- You may be going through
an awakening spiritually, and when the ego comes
in through the back door, you begin to feel very superior to ordinary people who are not awakening. (bell chimes) On a collective level
then, as humans awaken, there will no longer be completely pointless conflict between nations, but it must begin with the absence of pointless conflict on an individual level. The way in which you experience life is a kind of mirroring back to you your predominant state of consciousness. So if you are engaged
in continuous conflict and unpleasantness year after year with people, if you're engaged maybe in countless court cases with all these nasty people who want something from you, who are all, if you find that when you talk about people, you may find that the strange thing is that those people that you talk about, they're always wrong and
you are always right. Isn't that strange? That's, if that is
still the case with you, you might have to, it's very
unlikely because you are here, but you might just be,
when you talk to others, to third people about others, this is what he said,
this is what she said, and then he did this, and
then he did that, then I said, and then, and he never did, he should have, but he didn't, and. If you find the strange phenomenon that you are always right
and others are always wrong, that's an important realization. How is it possible? I must be super human. And in the eyes of the ego, of course, that's kind of the case because the ego, which is that which is perhaps the major obstacle towards the realization of that deeper dimension, and the ego strives incessantly for some kind of superiority. And so this is what you are condemned to when you have not yet awakened, even to at least to some extent to the deeper essence of who you are, the awareness, the presence, the stillness, then you are in the prison of your own personality, and it's not a pleasant place to be. I sometimes watch people and they are so burdened
with their personality, so in the grip of that thing. What is personality? It's the sum total of their mental, emotional
conditioning from the past, mental, emotional conditioning. Mental conditioning means
certain thought forms, mind structures that become repetitive, certain narratives concerning your life, my life, says the ego, a certain narrative concerning
my other people in my life, what I did or they did to me, my victories, my defeats. Many things form the
egoic conditioned self, and one important aspect of
the egoic conditioned self is it talks about my life or the time in the head and out aloud. And my life is what concerns me. Obviously, it's my life. And what is my life? It's a story in my head, but they don't know that. They think it's the reality, but it's a story in my head. It's a narrative. It's the predominant narrative in my mind, and it's the narrative through which I interpret everything that
I come into contact with. It becomes a screen through which I interpret other people, situations, places, events. I don't know that, because I am so identified with that mental, emotional conditioning that it has become me. It has become me and my life. I don't know anything else. That's the fate still of the majority of humans on the planet, Although the minority that
is awakening is growing, it is still a minority. Most humans are still totally in the grip of their egoic self, and probably most of you are moving still in and out of your egoic self. This is usually how the
awakening process happens. Sometimes you're drawn
back completely into it and it talks and this is such, your superiority, and you compare yourself to others and you need to be right in any argument. Being right is more
important than the truth. And you're always right. That's a good sign that there's ego. So the egoic entity, I'll just
say a few more words about it because it can be very deceptive. It can use you, come back in sometimes
through the back door. By that I mean you may be going through an awakening spiritually, and when the ego comes
in through the back door, you begin to feel very superior to ordinary people who are not awakening. And now what does that mean? It means, and this is always ego, there is a conceptual sense of self, and you derive your identity, you derive your sense of who you are, from a conceptual mind-made self. If for example, let's take myself, and the world tells me, now you are a great spiritual teacher. Now, 25, 30 years ago, so he didn't tell me that. The world basically was
saying, who are you? Nobody. Nothing has changed. If I walked around with an image of myself, this requires a lot of awareness because what I'm describing now has happened to some spiritual teachers. The spiritual teacher's only one example. If I had a mental image of myself as a great spiritual
teacher, I would be lost, again, lost in ego. And so anything that you do, let's stick with spiritual teacher, because some of you, I know some of you are
already spiritual teachers in whatever capacity. Perhaps you're a therapist, perhaps you are working with
people in some capacity, and many others of you are destined to become spiritual teachers. It's either directly or indirectly, either formally or non-formally. Of course you are destined, because the world desperately needs awakening and awakened humans. And so a danger, no matter where you are, but right now we're just talking about becoming a spiritual teacher or being a spiritual
teacher in whatever way, anything that becomes a
conceptual sense of self means the ego is coming back in through, coming in through the back door. And so is it not true then that at this moment, I
am a spiritual teacher? Yes, but only in the sense
that it's a function, and while this function is
happening right here and now, one, I could say I'm a spiritual teacher, but when I walk off this
stage and out the door, if I then carried a mental image of myself as a great spiritual teacher, I would be walking like that. And of course, everybody else
would be inferior in my mind. And without knowing it, I would be walking around with a huge ego, and sooner or later the
ego would contaminate or obstruct my ability to teach. It could contaminate the
teaching with egoic falsehood or it could completely block the intuitive teaching that happens when you, which means the ego, when you get out of the way. When you get out of the way, something that transcend the limited you, I call that sometimes the surface I that gets out of the way, and then the deep I emerges as the unconditioned consciousness. And it can use your mind, and that's the way to
ultimately use your intelligence in a way that no longer puts the intelligence in
the service of madness. So spirit, being a spiritual teacher, is a function. When I go away from here, I need to immediately relinquish the mental image and narrative in my mind that tells me who I am because that is a
conceptual sense of self. But of course this not only
applies to spiritual teachers. It applies to anybody in any situation. Where do you derive
your sense of self from? What is it that gives
you your sense of self? I know of course that on
a purely surface level, spiritual teacher works, it can solve problems when you
can tell the person who says, what do you do? You could say this and that. Usually I don't say spiritual teachers. If I go to a foreign country and sometimes at the
border or the airport, the customs say, "What do you do? "Why are you here?" And usually I say, "I'm
a writer, I'm an author." Okay, that solves the problem. I don't go into, I don't
advise you to do it either, saying, "I have no conceptual identity." (crowd laughs) They probably won't let you in. (crowd laughs) We don't want people who
have no conceptual identity. (waterfall rushes)
