Death is not so much the soul separating from the body but the disappearing of the external self and the emergence of the true self.

Death is our freedom from the egoic/lower self.

We have to move beyond the idea of the “healthy” ego.

The ego is not quite the same as an illusion which is seeing something that is not there. A mirage is there, but it is floating, not grounded.

The egoic system derives energy from the environment. It gives us the impression of having a separate identity made up of attributes, gifts, and talents which we believe need to be fully expressed. This sets up a feedback loop that gives us our program. We know what we need and how to get it so we set out into the world to get what we believe we need. To the extent that we receive confirmation of who we are, we experience “aliveness.”

When we do something well, we get a spike of energy. When we are affirmed we feel vitalized.

The downside of this arrangement is that when our programs are frustrated, we become drained.

The egoic self runs on the pain/pleasure cycle. In terms of the spiritual path, this is an immature way of operating in which we get and squander energy at a great rate. We don’t have a deeper reserve collecting within that allows us to be open to the connection with our higher self.

The desert tradition said, “Beware of the flesh.” They were not saying hate your body. They were saying beware of feeding your body on this pain/pleasure principle. The egoic system is junk food.

We spend so much of our time trying to beat the circumstances of our life into shape, so that life pleases us and so we can derive pleasure from it. This can be very frustrating because life was not set up to be our personal servant.

We do not need to down load energy into the egoic level.

“The heart” is not about emotions. It is something much vaster. The centre of our being is connected to God. It is able to draw vitality and self-worth directly from God.

There is a deeper way of feeding. We can draw our energy and vitality from the heart of God. We no longer need the egoic feedback system.

We can draw the experience of Being directly from the heart. We then become less insistent upon controlling the external circumstances of our life. It does not matter so much if the externals of our life are good or bad. We don’t need to be confirmed by external circumstances.

This is the way to get off the roller-coaster. The egoic system is no longer a way of finding our identity. It can now be used as a tool for manifesting the glory of God.

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from “Living Presence” Transcript

The old law is entropy; the old law, the law of pain and pleasure, is that you will be drained down by life, and that when you get drained down by life you’ll get sleepy and then you’ll lose energy and then everything will go south. When you learn how to pay attention, you can bring into any situation the power of your collected attention and you can not only regenerate energy in your own being but you can bring a whole group along with you.