I'm experiencing the ego-self right now, as are you experiencing your ego, or self-concept 'package.' This experience is about as inconsistent as you could imagine. In fact, that's exactly how you do imagine it.
When you awoke this morning did you plan your 'day'? Did you make decisions on doing this or that? Ego-self is the protagonist in all your predicting and preparing. "You" are ALWAYS directly engaged with experiencing your 'self' through realizing parts and never a whole. You could never NOT be engaged with ego-self, since you would NOT 'exist' if you completely detached from your circular experience of 'identity.'
"You" are the context of every experience "you" encounter, because you constructed the experience in order to encounter it. Understand the ego-self dynamics and you understand the mechanics of experience.
Many spiritual paths seek to annihilate that context in the belief that there is some underlying context not reliant on "you" being a "you."
Yet, take out the "you" as subject, and there would be nothing to experience (object), since every experience is subjectively encountered and interpreted. "Awakening" is meaningful and therefore, "you" will experience the meaning you intend it to be. This will be based on the ideology you enter into it with. What you go in with is what you come out with, only magnified by the intensity of altered/heightened states of consciousness.
Even the glorious "egoless" experience that many so desperately seek, is itself an ego experience. Seek and you shall find, simply because you have constructed it to be experienced.
Ego-self interprets, and even 'names,' everything it experiences ("banana," "dog," "god," "enlightenment," "ego," "orgasm," "consciousness," etc, etc). This provides an undeniable sense of 'reality' and seems to help increase mutual understanding of experience, but only barely, since you could never fully understand MY experience nor I, yours.
I have noted that my "parsing" of ego-self experience has tended to anger some folks, particularly when I start at the top (the ultimate experience of "enlightenment") and work down. When, in fact, this understanding of ego dynamics may aid in understanding the specialized concepts we tend to provide a religious observance to, without realizing this compulsion for 'sacred' contexts actually impedes experience.
Maybe the easiest method toward "awakening" is to simply understand the ego dynamics that determine the context, and conduct, of your life. The fact, that you have named and given meaning to some event in time as an "awakening" means you will have it exactly as you have contextualized it, based on the ideology that taught you how it should be contextualized in order to be experienced. This digging into concepts need not be painful and can lead to that "lightness of being" we would like to experience in our lives.
THE EGO-SELF CONCEPT
You can name it anything you want, self, mind, consciousness, ego, big mind, awareness, Joe, Sally etc, etc, etc, (mine seems to be called "mike") the point is it's "you." You will carefully observe it by understanding the concepts it, or "you," idolize and associate with as 'truth.' No need to dissociate, just know what "you" associate to and how serious you take this association. This is exactly what I do by 'parsing' the dynamics of the ego. But this seems to cause anxiety and resentment in folks because, essentially people don't want to KNOW the concepts they adhere to in defining the 'self,' especially when those concepts have been made sacred. They proclaim:
Just "Be Here Now," and shutup, dammit!
Socrates' declaration "know thyself" becomes "know thy... 'self.' Your concepts inform "your" ego-self how to "Be Here Now" and, make no mistake, "you" will define that "now," (whether you wish to deny this defining or not) simply because it MEANS SOMETHING to "you." Denying your will to construct experience simply limits experiencing fully.
The ego-self must give meaning to every experience BEFORE IT IS EXPERIENCED or it would NOT mean anything at all. You would not experience that which is meaningless, simply because it would not exist in your subjective 'world.' Experience is conceptualized through interpretation. Every experience you have must be interpreted by your "self' for your 'self' to KNOW it at all. Anything you do not conceptually interpret denotes no awareness that it even exists.
But here's the rub, "you" construct experiences so that "you" can then interpret what you constructed. This is the 'infinite game.'
Many claim that I complicate that which is "simple." Actually, this is an attempt of ego-self to deny itself through specialized concepts, or platitudes, that tend to terminate all attempts to understand the concepts it constructs and lives by as 'truth.' However, some folks refuse to just "simply be here now" and they dig deeper into the mass of conceptual understandings the ego-self proclaims as truth, in recognition that "be here now" was constructed and interpreted by the ego-self merely to reinforce itself as 'real.'
Obviously, many would prefer nothing be said and this is the "fallacy of the sacred" and religions are fueled by it. The modern 'masters" proclaim, "just seek silence in the emptiness."
Ideological "enlightenment" programs (is there any other kind?) deny "you" as source. A completely "empty" and "silent" ego-self could not exist to experience the silence and emptiness. However, since it does believe it exists, it will construct experiences that it provides MEANING to, so that it can interpret that meaning in a circular reinforcing context of 'existence' or an infinite 'I AM.' It will attach nomenclature to those experiences by calling them "silence," "emptiness" and "enlightenment."
But what is it really? ; )
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