What is the spritual ego?

[Eternal]

Curious to understand the undertakings of the spiritual ego and how it evolves.

 

How an ego can claim awakening and enlightenment for itself?

 

I see a bunch of people claiming they are awake on the actualized forum but I assume it is molding beliefs over what is already believed. And awakening just seems to be the next best thing for the illusory self to perpetuate itself.

Edited January 17, 2023 by Eternal

[James123]

11 hours ago, Eternal said:

Curious to understand the undertakings of the spiritual ego and how it evolves.

 

How an ego can claim awakening and enlightenment for itself?

 

I see a bunch of people claiming they are awake on the actualized forum but I assume it is molding beliefs over what is already believed. And awakening just seems to be the next best thing for the illusory self to perpetuate itself.

I AM GOD is the top of the spiritual ego. I, I, I, I, I all ego 

[James123]

4 minutes ago, Saylor Twift said:

Oh right. Add that to my list as well... I sincerely do think of myself as God sometimes.

Because you "think"

[James123]

19 minutes ago, Saylor Twift said:

I do. And sometimes I have the audacity of thinking my even more audacious thoughts are accurate.

In this situation trying to find them, you will laugh at yourself 😂😂😂

[Eternal]

5 hours ago, Saylor Twift said:

I have an enormous spiritual ego.

 

I often think I’m enlightened despite only having recently heard about that. I’ve never seriously studied spirituality, and the extent of my knowledge is based almost entirely in YouTube videos. I’ve done a bunch of psychedelics, but it’s almost never been with the intention of inner growth. I constantly judge other peoples level of consciousness. I get annoyed with people who I judge as being lower consciousness than myself, and I seek validation from people who I judge as being higher consciousness than myself. I do all this despite not even really knowing what higher/lower consciousness means. I come across as totally insufferable to a lot of people and I justify it to myself by thinking that they just don’t get me. Despite thinking I know what enlightenment is and that I’ve understood “it”, I struggle to pay my bills, I struggle to keep in touch with friends, I struggle to hold a relationship for very long, I struggle to form a tangible vision for my life, I avoid responsibility with a multitude of vices and coping mechanisms, I blame other people for most of my problems, and I think pointlessly talking shit on Internet forums makes me really cool.

 

Feel free to ask me anything.

 

edit: Ooooh, another thing I do is laugh at people who I think are less enlightened than me. I said before that they annoy me, and they do, but only if I’m threatened by them somehow. Otherwise I just laugh at them and bask in the good feeling of knowing that I’m better than others.

 

edit 2: But none of the stuff I previously mentioned even burns me that bad. Here’s something that really burns... So, all I really want in the entire universe is attention from attractive women, and I’m willing to make a complete ass out of myself in order to get that. I’m also really salty because not very many of them want anything to do with me, and I’ve even let that saltiness become an integral factor in defining my entire worldview. I have so many misogynistic beliefs, that it’s hard for me to even form a genuine human connection with somebody of the opposite sex. When I finally had sex for the first time, I didn’t even tell the girl that she was my first because I thought that made me look bad. She eventually figured it out and called me out on it, and I kept pretending even though it was completely obvious. And even after all that, I still kinda think I’m enlightened.

 

Why do you want to be enlightened? and higher consciousness than others? 

[James123]

7 hours ago, Saylor Twift said:

Hope so. It feels great whenever I’m able to. 🥰

😍😍😍😍😍

[Tarak]

21 hours ago, Eternal said:

Curious to understand the undertakings of the spiritual ego and how it evolves.

 

How an ego can claim awakening and enlightenment for itself?

 

I see a bunch of people claiming they are awake on the actualized forum but I assume it is molding beliefs over what is already believed. And awakening just seems to be the next best thing for the illusory self to perpetuate itself.

In my experience, the spiritual ego is ego lying to itself that it has surpassed itself, and might even be a harder trap to acknowledge than the "normal" ego.

 

1 hour ago, Saylor Twift said:

Because I get off on thinking that I’m better than other people. It’s a genuine addiction I have. I’ve had it for as long as I can remember. The reason I’m so hooked is that grandiosity allows me to avoid looking inward, and I hate doing that. I hate looking inward because I’m extremely manipulative. I lie and cheat and manipulate so much that it legit boarders on sociopathy. I hate recognizing that because the truth is that I’ve hurt a lot of people who I love. And deep down I’m really scared of life, and I believe I need to behave like a sociopath in order to survive because that’s just the way the world is.

The boundary between being a genius that changes the world and the psychopath that kills millions is thin. We live in a society that trains us to think there is scarcity and this encourages egotistic behavior. You can do two different things with that fact: 1) believe society and become an awful person that uses people for his own gain, or 2) realize society is wrong and become a loving person not afraid of life.

You seem to hate your manipulative behavior. Ever thought that it might be a blessing? You could surely use it to use others, but you might as well use it to create positive things. I have the same "skill", but didn't use it much for malicious acts, I somehow always knew that it was wrong to do. I use it to make people doubt their own beliefs, though, not to control them, but to help them grow.

Edited January 18, 2023 by Tarak

[Tarak]

28 minutes ago, Saylor Twift said:

Well I will never be either of those things because I’m super lazy. I talk a really big game and then I don’t do anything.

I don’t think society trained, conditioned, or encouraged me to be anything. I definitely wasn’t raised in scarcity. I grew up in an extremely wealthy environment. Everyone in my extended family is a millionaire. I had opportunities growing up that most people would only dream of. I went to Europe around 15 times before I turned 20. I’ve been snowboarding in fucking Norway for fuck sake. Society didn’t condition shit into me. Society is actually super awesome in countless ways. I became as self centered as I am completely on my own.

I can’t think of any ways in which manipulating anything could be helpful. I think as of now, helping people grow isn’t my place in the world. I’m definitely the one who needs to grow. 

 

It might be worth it to look what this fear of life you mentioned earlier comes from. Are you afraid of being alone? Have you put expectations on yourself (make as much money as your family) that you are afraid to fail? Maybe you feel worthless because you have no satisfying goal? No idea, but finding the cause of your fear seems to be important.

 

And it's great that you say you "need" to grow. The desire to grow is what makes us ascend mediocrity. By growing yourself, you are actually helping everyone around you. You might see yourself as only the student, but you are as much the teacher.

[Mandy]

When you forget that forgiveness and love are only now and think you got them and can take them along with you instead of them just being a constant.

[Phil]

On 1/17/2023 at 4:15 PM, Eternal said:

Curious to understand the undertakings of the spiritual ego and how it evolves.

It’s thought attachment, the believing of thoughts. 

 

Starts with an idea of a self, the separate self of thought, as a coping mechanism of aversion (from feeling). The thoughts aren’t true and feel discordant, but the thoughts are believed to be true and so the discord is believed to be felt because the thoughts (about a self) are true. But the discord is felt because the thoughts aren’t true. Conceptualizing spirituality is a means of spiritually bypassing the emotional suppression, most often due to intense trauma. 

 

Conditioning ‘teaches’ to ‘push through’, ‘suffering through it’, ‘man up’, ‘there just is suffering in life’, ‘bury it’, ‘work past it’, etc. This suppression comes from the suppressed & conditioned, from ignorance & aversion, and is like pouring gas on a fire, creating confusion & suffering. 

 

It ‘evolves’ into essentially vanity of & defense of the intellect as a believed identify, and is an identifying as the knower, understander, or in extreme cases, the enlightened self. The materialist’s paradigm is discounted and overlooked as comparative thoughts about self & other are believed. Thoughts which are, again, very isolating, separating & discordant feeling. 

 

 

The resolve is meditation, emotional expression and inspecting the thoughts. This is formidable for the intellect, because it’s the investigation of what’s actual, and the intellect isn’t actual. One thought at a time for every one is what’s actual in this regard. The humility of this is too much for an intensified intellect. Like attempting to bring a train with much momentum to rest. It feels like too big of a loss, which is again the misunderstanding of discord, the ego’s hijacking of feeling, unfortunately reinforcing conditioning via adaptation ‘inner world’ wise. 

 

A lot of thought activity goes into upholding the facade of identity, ‘protecting’ the separate self of thought, the intellect, from addressing the insecurity, inferiority or the like which arose via aversion from feeling from in the first place. The intellect is very sneaky and will frame this inspection as the ultimate facing of fears, unaware the intellect has already hijacked feeling by believing fear is complex and not just an emotion which has been guidance for the self referential thoughts all along.

 

This creates a loop of discordant feeling thoughts, and rationalizations & justifications for the behaviors and actions which follow, and discordant feeling self referential thoughts in hindsight, about the behaviors & actions. ‘Beating up on yourself’ or, ‘being hard on yourself’. The intellect will always address this ‘in the future’ (where feeling is not) which of course never actually comes & therein can never actually be done, because it’s as illusory as the intellectual (believing of thoughts), and feeling is always (the) present. The “separate self”, the “ego” is never present, always ‘in’ a past or future. Always about ‘what I did’ or ‘what I’m going to do’, never about alignment of behaviors & actions right now. Never actually self-accountable, therein never actually arriving at self-respect or integrity, therein keeping the whole loop going, and attracting to the tune of denying one even is attracting. 

 

The suffering can intensify taking a toll on health, and yet it is deemed easier by the intellect for the intellect to manipulate every one involved rather than see the illusory nature of the intellect. Manipulation is adapted to & identified with using anything from comparative thoughts to dna to personality. This all goes unnoticed via projection onto ‘others’ / ‘the world’ (believing comparative thoughts).

 

Again, this is still just the believing of thoughts, but that’s admittedly easy to say from meditation, non-aversion, inspection, and the natural joy of having found the closet is empty. It was never a ‘monster in the closet’, it was always the false identification via the believing of thoughts. Mental gymnastics vs expressing emotions. Conceptualizing & manipulating vs allowing & alignment. The materialist’s paradigm & purporting vs the true magic and wonder of experience. Constant motivation vs the abundant ease & pleasure of inspiration. 

 

On 1/17/2023 at 4:15 PM, Eternal said:

How an ego can claim awakening and enlightenment for itself?

As an armor for the unhealed inner child & unaligned thoughts, and or to sell awakening & enlightenment. Being ‘a teacher of enlightenment’ & purporting inherently aggrandizes the ego, the idea of who one is, or, the separate self. This only creates more suffering for oneself, and so to speak, every one involved by the aversion & misleadership into aversion as well. In short, just by lying, and this not weighing on the conscience, as it’s all justified & rationalized routinely, automatically, reactionally. All manipulation is actually self-manipulation, like all mind games are of the finite mind. 

 

On 1/17/2023 at 4:15 PM, Eternal said:

 

I see a bunch of people claiming they are awake on the actualized forum but I assume it is molding beliefs over what is already believed. And awakening just seems to be the next best thing for the illusory self to perpetuate itself.

It’s the materialist’s paradigm of separate selves purported as enlightened selves. A contagion of self-manipulation, with the easy justification & rationalization being the mirroring of the misleadership. It unfortunately, isn’t noticed. Imagine telling every one on the Sea Org there’s no ‘levels’. Yet it’s also a one off in every case, not all encompassing. But, for this to continue, any one which speaks the truth about levels, states, etc, can not be allowed to stay on the Sea Org. 

[Tarak]

11 hours ago, Saylor Twift said:

I am afraid of being alone, but I’m equally afraid of having a family and not having enough time to connect with them because I feel pressured to work insane hours which don’t leave me any free time. That’s how it was with my dad, and I’ve been noticing lately how much I wish I was closer to him. I fear that if I have a family, I’ll end up hurting them by not being what they need me to be. I also put a ton of other expectations on myself. Money is one of them, but that’s not the main source of fear.

 

For more than 35 years I was what others expected me to be. I crashed at 39 years old and was suicidal for more than a year. Before the crash I worked a lot and made 4 times more than I do now, I had a decent social life, was respected because I said what people wanted to hear. Now I live under the poverty boundary but have never felt richer. I lost most of my "friends" when I started being honest about my views, but feel less lonely than before. I was an awful dad and partner because I was 100% focused on my job, now my kid adores me because I spend plenty of quality time with him.

Don't let other people's expectations (which you have made your own) make you insecure. Look to do what makes you happy, go for your dreams. In doing so, you will attract people that resonate with your path and the people who don't like your decisions will slowly fade away from your life. Everything created starts with thought. Straighten up your thoughts and everything else will follow.

Also, generational karma is a bitch. You can try to become closer to your dad, but don't hope for too much. Better is to learn from his mistakes and be a way better dad than he was.

[almond]

i'm glad you're here Tarak.. thanks for sharing, it's good advice

[Blessed2]

@Saylor Twift Yeah, it might be like that.

 

Maybe the "trauma" or "past negative experience" is a projection, or a symbol / metaphor for thoughts about separation, a finite self, believed now.

 

1 hour ago, Saylor Twift said:

It’s like the one thing in life that I’m most afraid to face is that my parents weren’t terrible. Is that twisted or what?

 

This might be due to the ego-mind (or belief in separation etc.) and it's projections being brought to light.

[Phil]

2 hours ago, Saylor Twift said:

What if trauma isn’t even real, nothing bad ever really happened, and the insistence that it did is a coping mechanism for nothing more than the coping itself? Wouldn’t that be trippy as fuck? Like how would you even process that?

Psychotherapy. 

[Eternal]

14 hours ago, Saylor Twift said:

What if trauma isn’t even real, nothing bad ever really happened, and the insistence that it did is a coping mechanism for nothing more than the coping itself? Wouldn’t that be trippy as fuck? Like how would you even process that?

I would recommend IFS therapy. Really helped me.

[Tarak]

20 hours ago, almond said:

i'm glad you're here Tarak.. thanks for sharing, it's good advice

Happy to be here, happy to share.
 

18 hours ago, Saylor Twift said:

Thanks, bro. I appreciate that. I hear what you’re saying and it’s something I want to work on. Want to hear something even heavier than what I said before though? I’ve spent years despising my parents and blaming them for every problem I’ve had in life. And they weren’t perfect. There was alcoholism, verbal abuse, and even occasional physical violence. But, sometimes when I trip balls to a colossal degree, and I mean the kind of insane trips that brake the whole universe apart, I get the thought that my parents might have loved me a lot more than I think they did, and I even get the thought that they might have been good parents. And I’m not gonna lie, that REALLY fucks with me. It’s like the one thing in life that I’m most afraid to face is that my parents weren’t terrible. Is that twisted or what?

 

I'm quite sure most (all?) parents want to love their kids unconditionally, but the traumas and conditioning they got themselves make that difficult or impossible. I didn't understand this until I got a kid myself and watched myself becoming a copy of my dad. Everything is connected.

I know it's hard, but you should try to forgive them for the mistakes they made. It will feel like you put down a heavy backpack. You could even forgive them face to face, but again: don't expect them to even understand it. Don't do it for them, but for yourself.

[Tarak]

4 hours ago, Saylor Twift said:

I gotcha, man. Thanks for the talk.

🙏 You too. By typing these things down, I realized I also still have some work in the "parent" area 😁. Thank you for the reflection!

[Joseph Maynor]

Spiritual ego is my spirituality is right and everyone else's is wrong.

[Rose]

Anybody who develops an identity around being spiritual and obsesses with “enlightenment” - not to end their suffering but to have some kind of status by it. You know they are not enlightened because they are hateful, put down others who are not on the same path, think they are better than others.

 

So basically just like any other ego really, but this ego’s theme is “spirituality”

Edited February 11 by Rose