Letting Go of the Ego

Someday everything will make sense. So, for now, laugh at the confusion, smile through the tears and keep reminding yourself that ... everything happens for a reason.
(Quote on Spiritual Networks)

I sometimes imagine a spiritual journey as a connection of two plateaus connected by a water fall. In the transition phase you are very much out of equilibrium, while on the plateau, the system is at rest. How long this journey will take is very much up to you and will crucially depend on how you interact with your ego.

At work I observed that all my ambitions have somehow vanished. Stuff that drove me in the past like being the best at what I do, or being admired by people I care for, somehow dropped by the wayside. I still do my work but it is with a new mind-set. I keep on going because I care for the people I hang out with and I still have an artistic interest in what I do. On thing is quite clear to me though, my ego is as strong as it has ever been; I have just redistributed meaning in that particular work dimension.

The spiritual journey is about letting go some of your belief system about yourself. The journey is also about realizing - and experiencing - that you are not an ego. The ego always comes in different forms and dimensions and you can never completely shake it off no matter how enlightened you are. Something has to keep you here, otherwise you would just slip away.

Sadhguru told the story of Sri Ramakrishna, the 19th century mystic of India. Sadhguru said that everyone needs something to hang onto and in Sri Ramakrishna's case it was his love for tasty food. When one day he told his wife that he had lost his appetite she knew that he had only 3 more days to live.

When you are on a plateau, the "I" that you experience is bound in one entity. When you are in a transition phase, one or more of the belief system about yourself is disintegrating. You are - over a transition period that can be quite confusing and uncomfortable - letting go of an ego dimension, just as a snake lets go of its skin. But even in this case, it is not that the snake is skinless afterwards - a new skin had come to the fore.

A spiritual journey is a soul searching exercise. Sure, long periods of peace, love and happiness await for you. But until you there, accept when life shakes you a little to prepare you for it.

I Am, That I Am

The ego is the psychological institution that builds armor around you to protect you from what is. Most of this job was done for you; by your parents, by your friends and foes, by the country you are living in and the epoch you are born into. But then as you get older, you start building your own castle in the sky. The person you have to become; the goals you have set for yourself to finally be happy. And then there is the stuff under the surface that you don't really want to be aware of. And when it finally pops up you wonder what all that is about.

"I Am" is the realization that you are either happy now or never will. It is the observation that no matter where you look and turn, you are always perfectly protected and loved; you need no armor at all to deal with life. "I Am" is also the nod towards your shadow; the understanding that all your drives and passions are bubbling up from this source. Let the Tao remove all the armor from you and connect you with your energy source while cleaning up the clutter  in your basement. The holy Now guides you home, all you have to do is to open up to life. I Am - That I Am!

Let the Tao Help You Find True Success

Are you driven to achieve something? Have you ever asked yourself why are you so driven to do these things? Why do you work so hard? What is it really that you want to get in the end, and are you happy doing these things? Most people are driven to achieve something. We have seen so many people work so hard to the point that they torture themselves and others in the process. Have you ever asked yourself why this is the case? Do you really enjoy it, or are you perhaps driven by subconscious processes that are out of your control.

Isn’t that sad that you work so hard all your life only because you are out to prove something to yourself and others? Don't get us wrong, spiritual path travelers also have to work quite hard at times when the situation demands it. But there is an underlying serenity, a feeling that everything is perfect as is, and we don't put pressure on ourself and others. We just float along a strong flow that prevails at the time. The big question though, how exactly do you get there? If you just say 'I must not be competitive!" or "I must not hunger after power!" you are not solving anything.

Sometimes people have no idea about the true motivation behind their actions. They may have a vague idea that they want to succeed, that they want to be rich, that they want to be admired, that they want to be smart, but have no idea of what the real reasons behind it are. Can you imagine that you may have been teased as a child and now you hunger after power to compensate for it. Your father may have been out of a job for a couple of years and now you aspire to become the best surgeon in the world to erase the family shame. You may not consider yourself as very smart and now you put all the pressure on your daughter to get her admitted to Harvard. Or you may still carry a scar from a previous life so you were literally born with a drive to succeed that no one, including yourself, really understands.

A spiritual path often starts because you literally lose direction somewhere. Old goals that were so meaningful before suddenly have lost their attraction. If this happens to you, congratulation, we think that you are connecting with your potential to be truly successful. Most of us only start our spiritual journey when we feel lost and when we rightly conclude, there must be another way!

This loss motivates us to launch this journey to find out who we truly are and what we truly want. In this process, we start to take off layers and layers of expectations from our society, parents and friends until we get in touch of who we truly are. We are totally fresh and reborn. With our curious eyes we are able to see a new world and launch a journey in a totally different direction. We are light and fast because we carry no longer any baggage. At that stage you will find a friend, a guiding light, who you have overlooked all your life because you were too busy to look elsewhere.

The Tao can help you find your natural connection with others while avoiding the ones which are built on power games and hierarchy. The Tao can teach you how to find that natural flow of things, the presence of hard work without any pressure, as well as the flow of give and take of friends at work with a loving and serene mind set.

We hope you do really can express yourself when you are working. Work can and should be a joy. When you are really in tune with what you are doing you see the beauty of the Tao in action. Priceless connections with others manifest themselves, creativity flows out of you and become a fountain of love and joy. The trick is to know that you are successful already. You don't have to prove anything to yourself and others at all. Your success shines through and when you believe it others will acknowledge it. Your success is simply natural.

Find out what you truly love and want and let the Tao help you manifesting it. The Tao is a new perspective, it is a new way of looking at the world. As you stop looking for the glitter on the horizon you start seeing that you are standing on pure gold already. But you have to be empty inside. Let the Tao help you with this. You don't have to drop everything and become a monk in Tibet. All you have to do is to figure out what you truly love and the Tao will  show you how to find true love in the process. It is as imple as that. You will have a lot of fun and joy discovering who you truly are.

By Su Zhen and Christian

You Don't Need to Stay Hungry My Friend

The other day a Russian colleague told me that he wanted his children to feel a little like foreigners. After all, the feeling to be different and excluded at times gives him the hunger to succeed in the US society and economy. His children were born here in the US, so he knows as well as I do that this is just a wish; his children will grow up to be American like everybody else. Don't worry about the drive I would say, your life sets you up optimally to be the one you are born to be. I know this sounds like an empty tautology, but it is true.

We are all driven by some hidden ghosts. Some work hard all their lives because they want to give their children something better. A more prosperous community, a better education, a social advancement. Some strive because deep down inside they are afraid of life, or they feel they have to prove something. Some want to score with the opposite sex and they know that status and wealth often does the trick. Everybody has a secret engine. You don't need to worry about your children. They are being set up for their idiosyncratic movie plot; just always put your best foot forward, but leave the script up to a higher authority.

You may have seen one of the Dos Equis beer adds in which a handsome (but somewhat past his prime) man is surrounded by attractive women half his age who advises the audience to 'Stay thirsty my friends!'. I am not so sure about his advice though. To advice our young folks to step out of the movie plot is meaningless because they still have to make it to the scene when the heroine is born. But you can my friend. Once you discover that life is nothing but a movie - your movie - you can step out of it. Waking up from this dream doesn't mean you become a drifter, it just means that you live a purposeful life full of peace and serenity.

The Voice

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be.
(Luke 12:34)

A colleague showed me the other day a photo in a local newspaper that displayed someone who made it into the Guinness Book of Records with the biggest biceps in the world. When I looked at the arms I didn't really know what to think. I find body building attractive myself, but he looked a little like Popeye on steroids. They also had an interview with his wife who said, 'Well, it took me some time getting used to this size, but I now consider it normal and when I look at the arms of all other men I think to myself, are they sick or something?'

A spiritual path starts when you realize that there is a voice in your head which has little to do with you. The voice telling you that you are not loved, or that you will never make it. Or the voice that tells you that you need to be CEO, or that you need to have the biggest arms in the world. The good news is that once you have experienced only for a single moment that you are not this voice, you have reached the beginning of the end of an ancient journey. Reading others who tell you about your supposedly evil ego doesn't do it; you have to experiment this disconnect for yourself, at least once. But then you will learn to disengage more and more, and as you do, you experience joy, happiness and peace along the way.

You may ask how does one reach this magical moment of disconnecting with the voice in your head? Observe your feelings and see how they are sometimes at odds with what is going on in your head. Realizes how this voice is driving you into a wall over and over again. Experience the inconsistencies in your life - the disconnects of what you want from what the world reflects back to you. A spiritual path is very simple really: figure out who you truly are and what you truly want independent of what the voice babbles.

One thing is important though, never let anyone tell you what you supposedly have to do in the name of spirituality. Our spiritual community is very confused on this point. Who knows, perhaps the man with the biggest arms in the world follows his destiny to show others what we can accomplish with our bodies. Perhaps Steve Jobs followed his spiritual mission to start Apple to let the world experience the wonders of technology. Only you know what is your destiny and what the ramblings of 'the voice' are. Separating the two is really not that hard: 'the voice' tells you where your treasure is supposedly  hiding while your heart knows where your treasure is. All you really have to do is to listen to your heart; that's all.