#5 What an Enlightened Being Really Looks Like – Debunking The Myths

It isn’t about, in any way, becoming extraordinary; if anything it’s just becoming ordinary, it’s becoming who we really really are. – Adyashanti

In this article, I would like to share with you some common myths about enlightened beings. Spiritual enlightenment has been largely mystified and I believe it is important to debunk some of the myths that exist around spiritual enlightenment.

If you are not familiar with spiritual enlightenment, you might want to read my series of articles on spiritual enlightenment and particularly the following article The Biggest Mystery of All Time – Why so Few People Know About Spiritual Enlightenment.

Enlightened beings sit all day doing nothing

You might have the image of the Buddha and imagine enlightened beings spending their day meditating, alone in a temple, a cave, under a tree etc.

It is true that after reaching spiritual enlightenment, as we become egoless, many of the activities we enjoyed doing before might not motivate us anymore. The reason for that is simply because these activities were self-centered. They were an attempt to fulfill our ego in a way or another. Naturally, as our ego disappears, self-centered activities lose their meaning and become irrelevant.

For instance, Sri Mooji was an artist before awakening and spent a lot of time painting. After he woke up, he didn’t feel such a need to paint anymore. Nowadays, he still paints when he feels like it, but it is not anymore to fill a gap within himself or to be praised by other people. He just enjoys it.

As life unfolds, enlightened beings will know naturally what to do. Some will be drawn to teaching while others will have a normal job. In fact, it is very difficult to distinguish an enlightened person from a “normal” person. Especially because enlightened people feel no need to share their “secret” with other people. Only a fake enlightened being would brag about being enlightened.

Enlightenment is for the chosen ones

One of the biggest and most pernicious myths about spiritual enlightenment is that it is only reserved to very special beings like Jesus or Buddha. That is no true! We must get this idea out of our head. Every single human being is a potential candidate to enlightenment for the simple reason that enlightenment is nothing more than the rediscovery of our natural state. It happens when all our social conditioning and false beliefs fall away; then only our true self remains.

One of the greatest spiritual teachers of the 20^th century, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, was actually poor and practically illiterate. Sri Mooji wasn’t a great intellectual and seldom read books. People who are too much in their mind might in fact have more difficulties to awaken. Sometimes, “spiritual” people end up building up a spiritual ego and all their spiritual knowledge become an impediment to their awakening. Spiritual enlightenment is not something that is theoretically difficult to grasp and it certainly doesn’t require holding a PhD to understand it.

Enlightenment beings don’t eat meat

As our true nature is love and compassion, I would have expected enlightened beings to be vegetarianism, but surprisingly, that is not the case. They certainly don’t encourage the killing of animals and don’t kill animals themselves, but they do eat meat at least for some of them.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj admitted to eat a small amount of meat and Sri Mooji explains that it is in his culture to eat meat and that he doesn’t feel the need to become vegetarian.

Enlightened beings are healthier and live longer

Enlightened being are not overly obsessed with their body or their nutrition. Their body is rather secondary, as they know that what they are is beyond both the body and the mind. They don’t seem to live longer than other people. Interestingly, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj was actually selling handmade cigarettes and was quite a heavy smoker! He died from a throat cancer at 84.

Enlightened beings don’t feel emotions as we do

People imagine that when they realize their true self, they will have to give up all the pleasures of the senses like sex or good foods but that is not true. They might lose interest but it will feel natural. Enlightened being are not emotionless. They feel emotions like grief, sadness and even depression. However, emotions cannot stick very long. Indeed, the only reason why our emotions last is because we identify with them. An enlightened being might get suddenly angry and even occasionally yell at someone, but it won’t be personal and the feeling will vanish very soon leaving no trace.

We must also stress the fact that, regardless of their emotions, awakened beings constantly feel peace, joy, love or compassion, which is the natural fragrance of our being.

Enlightened beings have not a “normal” life

Most enlightened beings live a perfectly normal life. They have a family, they have children and they go to work… They might watch TV or play poker. It is not because you wake up that you are suddenly going to leave everything to live in the mountains by yourself. However, it is true that, as I mentioned previously, you might lose interest in some of your hobbies. Some of your relationships might be impacted, but it will happen very naturally. Once you wake up to your true nature, there isn’t any real purpose anymore. Just being yourself is enough! It’s not like you need to prove to people that you are good enough by becoming successful, famous, rich etc. That becomes just irrelevant! What needs to be done will be done spontaneously and effortlessly and it won’t feel like you are doing anything anymore.

The real difference between enlightened beings and us is their degree of freedom. They are unaffected by praises or criticisms, they enjoy people but don’t need them. They worry neither about the past nor about the future, which they see for what they are: pure illusions. They are not afraid of death. Reputation and money mean absolutely nothing to them. They don’t need to control, influence or make any demand to other people. They are complete and don’t need anything at all! In a nutshell, they are living in reality; we don’t. That’s why it is called “awakening”. They woke up while we are still caught in the dream. But for how long?

20 years or more of meditation are needed

Spiritual enlightenment is quite mysterious. For certain people like Eckhart Tolle, the best-selling author of The Power of Now, it just happened in an instant without any practice at all. In fact, Eckhart Tolle didn’t even know what was spiritual enlightenment and only learnt about it after his awakening.

Other people spend years and years of meditation failing to reach that state. However, fortunately, more and more people are awakening and for some it takes only a couple of months. Some even wake up by watching Youtube video of spiritual teachers and practicing on their own. Meditation, as most of us picture it – sitting in the lotus position and not moving – is not necessarily the way to go, and other methods can be more straightforward. For those who are interested in realizing your true nature, in another article, I will share some of the most powerful and straightforward exercises that can be done to find one’s true nature.

Note that, though some people choose to leave everything to find their true self, it is not necessary that you quit your family or your job, or anything else to work on finding your true self.

What about you? Do you feel any motivation inside yourself to find out who you really are? Why or why not? Leave me a comment below 😉

To learn more about spiritual enlightenment

My series of articles on enlightenment

My Youtube playlist on enlightenment (I recommend you to watch them in order)

Mooji TV (Many videos from Sri Mooji)

Books on enlightenment (I recommend you to read them in this order):

If you like this article share it with your friends and join my FACEBOOK page here.

Finally, make sure to SIGN UP to receive my FREE E-BOOK 🙂

The 5 Commandments of Personal Development

Psychology vs. Spirituality – Which one is the most powerful?

Is psychology more practical than spirituality? Nothing is more practical than spirituality. What can the poor psychologist do? He can only relieve the pressure. I’m a psychologist myself, and I practice psychotherapy, and I have this great conflict within me when I have to choose sometimes between psychology and spirituality. I wonder if that makes sense to anybody here. It didn’t make sense to me for many years. – Anthony de Mello

Which is the most powerful: psychology or spirituality? What do you think?

Our mind turns reality into beliefs

One of the characteristics of our mind is that it likes to turn practical things into theory and beliefs.

Take philosophy, for instance. Originally, philosophy is one of the most practical things in the world. Choosing your own philosophy is choosing your own way of life and, as a result, has huge consequences on your life. Unfortunately, most people are more interested in talking about philosophy than practicing philosophy. They are more interested in trying to boost their ego than in trying to boost their happiness.

It is one of the characteristics of the mind. It turns everything into theory, beliefs and abstract concepts. It is a filter of reality. It distorts it. Similarly, our mind likes to turn spirituality into a belief, but is it?

Psychology vs. spirituality

When I was a kid, I went through all the compulsory teaching that “devoted” Christians have to go through. It lasted 5 years (from 7 to 12). However, I realize now that there was absolutely nothing spiritual in that teaching. In fact, we can say that most religious people are not spiritual people. Why? Because they aren’t trying to find who or what they really are, but they are simply following a set of beliefs dictated by institutions that have distorted the meaning of spirituality over time. Religion turns spirituality or god into a belief, but spirituality is not a belief, it is an experience. Going to the church every Sunday and praying mechanically doesn’t make you more spiritual; direct experience of who you are through profound self-enquiries does. For that reason, I don’t consider myself as a religious person, but rather as a spiritual person.

Improving your self-image vs. distancing yourself from your self-image

You have never been, nor shall ever be, a person. Refuse to consider yourself as one. But as long as you do not even doubt yourself to be Mr. So-and-so, there is little hope. When you refuse to open your eyes, what can you be shown? – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

So what is the difference between psychology and spirituality? Psychology is mainly about changing your self-image while spirituality is about realizing the falsehood of your self-image and differentiating yourself from it. Do you understand now why psychology is operating at a much more superficial level than spirituality?

Our self-image/identity (see What is the Ego) consists of a set of beliefs about ourselves. We can either work hard on changing these beliefs, or we can simply realize that our whole identity is a mind-made entity that has no real existence and learn to differentiate ourselves from that false identity.

In a nutshell, psychology is about trying to “fix” your self-image while spirituality is realizing that your self-image is actually an illusion. What is the difference? When you believe yourself to be a person and cling to your self-image, you automatically take things personally. However, when you realize that you are not a person, well, you don’t, or more precisely, you can’t!

Distancing yourself from your current self-image is something you can directly experience through self-enquiry, meditation or contemplation for instance. There is nothing magical or extraordinary about it. By observing yourself thinking, talking, doing things or feeling all sorts of emotions throughout the day, you gradually understand that you are not your self-image. Yes, you still exist without your self-image and your beliefs, and life actually gets easier. Imagine how great you would feel, if you could stop being obsessed with your self-image 24/7 like most of us. Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t care anymore about what people think of you or if rejection, disapproval or disrespect did nothing to you? That’s possible.

You are not your social conditioning

Most of our emotional reactions towards rejection, disapproval, disrespect, love ones’ death etc. are actually the result of our social conditioning. We have been programmed to behave that way! Rather than trying to change our program (psychology) it is actually more powerful and easier to observe and understand that we are not our program (spirituality). There is no need to identity with that program, but just to understand it. Then, gradually, our tendency to get upset, or to be more precise “to upset ourselves” as Anthony de Mello calls it, will fade away as we realize the falsehood of the whole thing. Nothing is wrong with you. There is nothing to be fixed but there is a lot to be understood.

Psychology or Spirituality? What is your choice? Leave me a comment below to let me know 😉

To learn more about spirituality and who we really are, don’t forget to read my series of articles on Spiritual Enlightenment

If you like this article share it with your friends and join my FACEBOOK page here.

Finally, make sure to SIGN UP to receive my FREE E-BOOK 🙂

The 5 Commandments of Personal Development

Do You Believe in Reincarnation?

Souls don’t represent all that is pure and good about a body or they wouldn’t be incarnating for personal development. Souls come to Earth to work on their own shortcomings. – Michael Newton

Nobody told me but I’m pretty sure I was Napoleon in a previous life!

What if, it could actually be possible? (though very unlikely)

I should start this article by saying that I’m not a particularly religious person. Neither do I consider myself as superstitious.

At the same time, my personal research lead me to believe in spiritual enlightenment (see my articles on enlightenment) as well as in the existence of a higher consciousness that science has yet to explain. Still, until very recently reincarnation is absolutely not something I was taking seriously, to say the least.

A while ago, when my friend told me he was reading a book on people’s past lives, my reaction was to instantly reject that kind of “new edge woo-woo” thing . In this particular book, the author, a hypnotherapist, argues that people when put into a very deep state of hypnosis are able to recall past lives.

It is only later on, when I came across a book that mentioned the very same author that I decided to have a closer look at reincarnation out of curiosity.

Destiny of souls

The book I’m referring to is Destiny of Souls by Michael Newton. Michael Newton worked on about 7,000 cases. He regressed his patients into past lives and discovered the richness of the life between lives or « spirit world » that he described in length in his book.

It is true that hypnosis is generally not recognized as a scientific proof but I would like to bring to light several interesting points:

It was performed on a large scale. Michael Newton hypnotized thousands of people and he is not the only one to perform life between lives hypnosis.
Similarities between patients’ stories are striking. Patients’ recalling of their life between lives are very similar from a patient to another. They all mention having a guide, a group of souls they are closely bonded with and a soul mate that often reincarnate with them on earth. They also mention in details the process they go through in the spirit world, from meeting with their guide to choosing their future body to name a few.
Making up a story seems unlikely. Patients were able to talk for hours and in great details of the life between lives and each session was recorded. It seems unlikely that they could all be making up a story.
There are numerous cases that show that the person the client incarnated in a past life actually existed

I believe that the elements mentioned above appear convincing enough to take the phenomenon of reincarnation more seriously.

To add to these facts I should mention Stevenson’s work on reincarnation. Stevenson was a psychiatrist who worked for the University of Virginia School of Medicine for fifty years. He carefully analyzed many cases of reincarnation among children.

Indeed, in certain cases, it seems to be possible for small children to remember their most recent previous life with a surprising accuracy. However, as they grow older they generally forget everything.

Implications of reincarnation in our lives

If reincarnation were to be real, then it would have huge implications on our life:

We would all have a clear purpose. We reincarnated in our present life for a reason. Newton’s patients explained that they chose their present body for a particular reason, that is: to improve a certain aspect of their personality.
We would have to be totally responsible for our life. Michael Newton wrote: “Souls voluntarily select less than perfect bodies and difficult lives to address karmic debts or to work on different aspects of a lesson they have had trouble with in the past.” If we did choose our current body to achieve a certain objective in this life, then, no matter how hard our current life is, we know that we chose it and thus need to keep moving forward and improve ourselves.
Relying on our intuition would be more important than we think. Once reincarnated, unfortunately, we are unable to remember anything from our previous life except for certain very rare cases. Our intuition may then be crucial to help us stay on track with the real purpose we set to ourselves before entering our current body.
There would be no need to be afraid of death. If reincarnation is real, then our soul never die until it is purified. Knowing that can bring us a certain peace of mind!
Materialistic things wouldn’t be important. If we reincarnate again and again, it is certainly not to become more and more materialistic each time; it is to become more tolerant, more caring for others and more selfless. Making money or acquiring materialistic things would be even less relevant than we might think.
There would be no need for feelings of inferiority or superiority. In the spirit world, souls are divided into different levels but according to clients report, there is no sense of superiority or inferiority. If we are indeed trying to purify our soul there is no need to disrespect or belittle others in our current life as it is unlikely to help us in our quest.

Need for further scientific studies

Reincarnation is certainly hard to believe and raises more questions than it brings answers. However, I believe there are a lot of things that could be done to assess in a more scientific way whether reincarnation might be real or not. It is true that hypnosis might not be recognized as a scientific method but the following studies, if conclusive, would make it hard for “rational” minds to ignore the possible existence of reincarnation.

1.Hypnotize people from the same “soul group” and cross-check their stories. In his book Michael Newton explains that his clients all belongs to a group of about 5 or 6 souls that tend to reincarnate together as friends or members of the same family. Whenever possible, it would be interesting to hypnotize members of the same soul group and cross-check their stories while making sure no information has been shared between them.

2. Hypnotize the same person using different hypnotherapists and cross-check the story. Sessions generally last about 3 or 4 hours and it might be very difficult for patients to give the same amount of details in a different session with another hypnotherapist. For instance, we could imagine a study where a patient would be hypnotized by three different hypnotherapists; no communication would be allowed between them. The following things could be checked:

Whether the name of the spiritual guide remains the same
Whether the patient’s soul group members are still the same
Whether the patient remembers the same past lives

3. Hypnotize the few people who were able to remembered their most recent past life when they were children. We could start with people who were featured in books like “Children Who Remember Previous Lives” by Ian Stevenson.

Of course, a committee of scientists should be in charge of designing and supervising the study to ensure its validity. If the results were highly congruent, even scientists would have to recognize the possibility that reincarnation may actually exist. It is quite surprising that such a study hasn’t be done yet, or if it has, that we haven’t heard about it.

If you know of such kind of studies, please let me know 🙂

What about you? Do you believe in reincarnation? Who do you believe you were in your previous life?
Leave me a comment below to share your thoughts with me.

Finally, for those who want to learn more about LBL (Life Between Lives) hypnotherapy, become a LBL hypnotherapists themselves or look for LBL therapists in their area, check The Newton Institute’s homepage.
If you like this article share it with your friends and join my FACEBOOK page here.

Finally, make sure to SIGN UP to receive my FREE E-BOOK 🙂

The 5 Commandments of Personal Development

The Power of Hypnosis – Some Unconventional Ways to Use Hypnosis

Tell a hypnotized subject that your finger is a red hot poker and he will not only grimace with pain at your touch, but his cardiovascular and lymphatic systems will react just as if your finger were a red hot poker and produce inflammation and perhaps a blister on the skin. – Maxwell Maltz

When you hear the word “hypnosis” what comes to your mind? If you had the opportunity would you like to be hypnotized? Why or why not?

I’m personally fascinated by the power of the mind and how our beliefs of the world create our own subjective reality. Hypnosis is an excellent way to realize how believing in something make it real beyond what you can imagine and how our subconscious mind can seriously get in our way by running counterproductive beliefs.

We are all operating under a subjective model of reality that is the result of our environment, the various experiences we went through in our life and the way we chose to interpret these events. In that sense, we can say that we’ve all been hypnotized to a certain extent.

Hypnosis can be a great way to access to your subconscious mind and re-program it in order to get rid of phobias and limiting beliefs among other problems.

However, hypnosis might be able to do much more than that? What if hypnosis could provide us with answers to deeper questions like: “Do we have a soul?” or “Where are we coming from?”

In this article I would like to introduce you to 3 untypical hypnotists and show you what it may be possible to do with hypnosis. You might not believe some of the things I will talk about in this article or might find them rather controversial but I encourage you to stay open-minded 🙂

Derren Brown – When Everything Seems Possible

You might have heard of Derren Brown. He is a famous English illusionist, mentalist and hypnotist known for his appearances on various TV shows. He is so talented that it looks as if he had some psychic superpowers. However, he, himself, is a sceptic and likes to denounce so-called psychic who pretend to have such power.

Now, let me introduce you to a few interesting experiments he made for TV shows.

The invisible man

In this video Derren Brown make himself invisible!

Sitting in freezing ice water

Derren Brown was looking for a candidate who was very receptive to hypnosis to become the main character of his show “The Assassin” mentioned below. After putting him under hypnosis, he asked him to sit in freezing ice water (less that 2 degrees). The result is quite impressive !

The Assassin

There is often a debate on whether we can get people under hypnosis to get things they don’t want to do or not. In this show, Derren Brown wanted to see whether we could actually program someone to kill without him remembering anything at all. This show was inspired by the story of Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated Robert Kennedy in 1968 and claims that he doesn’t remember anything because he was under some kind of hypnosis. Check out what happened!

Short version (9 min)

Full version (48 min)

Mark Cunningham – Erotic Hypnosis

Mark Cunningham is a hypnotherapist whom an acquaintance of mine learnt hypnosis from. After asking to be introduced to that hypnotherapist, I discovered that he was now specialized in a rather unusual field: erotic hypnosis. Not exactly what I had in mind when considering learning hypnosis. One of the main things he is doing according to his word is to “re-ignite a woman’s sexuality, training them to become fully orgasmic, highly responsive, and having their primal sexuality infused throughout their whole lives…” In our modern world, it can be more difficult for women than for men to express fully their sexuality. Mark Cunningham put women under hypnosis and have them having orgasm on command and help them reignite their sexuality. It’s an interesting way to use hypnosis.

I encourage you to check out his website if you are interested. He has some demonstration videos. http://renegadehypnotist.com/

N.B. You might find some of his stuff to be quite controversial.

Michael Newton – Life Between Lives

Michael Newton has been a hypnotherapist for over 50 years. At the beginning he was rather a traditional therapist helping his clients with problems like insomnia or depression. From time to time, some patients would come to him and ask him if he could put them under hypnosis in order to help them relive their past lives, but he would refuse saying that he wasn’t into that kind of things.

One day, a patient came and asked him if he could de-program an injury that he thought was from his childhood. He felt pain under the ribs on his left side and it was getting worse. He couldn’t sleep well. He had seen several doctors but they couldn’t find anything and said it was a psychosomatic disorder.

Michael Newton accepted to offer him his help but he couldn’t find anything from his childhood that would account for his patient’s pain on his left side. Finally, in frustration, he said to his patient “I want you go to the source of your pain. When was the first time that you felt this pain?”

Suddenly, the patient started screaming: “I’m being bayoneted”. He was remembering a past life during World War I where he was a British sergeant in the fourth corps. Michael Newton who was sceptic, asked him a lot of questions. His patient gave him a lot of details and when he checked out later, what he found out surprisingly concurred with his patient’s explanations.

He then went on studying thousand of cases of life between lives during the 70s and 80s before publishing his first book: Journey of Souls in 1994.

I highly encourage you to watch Michael Newton’s interview below

I decided to start with his second book Destiny of Souls published in 2000 and I’m half through it. Honestly, it’s one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read. Michael Newton has been a hypnotherapist for over 50 years and what he is talking about is the result of thousand of cases he encountered in his career. Yet, his description of the life between lives is so detailed that it sounds completely crazy and hard to believe. Interestingly, there are a lot of similarities in how patients recall their life between lives, and it is so detailed that it can’t help but wonder how they could possibly be making it all up.

Here is a very brief summary of some ideas in his books: Souls are timeless and immortal entities. They reincarnate in a different bodies that are chosen for specific reasons. (Usually as an opportunity to grow and overcome shortcomings). Indeed, it seems like souls are constantly doing personal development to purify themselves. That’s cool! Once we die, we come back to the spirit world where we can reflect on our past life and review the progress we’ve made before choosing a new body to reincarnate in. In the spirit world there is no sense of time and we can very well spend hundred of years there before reincarnating in a new body.

If you are interested, I encourage you to read one of his books. You will find a lot more details about the life between lives.

I can’t help wondering what a sceptic hypnotist like Derren Brown would say about Michael Newton’s work.

What about you? Have you been hypnotized before? If not, would you like to? What would be the purpose? Finally, do you believe in life between lives and reincarnation?

Leave me a comment below to share your thoughts with me.
If you like this article share it with your friends and join my FACEBOOK page here.

Finally, make sure to SIGN UP to receive my FREE E-BOOK 🙂

The 5 Commandments of Personal Development

#4 The Biggest Mystery of All Time – Why so Few People Know About Spiritual Enlightenment

This article is the fourth article of the spiritual enlightenment series. I encourage you to read the previous articles before going through that article

What is Spiritual Enlightenment? – Are You Seeing Reality as It is?

What is Spiritual Enlightenment? – What is Preventing You From Seeing Reality?

What are the Benefits of Spiritual Enlightenment?

Why so few people know about spiritual enlightenment is probably the biggest mystery of all time. During my personal development journey, I sometimes discover things I didn’t know and wonder why nobody told me that before, but spiritual enlightenment is by far the most shocking revelation ever. Isn’t it crazy? The idea that we are not our body-mind, that all the world is part of the same and unique awareness, that we are not seeing reality as it is and that our true nature is lasting happiness.

In reality, enlightenment has been known for thousands of years. The Buddha awakened 2,500 years ago and Jesus 2,000 years ago. Yet 2,000 years later not much progress has been made. How many people are spiritually awake today? How many Christians even know that Jesus was enlightened and what enlightenment is all about? It is very unlikely that even the Pope is enlightened.

Isn’t it surprising that in a highly connected world where we are only one click away from all the knowledge in the world and where one stupid video can make the buzz and be seen instantly by millions of people all around the world, enlightenment remains unknown to most of us? Can you believe that enlightenment is not even really part of the countless theory conspiracies existing around the world?

It is true that it might require a lot of work to become spiritually enlightened. Some people might very well spend their entire life trying to reach enlightenment without finding it.

However, this should not prevent people from, at least, knowing what enlightenment is. Shouldn’t we have the freedom to choose whether we are willing to transcend our ego and uncover our true self or not?

So what are the main reasons why so few people know about enlightenment?

People don’t believe in spiritual enlightenment

It is probably the biggest reason. People simply don’t believe in it. That’s why they don’t see the need to learn more about it. The only way to verify whether enlightenment is real would be to experience it which only few people does. Many people may think: “Why should we believe in a minority of people talking about all this spirituality nonsense?” and it is a perfectly valid point.

Having said that, doesn’t it spur your curiosity that people like Buddha or Jesus still have so much impact today, 2,000 years later? What is it in their teaching that resonates with us? There must be something. My assumption is that, without really understanding why, we perceive the truth through their teaching and that triggers something within us. Nature may simply be calling us.

People believe that only very special people can reach spiritual enlightenment

Many people believe that only a handful of very special people can, through many years of practice, reach enlightenment. However, in reality, at least in theory, we can all reach enlightenment since it is the essence of what each of us are!

Unfortunately, it is true that there is no scientific method, at least not yet, that would guarantee the access to enlightenment. Enlightenment requires the entire destruction of our current identity; the identity created by our mind (our story, our beliefs, our identification to our body-mind…). It will generally take thousand of hours of practice but is it a high price to pay for lasting happiness? Try to count how many thousands of hours you watched TV throughout your life? Did it bring you lasting happiness, peace of mind and make your fear of death disappear? Actually, for those who are interested, I don’t see any reason why seeking one’s true nature could not become a hobby like any other. But, it cannot happen if people don’t know about enlightenment.

The ego doesn’t want to know about spiritual enlightenment

I believe the ego is what prevents enlightenment practice to spread. I personally read several books on enlightenment and watched many videos from spiritually enlightened people like Mooji, Adyashanti or Eckhart Tolle. However, I realized how easy it is in our busy life to forget about enlightenment. Even, if I have no doubt that enlightenment is real, still my ego is constantly telling me “Come on, it cannot be real”, “Maybe it does not exist” or “You would never be able to reach it. Why waste your time?” It is how tricky the ego can be. Enlightenment is the death of the ego and the last thing your ego wants is to die!

The happier you are with your current life, the less likely you are to get interested in enlightenment and practice diligently. However, no matter how happy you think you are right now, from enlightened people’s point of view, you are still living in hell. The Devil is simply a little bit nicer to you. Aren’t you curious to discover what it is that they found that is so extraordinary?

Do you believe in spiritual enlightenment? Are you willing to transcend your ego? Why?

Leave me a comment below to tell me why or why not.

If you found this article useful share it with your friends 😉

#1 What is Spiritual Enlightenment? – Are You Seing Reality as It Is?

#2 What is Spiritual Enlightenment? – What is Preventing You From Seeing Reality?

#3 What are the Benefits of Spiritual Enlightenment?

#5 What an Enlightened Being Really Look Like – Debunking the Myth

You might also want to join my FACEBOOK page here

Finally, make sure to SIGN UP to receive my FREE E-BOOK 🙂

The 5 Commandments of Personal Development

#3 What are the Benefits of Spiritual Enlightenment?

If you’re lucky and the gods are gracious or if you are gifted with divine grace (use any theological expression you want), you might suddenly understand who “I” is, and you’ll never be the same again, never. Nothing will ever be able to touch you again and no one will ever be able to hurt you again. You will fear no one and you will fear nothing. Isn’t that extraordinary? You’ll live like a king, like a queen. This is what it means to live like royalty. Not rubbish like getting your picture in the newspapers or having a lot of money. That’s a lot of rot. You fear no one because you’re perfectly content to be nobody. You don’t give a damn about success or failure. They mean nothing. Honor, disgrace, they mean nothing either. Isn’t that a wonderful state to be in! – Anthony de Mello

This article is the third article of a series of article about Spiritual Enlightenment. Before reading this article I encourage you to read:

As we have seen previously, spiritual enlightenment requires us to get rid of our ego which is not an easy task to do! Why should you work so hard to drop everything that you believe makes up for your identity? Your ego wants some benefits, it likes rewards and is asking “What’s in it for me?”. See, it is already trying to attach itself to this idea of spiritual enlightenment and create a new identity out of it. It would like to be able to say proudly “I am spiritually enlightened”. Watch out!

Do you want to know what enlightened people look like?

In this article, I would like to give you an overview of some of the benefits of spiritual enlightenment. Just for your information, unfortunately I’m not enlightened and haven’t direct experience of it :-p

A good way to start is to use the analogy previously mentioned of the movie and the light projecting on the screen. Imagine for a moment that you are the light projecting itself on the screen. Can the movie playing on the screen affect you? No, because you are not an actor in the movie, you are the movie! You are the light creating the movie. Everything that happens in the movie cannot affect or change you in any way. I hope this illustration gives you an idea of what it is like to be enlightened.

The End of Separation

I explained previously that enlightenment simply means that you are coming back to your natural state. I also mentioned awareness. So what is this awareness? Different people have different ways to call it. I like the word awareness but some people call it “god” or “consciousness” for instance. When people wake up, they realize that there is no separation in the world. Behind any single object or living being in the universe, there is this awareness. Awareness is one. Eckhart Tolle says that we are a drop in the ocean and at the same time we are the ocean itself. In reality, separation is created by our mind.

It doesn’t mean that physical objects or people don’t exist. Spiritually enlightened people still see people and objects the way we see them, but they realize and experience, in a way that they all qualify as indescribable, the oneness of Awareness behind everything they see.

All the world as we see it is awareness projecting itself to take the shape of people, things and any other elements that constitute the universe. Doesn’t it remind you of something? Personally, it reminds me of the Big Bang. If you believe the universe was created by a unique source of energy, then enlightenment doesn’t sound such a crazy thing to believe in anymore.

Spiritually Enlightened People Feel Complete

As you know, the ego always wants more and is never satisfied. One of the biggest benefits of being enlightened is that you don’t need anything anymore. You are complete and perfectly content with yourself. One thing that people have to understand is that pretty every much everything we are doing in our life is actually an attempt to reach this level of completeness. All our desires to be successful, to impress people, to be recognized and to be loved come from this underlying feeling of “not being complete”.

Enlightenment is simply the recognition that we are already complete and that we don’t need anything or anyone to make us happy. After all, apart from human being, what else in the universe is unhappy and feels incomplete? As the American spiritual teacher Adyashanti says: “You don’t find oak trees having existential crisis”. If our true essence is awareness and awareness is one, then the idea of incompleteness becomes totally irrelevant.

Spiritually Enlightened People Experience Lasting Happiness

Enlightened people experience lasting happiness. They don’t need to do anything in particular to be fulfilled. Happiness is their natural state. It is also our natural state but we simply don’t realize it because our ego stands in the way. Their happiness has nothing to do with the happiness we usually experience. It is not a happiness that comes from the mind. It is not a happiness that has different degrees like when you say “I’m quite happy” or “I’m really happy”. Its opposite is not sadness. There is no opposite.

Spiritually Enlightened People Are Never Upset

If I’m not a person, but the underlying awareness behind that person, how can you hurt me? If I think myself to be noboby and have no need to prove anything to anyone what can you do to me.? Can four-letter words affect awareness? Can a sword hurts the wind?

However, it doesn’t mean that they will never ever get angry. The spiritual teacher Mooji declares himself that he does sometimes get angry but it never lasts very long. Enlightened people don’t attach themselves to their thoughts and don’t dwell on the past. Thoughts and feelings are just clouds that disappear quickly.

Do enlightened people feel physical pain? Yes, physical pain still exists. However, the mental suffering that accompanies pain disappears. Pain comes and goes and lives no scars. There is no mental sufferings, no identification with pain. What does pain without mental suffering feels like. I don’t know!

Spiritually Enlightened People Love Everyone and Everything

Enlightened people claim they love everyone and everything. How can someone love a criminal for instance? I had a hard time understand that point but it is precisely because I was trying to understand it using my mind.

It is not like they are trying hard to love everyone or pretend to love everyone and everything. Love experienced by people after they wake up is unconditional love. This unconditional love is the by-product of awakening. It unfolds automatically once people experience their true essence and realize that there is no separation in the world. What most of us are calling love is in reality an attachment and a need for someone else, a desire for the other person to make us complete; NOT unconditional love. Here is a great analogy for unconditional love by Anthony de Mello:

Is it possible for the rose to say, “I will give my fragrance to the good people who smell me, but I will withhold it from the bad”? Or is it possible for the lamp to say, “I will give my light to the good people in this room, but I will withhold it from the evil people”? Or can a tree say, “I’ll give my shade the good people who rest under me, but I will withhold it from the bad”? These are images of what love is about.

Spiritually Enlightened People Experience the End of Time

For the ego to survive, it must make time – past and future – more important than the present moment. The ego cannot tolerate becoming friendly with the present moment, except briefly just after it got what it wanted. But nothing can satisfy the ego for long. As long as it runs your life, there are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other. – Eckhart Tolle

Have you try to experience time directly? You will realize that you can’t! It is impossible for us to experience time directly. When we think about the past or the future it is always in the present moment. Surprisingly, the present moment is timeless!

Like separation, time is also a creation of the mind. To realize our true essence we must focus on the present moment. It is the only thing that is real and thus our only way to enlightenment.

Spiritually Enlightened People Are Fearless

People are not afraid of death, they are afraid of losing their ego. – Osho

Enlightened people are not afraid of death. If we are not the body-mind but just awareness how can we die? As the Indian spiritual teacher Maharaj said “Your idea that you were born and that you will die is absurd – both logic and experience contradict it”. Our identity created by our mind through our thoughts, that is, our ego, dies but not the essence of who we really are. That’s what people realize when they awaken.

These are a few benefits of being enlightened. Pretty cool, isn’t it? Are you ready to trade your ego for these benefits? Leave me a comment below and let me know your thoughts on that.

In the next article we will explain why so few people are enlightened.

Articles in the same series:

#1 What is Spiritual Enlightenment? – Are You Seing Reality as It Is?

#2 What is Spiritual Enlightenment? – What is Preventing You From Seeing Reality?

#4 The Biggest Mystery of All Time – Why so Few People Know About Spiritual Enlightenment

#5 What an Enlightened Being Really Look Like – Debunking the Myth

If you like this article share it with your friends and join my FACEBOOK page here

Make sure to SIGN UP to receive my FREE E-BOOK:

The 5 Commandments of Personal Development

#2 What is Spiritual Enlightenment? – What is Preventing You from Seeing Reality?

It’s going to take a lot of awareness for you to understand that perhaps this thing you call “I” is simply a conglomeration of your past experiences, of your conditioning and programming. That’s painful. In fact, when you’re beginning to awaken, you experience a great deal of pain. It’s painful to see your illusions being shattered. Everything that you thought you had built up crumbles and that’s painful. That’s what repentance is all about; that’s what waking up is all about. – Anthony de Mello

Before reading this article please read “What is the Ego” and “What is Spiritual Enlightenment?”

In my previous article I explained what spiritual enlightenment is and also explained that we are not seeing the reality as it is. So why are we not seeing reality as it is?

What is preventing us from seeing reality is simply our mind. Our mind is creating artificial identification/separation with things or people. The main causes for these are:

Social conditioning
Labeling

Social conditioning and the ego

You have to understand that you basically spent your entire life believing you were your ego, letting your thoughts, your memories and your interpretation of events determined who you were. You already had a name before you were born. That’s how early starts social conditioning! Then you learnt all this concepts: success, recognition, approval, disapproval, power, competition… and you start caring a lot about what other people think of you.

Your parents and your teachers taught you that your self-worth depends on how well you respond to their expectations, on how well you behave in accordance with society’s “rules”. As a result, you became convinced that your values as a human being were equal to your values as a social being.

If people respect you, approve you and love you, then you feel great about it. On the contrary, if they insult you, disrespect you or ignore you, then you feel unworthy.

To put it simply, you unconsciously gave power to others to decide your self-worth! Society made you believe that your self-worth or your happiness depend on how others perceive you. As a result, you constantly try to maintain your self-worth by achieving more, to be better than others or to be loved and respected by people around you. Isn’t it tiring?

See this great video on social conditioning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su5BWEvgTlQ

We are all trying so hard to be somebody and believe success will bring us fulfillment. It’s what we have been made to believe after all. However, that’s an illusion. All spiritual teachers themselves, after years and years of self-enquiry, realized that they are nothing and they will never ever be anything. Enlightenment doesn’t sound that exciting anymore, does it? Who wants to be nobody? It is not that bad actually. It is rather the opposite since you feel complete and at peace, and nothing is needed anymore to make you happy. We will talk about the benefits of enlightenment in the next article.

Labeling

Our mind can only comprehend the world by giving name to things and creating artificial separations. As we learn to label things around us, our mind creates images and these things become concepts.

However, labeling prevents us from seeing reality as it involves mind activity. We are not seeing reality as it is because we look at it through concepts created by our mind.

Thinking is what creates the ego through separation or identification with other things and people, so obviously we cannot get rid of the ego by thinking. What it means is that we cannot reach enlightenment through the mind. To reach enlightenment we must stop thinking. We must stop identifying with thoughts that come and go.

What getting rid of the ego really means

Dropping your ego is not just getting rid of your pride or stop taking things personally. It is much more than that. To give you an idea of what it really means let me quote the famous Indian spiritual teacher Maharaj:

“If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling. Even the idea of being man or woman, or even human, should be discarded. The ocean of life contains all, not only humans. So, first of all, abandon all self-identification; stop thinking of yourself as such-and-such, so-and-so, this or that. Abandon all self-concern, worry not about your welfare, material or spiritual; abandon every desire, gross or subtle, stop thinking of achievement of any kind. You are complete here and now- you need absolutely nothing.”

Pretty intense isn’t it. You might start to understand now why so few people seek enlightenment.

In a sense getting rid of the ego is actually very similar to committing suicide – not physically speaking but mentally speaking. It is dying before dying. It is why, in certain rare cases, people under great suffering may suddenly awaken. It is precisely what happened to Eckhart Tolle, the best-selling author of The Power of Now when he was 29 years old. He was depressed, very unhappy and suicidal for many years. Then one day, he awakened without doing anything. A complete separation between his body-mind, and his being occurred and everything became suddenly so peaceful. At the time, he didn’t know what happened to him and it is only later that he learned about Enlightenment.

The Ego is Incredibly Tricky

After reading Maharaj quote you might have felt a strong negative reaction from your ego. You are likely to have strong attachments to some people, things or beliefs and you can’t think of any reason in the world why you should let go of these attachments. Now, you understand the power of the ego. Even if you perfectly understood the benefits of dropping your ego, your mind would still do whatever it can to make sure that it does not happen. Your ego wants to survive.

Seeking Enlightenment seems like a hassle. You might think: “What should you destroy my “identity” to reach it?”

In the next article we will see in detail what are the benefits of Enlightenment.

Are you ready to let go of your ego? What are the things you are not ready to drop in your life? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts with me 😉

#3 What Are the Benefits of Spiritual Enlightenment?

#4 The Biggest Mystery of All Time – Why so Few People Know About Spiritual Enlightenment

#5 What an Enlightened Being Really Look Like – Debunking the Myth

Join my FACEBOOK page here

Make sure to SIGN UP to receive my FREE E-BOOK:

The 5 Commandments of Personal Development

#1 What is Spiritual Enlightenment? – Are You Seeing Reality as It is?

He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened. – Lao Tzu

The chances that you will wake up are in direct proportion to the amount of truth you can take without running away. – Anthony de Mello

If you haven’t read my previous article about the ego yet, please read it first before going through this article.

What is spiritual enlightenment? In this series of article I would like to debunk the myth of spiritual enlightenment (also called spiritual awakening) and give you a clear definition of spiritual enlightenment without adding superficial and misleading information.

Let me warn you now. Learning about spiritual enlightenment will shatter all your beliefs about yourself and about the world beyond what you can ever imagine.

How much truth can you take without running away?

What is Spiritual Enlightenment?

When you hear about spiritual enlightenment, what comes to your mind? Is it the image of the Buddha in a lotus position meditating under a tree? Is it the image of an Indian guru living in a cave? In either case you probably imagine these people to be kind of disconnected from reality.

Spiritual enlightenment is one of the most fascinating topics that exist. I think everybody should know about it.

The greater mystery of all time is actually that so few people know about spiritual enlightenment and even less seek it. Personally, I had heard about it before, but it is only after several years of intense personal development work, a great sense of curiosity and a bit of luck that I started digging into that topic. And it’s not like it is something new. It has been around for thousands of years.

Let’s start by explaining what is enlightenment in a very simple way

Enlightenment is coming back to your true nature. It is getting rid of the clouds that are preventing the light within you to shine.

What is the true nature I am talking about here?

If you are like 99.999% of the population, you believe that you are a person right? But are you?

Spiritual enlightenment is the realization that the person we think we are is actually a mere projection of what we really are. The person is just the manifestation of our essence, which is, awareness. Our body and our mind are only media through which awareness manifests itself. We mistakenly believe we are in the movie while in reality we are simple the light that creates the movie by projecting itself to the screen. You are not a person!

That’s why enlightened people often refer to “normal” people as living in a dream state. That’s also why enlightenment is also called “awakening”. When you are in a dream, it seems so real that you don’t even realize that you are dreaming, do you? That’s exactly what is happening to you! While reading this article you are deeply asleep.

Why are we trapped in the dream state?

Let’s assume that you buy into that enlightenment “stuff”. Why are we trapped in the dream state then? Why can’t we wake up and simply come back to our true nature, to the essence of who we are? What are these dark clouds that won’t allow the light to pass through?

It is your ego that creates these clouds. (Read What is the ego?)

Let me refresh your mind by explaining briefly what the ego is. The ego is a mind-made entity that is only interested in its own survival. It constantly needs to strengthen its identity and is never satisfied. It is a mere creation of the mind that results from thinking.

Our compulsive thinking creates our personal story. Rather than living in the present we spend our time thinking about a past and the future. Our thoughts create then feelings of attachment to people, things, beliefs or our personal story. These thoughts create the illusion that we are our body and our mind. “I” becomes my body and my mind and “my” becomes a way to strengthen our identity by associating to things or people. It is my wife, my car, my house, my life, my story…

Does this selfish and never satisfied entity remind you of something? You probably! Aren’t you constantly in need for love, affection, approval, money, success, attention, fame or recognition? That’s the ego. Aren’t you taking things personally? That’s the ego. By definition, taking things personally means that you believe yourself to be a person!

Put it simply, ego = attachment

Indeed, our ego, in order to exist, must attach itself to something (material or immaterial)

That thing can be:

Our body
Our thoughts/beliefs
People
Things
Experiences

This attachment generated by our ego through thoughts, creates a filter that leads us to see the world in a different way that it really is. It sounds crazy, but, believe it or not, we are NOT seeing reality as it is!

How can we see reality then? We will talk about that in the next article 😉

See other articles from the series:

#2 What is Spiritual Enlightenemnt? – What is Preventing You From Seeing Reality?

#3 What Are the Benefits of Spiritual Enlightenment?

#4 The Biggest Mystery of All Time – Why so Few People Know About Spiritual Enlightenment

#5 What an Enlightened Being Really Look Like – Debunking the Myth

Join my FACEBOOK page here

Don‘t forget to SIGN UP to receive my free E-BOOK

The 5 Commandments of Personal Development

What is the Ego?

There are people who have renounced all possessions but have a bigger ego than some millionaires. If you take away one kind of identification, the ego will quickly find another. It ultimately doesn’t mind what it identifies with as long as it has an identity. – Eckhart Tolle

The ego is a truly fascinating, yet extremely complex topic. If you really want to know more about yourself, it is fundamental that you understand what the egoic mind – as Eckhart Tolle called it – is and how it works. Becoming more aware of your ego will have tremendous implications for your life and for the life of others around you. However, you will need to be very open-minded to accept what I’m going to say in that article. You might not like it. Or should I say, your ego might not like it!

Are you aware of your ego

Notice that your current understanding of the ego depends on how self-aware you currently are. People at the lowest level of consciousness are not even aware that the ego exists and is running their entire life. They are completely enslaved by their ego, dominated by their thoughts, trapped in their mind.

On the contrary, people with the highest level of consciousness are able to see through their ego, and to reach a point where they can transcend it after a long and intense battle with their mind. Their thoughts then mean absolutely nothing, their mind is a tool, a way of expression of their higher self. They are the master of their mind not its slave.

What is the ego?

Let’s clarify what I mean by ego. We often say of someone that he has a “big “ego referring to ego as something close to pride. However, pride is only one of the many ways the ego manifests itself within a person. Because you don’t show any apparent pride, and appear shy or modest doesn’t mean your ego is not controlling you. It may very well control your life beyond what you can imagine.

So what is the ego? The ego refers to the entire identity that you – or to be more precise your mind – has been constructed throughout your life. How was your identity created? It’s very simple. Your identity was created through your thoughts and is still changing right now as you are thinking. Actually, your entire identity is a mind-made identity created solely by your thoughts; it has no concrete reality. Events that happen to you throughout your life have absolutely no meaning in themselves. It is only your interpretation, based on your thoughts, that gives meaning to those events and create your story and identity.

Where does the ego come from?

It is a great question that I wish I could answer. Actually I don’t think anyone, even the greatest spiritual teachers, has the answer. As we don’t know why the universe exists, how it was created and what created it, we don’t know either why the ego exists and why it works so hard to ensure its survival at our depends.

Your ego needs an identity

Your ego is a mind-made selfish entity that is only concerned about its own survival. It will do whatever it can to survive. It doesn’t care about your happiness. Your ego doesn’t want you to be at peace. It doesn’t want you to rest. It wants you to be a go-getter, to do something, to have something, to pursue something, to achieve something and to become “somebody”. It is never satisfied.

Your ego, in order to exist needs an identity. It is through identification with things, people or beliefs that it creates its own identity.

Here is some examples of what your ego identify with:

Things

The ego likes to identify with materialistic things. Needless to say that it strives in today’s world. Nothing could make it happier. In a sense, we can say that capitalism and the consumer society is a creation of collective egos. That’s why it has been working quite well for a while. On the contrary, communism failed because it was based on a false assumption that people are egoless. My guess is that in a community of egoless enlightened people communism could actually work pretty well.

In itself buying things is not a problem. Just watch out for your ego. If you feel a sense of attachment to those things, if you need them, it means that your ego is standing in the way. Marketers know that very well. That’s how marketing works actually. Marketing is used as a way to create so-called “value” to customers. In reality, in most cases it is just a way to activate people’s ego. By buying a certain product, people buy into the “value” delivered by the product and their ego creates a false identity out of it. It is not the product that they are buying it’s the “value”. They don’t need any of these things, but their ego – which is what they think they are – needs it.

Trying to find oneself in things is a lost battle that nobody has ever won!

Persons

The ego also derives it sense of identity from relationships.

The ego is only interested in the following things: “What can I get from that person?” Does that person allow me to strengthen my identity?” It doesn’t care about anything else.

Understand that we don’t consciously choose to act out of our ego. Actually, the ego is neither good nor bad, it is just a result of unconsciousness. The ego automatically starts to fade away once we become aware of it. Ego and awareness cannot coexist.

Let’s see how the ego works in the following cases

Parents/child relationships

Some parents’ egos lead to the creation of strong sense of attachment and identification with their children. It is based on the false belief that their children are their “own”. As a result, they try to control their children’s life once they reach adulthood or they try to “use” them as a way to live the life they wanted to live to name a few tricks of the ego. Of course, everything happens largely unconsciously. (See also 4 Disturbing Truths You’d Prefer to Ignore)

Couples

The feeling of needing someone is very much a play of the ego too. Anthony de Mello has a beautiful way to put it when he says: “Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality, by understanding that we don’t need people”. Once we realize that we don’t need anyone, then we can start enjoy people’s company and see them as they really are rather than thinking consciously or unconsciously about what you can get from them. Do you need people? Why?

Your body

Your ego loves your body because it is the easiest thing to identify with. We don’t have to look that far to see how strongly we are identified with our body. Most people derive their self-worth from their body, from the way they look, how much they weigh, how tall they are, what the color of their skin is etc.

It is very convenient for the ego to have a body it can attach itself to. It allows it to create a clear identity and separation between you and others. But are you really your body? Can you prove it?

Your beliefs

Beliefs also allow the ego to create a separation and give you a sense of identity. “I am republican. You are democrat.”

Some people are so strongly attached to their beliefs that they are ready to die for it. Or worse, to kill people who disagree with them. Religion is a perfect illustration of the danger of the ego. The ego will use any kind of beliefs to strengthen its identity. People say “I am this, I am that” all the time, but it’s nothing more than a thought. People are ready to commit all kind of atrocities out of illusions coming from their mind. Nothing that comes from your mind is actually true. Is your mind really who you are? Have your thoughts real power over you?

More generally

Here is a list of things your ego generally derives its identity from

Your name
Your age
Your gender
Your nationality
Your job
Your social status
Your role (employee, housewife, parents, CEO…)
Your beliefs (political beliefs, religious beliefs…)
Your culture
Your family, your friends
Materialistic things (Your house, your car, your clothes, your phone…)
Your “personal story” (Your interpretation of the past, your expectations regarding the future)
Your desires
Your body
Your problems (illnesses, financial problems, victim mindset…)

The ego needs a sense of superiority

The ego wants to feel superior. It wants to stand out and it needs to create some kind of artificial separations to do that. Here are some stratagems your ego is using to feel superior:

Enhancing its value through people. If you are friend with a celebrity, your ego will associate with that person to try to strengthen its identity.
Gossiping. People gossip because it makes them feel different and superior in some ways.
Manifesting an inferiority complex. It hides a desire to be better than others
Manifesting a superiority complex. It hides the fear of not being good enough
Looking for fame. It gives the illusion of superiority
Being right. The ego loves to be right. It a great way for it to affirm its existence.
Complaining. When you complain by definition you are right and others are wrong. It works with objects too. You hurt a table with your leg. The table is wrong. “What was the table thinking being on my way!! Seriously.”
Seeking attention. Everything that can allow the ego to stand out is good for the ego. It includes recognition, praise or admiration to name a few. Some people might also seek attention by committing crime, wearing eccentric clothes or having tattoos all over the body for instance.

The main characteristics of the ego

Here are some main characteristics of the ego you might want to keep in mind.

The ego tends to equate having with being
The ego live through comparison
The ego is never satisfied
The ego’s sense of self-worth is often bound up with the worth you have in the eyes of others.

Do you need the ego?

The important question to ask yourself is: do you need the ego to live?

Can you live without deriving your self-worth from the way society and other people perceive us? Can you live without creating an artificial separation between you and other people? Can you live happily and without any problems or needs for external things? Can you live without creating an identity through our thoughts and becoming a slave of this fictive personal story?

Meditate on those questions. Some people have the answer and I have my idea on that too.

Who are you? What is it that never changes in you?

What is Enlightenment? What is Preventing You from Seeing Reality?

Make sure to SIGN UP to receive my FREE E-BOOK: