This instrument exists, and it is very simple to use.

Facebook archive. First published on 26.04.2016.

The ego as a part of the soul, rather than as a part of the personality or a psychological aspect of consciousness, is far more interesting to study. If one tries to characterize what the ego is with a single concept, the first things that come up are commonly accepted phrases, something like: "inflated ego," "fight your ego," "the ego is a bad adviser," and so on. Several curious situations came under my observation, which I attributed to the manifestation of my ego.

Seeing a person I knew driving past, I greeted him, and when I did not receive a greeting in return, I greeted him again, but more clearly this time. This went on four times, but my greetings were ignored. It seemed less logical to me to assume that I simply had not been noticed, while the assumption that the person was deliberately ignoring me took first place in my characterization of the situation. And this assessment of mine began to influence the course of my thoughts, as well as my general mood.

But being in a meditative state gave me the opportunity to trace the difference between two of my inner attitudes toward the situation. One part of my nature reacted to what was happening completely neutrally: he did not greet me, so he did not greet me — it is not so important. But the other began persistently spoiling my mood. The mind immediately joined in, presenting terrible, in its view, pictures of general disrespect toward me, and attached all of this to the fact of memory, since it had happened before.

When my ego colored the situation, I immediately called the acquaintance who had not greeted me, and he assured me that he had simply not noticed me. My observations continued, and within one day there were a couple more moments when my ego assessed a situation, and that assessment was, to put it mildly, false.

When I transposed the events of one day onto my entire past life, I realized that the ego had tinted all situations and pushed me in the wrong direction countless times. From simple facts that meant nothing, it built internal contradictions, while the mind prepared a peculiar plan of revenge for grievances and insults that in reality might not even have existed. If I had had an instrument for influencing the reaction of my ego, much in life could have gone differently, and I am sure there would have been more positive changes.

This instrument exists, and it is very simple to use. But for some reason I received it only now. To begin using this instrument, one will have to understand what the ego is, while relating it, as I said above, not to an aspect of the personality, but to a part of the soul or consciousness.

I will give an example from childhood, for clarity. I do not know how it is with girls, but among boys in adolescence the territorial division of one's place of residence is very developed. Usually this is the yard where boys socialize with friends, and if another teenager enters "your" yard, he is perceived as a stranger; usually, while this teenager is passing by, jokes and taunts are thrown in his direction, often among ourselves, and sometimes very openly, so openly that such jokes move into the category of insults.

And once my friends got so carried away playing "guardians of the territory" that they did not notice how their jokes and taunts were directed at another friend of ours, who had changed his hairstyle over the summer and whom we simply did not recognize. But as soon as the effect of recognition occurred, the object moved from the category of stranger into the category of one of our own, and the taunts immediately stopped.

In Hinduism and yoga, one of the main concepts of perception is the concept of perceiving everything as a single whole; as Vasishtha says, perceive the world as one superconsciousness, everything is Brahman. That is, if you stop separating yourself from the world and perceive the surroundings as part of yourself, ahamkara will have nothing to single out. If a dog barks loudly, it will not irritate you, but will be perceived as, for example, your own loud cough or snuffling. Any person will be perceived as "I" in the past, or another version of me, and what sense is there then in taking offense at oneself, and most importantly, for what reason?

Peace and goodness to you.