Catching the ego programs at work

 The ego is nothing but a structure in the whole which can come and go.

David Bohm

 

I have a friend who tells me that unless we have broken away from the self identity for good, we do not know anything. My response to him, you might be right but what would you like me do about it, wait for Godot?

 

There is something we can do. We can become aware that what we perceive as self, the way this entity evaluates pleasure and pain, good and evil, right and wrong, is nothing but a set of programs that can be uninstalled.

 

Now how do you uninstall programs? You can’t just say that I understand that this is wrong, so I must do what is right. That’s just putting another program on top of the program.

 

Many spiritual people get lost in this step because they believe that the one who hears the voice in the head, the one who evaluates the feelings is outside of these programs. This is not witnessing consciousness!

 

What we can do is to catch the psychological programs as they arise and grasp their meaninglessness. That’s how they lose the power over us. We are literally transformed during that insight.

 

Now my friend is right that this practice of insight, letting go and moving on is still a partial breaking free. New programs are bound to pop up from the depth of our unconscious and it may at times feel we can never be free.

 

Still, inner work is all we can do other than waiting for God’s Grace to take us out of this virtual reality show. The whole is and our ego programs cover it from time to time just as the clouds cover the permanent blue sky.