Man begins his search for the highest Truth with his ego and rises to its higher and higher levels, but in the end he must leave the ego if the Truth is to be found. The manner of finding truth is such that he must leave the ego's limitations and look to its origin, its universal source.
6.8.4.41 | • Listen | 14 Jun 2011 |
Until it is brought to his attention, he may not know that the idol at whose feet he is continually worshipping is the ego. If he could give to God the same amount of remembrance that he gives to his ego, he could quite soon attain, and become established in, that enlightenment to which other men devote lifetimes of arduous effort.
6.8.4.153 | 10 Nov 2010 |
Whatever helps to lead him out of the ego's tyranny, be it an idea or a situation, an induced mood or a particular service, is worth trying. But it will be easier, and the result more successful, to the extent that he releases himself from his past history.
6.8.4.155 | 2 Feb 2011 |
He will advance most on the Quest who tries most to separate himself from his ego. It will be a long, slow struggle and a hard one, for the false belief that the ego is his true self grips him with hypnotic intensity. All the strength of all his being must be brought to this struggle to remove error and to establish truth, for it is an error not merely of the intellect alone but also of the emotions and of the will.
6.8.4.198 | • Listen | 19 Mar 2012 |
No one else can do for a man what Nature is tutoring him to do for himself, that is, to surrender the ego to the higher self. Without such surrender no man can attain the consciousness of that higher self. It is useless to look to a master to make for him this tremendous change-over within himself. No master could do it. The proper way and the only way is to give up this pathetic clinging to his own power, to his own littleness, and to his own limitations...
6.8.4.211, Excerpt | 22 Mar 2011 |
”The truth shall make you free,” promised Jesus. What kind of freedom was he talking about? The answer can only be--from the ego! And this is corroborated by his own statements, uttered at other times, concerning the need to die to oneself.
6.8.4.212 | 30 Jan 2011 |
It is both the irony and tragedy of life that we use up its strictly limited quota of years in pursuits which we come later to see as worthless and in desires which we find bring pain with their fulfilment. The dying man, who sees the cinema-film of his past flash in review before his mental eyes, discovers this irony and feels this tragedy.
6.8.4.355 | • Listen | 10 Jul 2012 |
There would be no hope of ever getting out of this ego-centered position if we did not know these three things. First, the ego is only an accumulation of memories and a series of cravings, that is, thought; it is a fictitious entity. Second, the thinking activity can come to an end in stillness. Third, Grace, the radiation of the Power beyond man, is ever-shining and ever-present. If we let the mind become deeply still and deeply observant of the ego's self-preserving instinct, we open the door to Grace, which then lovingly swallows us.
6.8.4.417 | 14 Jan 2011 |
What or who is seeking enlightenment? It cannot be the higher Self, for that is itself of the nature of Light. There then only remains the ego! This ego, the object of so many denunciations and denigrations, is the being that, transformed, will win truth and find Reality even though it must surrender itself utterly in the end as the price to be paid.
6.8.4.435 | • Listen | 30 Mar 2013 |
Although the price of attainment, which is the gradual giving up of the lower self, is agonizing because the lower one is the only self we know ordinarily, there is for every such surrender a compensation equal in value at least to what is given up, and actually of more surpassing worth. This compensation is not only a theoretical one, it is a real experience; and at the last, when the whole of the lesser self is surrendered, the only description of it which mere words can give is blissful peace. Since agony of mind cannot coexist with peace, the agony falls away and only the peace remains. The warning must be given, however, that the Higher Self never yields its compensations until the requisite surrender is made. If this is done little by little, which is usually the only way it can be done, then the lovely compensation will follow also little by little.
6.8.4.443, Excerpt | • Listen | 5 Mar 2013 |
The egoistic way of viewing life is a narrowing one. It keeps him from what is best, holds him down to what is base, and prevents him from working with the miraculous forces of the Overself. The farther he moves himself away from it and the nearer he moves into the impersonal and cosmic way, the sooner will he receive the benediction of more wisdom, better health, smoother relationships, and grander character.
6.8.4.454 | 21 Dec 2010 |
The unawakened ego submits passively to the lower influences which come to it out of the shadows of its own long past and to the sense-stirring suggestions which come to it out of the surroundings in which it moves. But when it has found and surrendered to the Overself in the heart, this blind, mechanical responsiveness comes to an end and an aroused, enlightened, fully aware, inner rulership replaces it.
6.8.4.463 | • Listen | 9 Dec 2011 |
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