[BROOK]

EGO Is it really you?

I am born...I am the son of the Prince of Wales...I'm in line to be the next king of England. Everything around me is rich and posh. I want for nothing. My freedom to go in the public is infringed by cameras and reporters...I was raised to lead a Country. Everything around me reflects who I am...it was my destiny to be a King.


I am born...I am the son of a poor man in South Central Los Angeles....my brother is a gang member...I don't know how to read and write properly...it was not a priority...I'm going to grow up to be a gang member.....it was my destiny to be a gang member.

These are reflections of Social Consciousness..being termed the identity...

It is from others that you get the idea of who you are. They shape your center. This center is false, because you carry your real center. That is nobody's business. Nobody shapes it. You come with it.
You are born with it.


So you have two centers. One center you come with, which is given by existence itself. That is the self. And the other center, which is created by the society, is the ego. It is a false thing - and it is a very great trick. Through the ego the society is controlling you. You have to behave in a certain way, because only then does the society appreciate you. You have to walk in a certain way; you have to laugh in a certain way; you have to follow certain manners, a morality, a code. Only then will the society appreciate you, and if it doesn't, you ego will be shaken. And when the ego is shaken, you don't know where you are, who you are. The others have given you the idea.
That idea is the ego.


Try to understand it as deeply as possible, because this has to be thrown. And unless you throw it you will never be able to attain to the self. Because you are addicted to the center, you cannot move, and you cannot look at the self. And remember, there is going to be an interim period, an interval, when the ego will be shattered, when you will not know who you are, when you will not know where you are going, when all boundaries will melt.
You will simply be confused, a chaos.
Because of this chaos, you are afraid to lose the ego. But it has to be so. One has to pass through the chaos before one attains to the real center.
And if you are daring, the period will be small.

We all have egos...it's getting to the center that counts..to get to the center..to attain the unlimited knowing...or you can forever stay where you believe you must stay with the ego....but it is not the real you...and my ego is not the real me....I am much more..and so are all of you
The ego is plastic..not real..

going to the real center..the self..the true self, everything changes, everything settles again. But now this settling is not done by the society. Now everything becomes a cosmos, not a chaos; a new order arises. But this is no longer the order of the society - it is the very order of existence itself.

It is what Buddha calls Dhamma, Lao Tzu calls Tao, Heraclitus calls Logos , it is unlimited KNOWING. It is not man-made. It is the VERY order of existence itself. Then everything is suddenly beautiful again, and for the first time really beautiful.

The difference is just like the difference between a real flower and a plastic or paper flower. The ego is a plastic flower - dead. It just looks like a flower, it is not a flower. You cannot really call it a flower. Even linguistically to call it a flower is wrong, because a flower is something which flowers. And this plastic thing is just a thing, not a flowering. It is dead. There is no life in it.
You have a flowering center within. That's why Hindus call it a lotus - it is a flowering. They call it the one-thousand-petaled-lotus. One thousand means infinite petals. And it goes on flowering, it never stops, it never dies.

This is not to say lose who you are..your self esteem, your self love...that is essential for you to co create. and to understand your self worth. But escape the self that the unbalanced ego has led you to believe you are, when you are dissatisfied with what society has projected in you..has created in you ..when you have the power to be that great being that is in you.

The key...a balance