from that source at first. This means as is explained in the other articles that one needs to experience the process in which ego judges each experience and gives it a place through which it judges the next. In other words it uses its limited understanding, its personalized ideas to weigh the feedback it has created himself. Anger within your field of experience is judging and recognizing in other ego’s.

The only way to disconnect is to recognize and understand this process and to realize that you did identify with it. I am angry, I am sad, etc.

The journey often only starts to take off after some sort of disillusionment, perhaps a relationship breakup, death, illness, identity crisis etc. It is often heralded by the “falling away” of a long held perception.

While this is usually the beginning, you find that the entire process becomes a succession of uninvestigated beliefs falling away. You might ask, “Why all this discomfort? Can’t we just awaken with love to love?” The answer is no, because as an ego, you don’t know love. The ego can’t possibly understand it, give it or receive it. Love is our natural state beneath our dysfunctional perception. To get to it requires the systematic dismemberment of its entire belief system. There are several stages to be experienced and their purpose is the development of faith or trust. As the ego is undone, a new and profound layer of faith (the mustard seed) or trust is seen to emerge from within and mirrored back to you from your seeming outer reality.

A real shift is required and it becomes easy once you understand and practice it. We’re not talking about the old brand of forgiveness here. Because that sets both of us apart. If I’m going to forgive you for the awful hurt you caused, then I’m saying you and I are separate and make myself a victim, forgetting that there’s really only One of us here. You are my own projection and must remember that there’s only one ego here appearing as many. So if you want to awaken out of this dream, you need to remember that this forgiving is really a forgiving of yourself too. And each time you overlook this, it keeps you on the wheel of life and death. So, when someone offends you or presses your buttons, you could view it as an opportunity to apply forgiveness. You could remember that your purpose is to awaken and see that every forgiveness is opportunity that presents itself and gives you the chance to surrender another great chunk of ego that keeps you from the truth.

After growing up, each of you pursue a career, some perhaps will get married and have children having a common goal, the ego will build on its own goal, an unconscious goal of which you’re not aware. A “seek but never find” and it makes sure you live out its prediction, even if it looks like you’re the victim of circumstances. Unknowingly you enter a relationship, each with two independent self-seeking goals.

The ego seeks to be “special” and its need is for pseudo-worthiness which it aims to take from another for itself. In a secret pact, it agrees to give its partner part of its own special pseudo-self in exchange.

The problem for all worldly relationships is when one or both partners fail to meet the ego desires of the other which is inevitable, and where many relationships fall apart. So understand that even without marriage or without a relationship with another you already have a relationship with ego, he, the boss, you the slave. Like many newcomers to a spiritual path, who make some pretty terrible misinterpretations and a lot of mistakes. true Love can never end, can never be terminated. Love can never turn to hate. On the deepest of level you know this to be true, but how to achieve it? You having another relationship besides that with your partner, but a Holy Relationship that is realized by the transformational process of the ego, will turn a relationship to a real Unified one and you will discover that Love cannot ever die, disappear or end….and that there’s absolutely no limit to it. Only the ego imagines that it experiences love turning to hate. Why? because as young children and now, as children in adult bodies, you’ve never been “seen”. No one has ever really seen you, because most of the love you’ve ever experienced was of the ego. It was a pseudo love that never reached and touched your core. Even your parents as loving as they may have been, were still largely in their mistaken identity, the ego.

So the sad fact is that most of you have been raised and judged by the ego perception of your parents and others. Without a truthful mirror of whom you are and perceiving from your own uninvestigated ego, imagine trying to love others? You can’t see another truly, neither do they see you, so how in the world can you believe that Love can never turn to hate or diminish? Through the dismantling of your old relationship with ego in the quest for a Holy Relationship within you, you will become able to have a Unified Relationship in this world. Surrender the ego props of judgment, expectation and guilt and start to see each other as a part of one Self. Dare to practice truly seeing each other. As you learn to accept each other without the usual judgments, and underpinned by the desire and willingness for the highest outcome for each other regardless of your fears, you grow to experience a Love that exceeds your wildest imaginings. In seeing the other as yourself, the chunk of ego that previously kept you trapped in a dualistic world falls away and all of a sudden you’re seeing, experiencing another dimension here while you’re in the dream.

You hear so much about “Oneness” in spiritual teachings but rarely do you get to witness and really participate in its awesome dynamic. That’s because you don’t practice Oneness consistently. Every time you take offence you’re not seeing Oneness, you’re seeing duality and reinforcing it in your perception. To see Oneness you must practice it! Its miracle can only be known through extending it in spite of what the ego interprets as threat. For instance if someone offends you, you realize two things, 1. That this is your own projection, and 2. That the offence is coming from their ego. Any attack or judgment is always a cry for love and being so, it deserves a loving response which is always forgiveness. The only way to reach a critical mass in terms of manifesting miracles and undoing the ego is to consistently practice the dynamic of forgiveness and of being thankful. This being thankful again is a higher thankfulness than the one coming from ego as this kind of thankfulness is conditional and not from the clear insight that the paradise is already in you, that all was already given unto you.

Understand also that you do not need more experiences to be able to recognize ego’s manipulation to live out his ideas. The I you are so familiar with cannot reach the garden.

 

21-05-2008

Moshiya van den Broek