My humble view:
Mans Ego has created, power, control, fear, guilt, class, status, race, material values and hero worship.
All of these attributes are the characteristics of Religion.
So Is Religion bad,....Yes in the hands of one or those led by Ego.
No- in the hands of those who are able to act outside of religious doctrines to do good by people regardless of race, religion, national origin or ethnicity.
EGO is the great Colonizer and Demonizer.
Judaism, Christianity & Islam have all done this at some point in history.
White, Yellow, Red & Black have all done this at some point in history.
If you continue failing to see commonality in the human struggle and continue to be ruled, led and controlled by EGO, it will eventually destroy you (us).
What is ego? I'm not going to define it or debate it, I am going to tell you outright what ego is: ego is the false self we build up from the day we are born. It is a character, or a persona if you will. It is not "real" or "legit" or "authentic"....
Let me explain...
When you are born, you are innocent, trusting, requiring nothing more than love, nurturing, and care. As you grow up, your family, eventually your school and friends and society around you, help you to shape your personality...
Imagine for a moment, that you grew up completely differently than you did. Imagine you were rich, if you grew up poor, or that you were black if you are white or Asian or Latino. Imagine that your childhood was completely different than it was in your memory, and then ask yourself "Would my personality be the same?"...
Of course not. There would be different factors, status-wise, heritage and culturally, societal. You would be a completely different person on the "inside" if your outside circumstances were different than they had been for you...
So now come back to you - who you believe yourself to be. You can probably define yourself in a few words or statements, such as "I am strong" or "I am compassionate" or "I am depressed", right? You can sum up your personality, your persona and character. This is because you have finely tuned, honed and perfected your persona as the years have gone by. You have been told by family and friends "you are so funny!" and so you continue to be funny. Or you were told in school "you have a learning disability" so you continue to perpetuate that disability upon yourself. You may have been told "you are ugly" by someone in the past, and that has sat eating at your confidence for years later...
All of these things, these definitions and labels, are nothing more than collected information of a "past you" which is not real. The past is gone. So should be the "you" who you identified yourself being in that past. Hold on to the memories, for they are part of your whole heritage in this lifetime, however, let yourself be liberated of the stereotypes, labels, and stigmas...
The Spirit - the truth of who you Are, is God. The Universe. Oneness. Essence. Light. Call "it" what you will, but in the grandest scheme of all things - you are the only One of you there is. Beyond your mind. Beyond your identity... ....
When you realize that the ego is nothing more than a collection of responses, insecurities, fears, and doubts, you can then easily shed it, watch it fall away and reveal the true Self. The ego is a character in a play - the true self is the Author...
It is natural to identify with your personality, in fact I was quite attached to mine for a very long time, having an internal struggle of faith based on my fear of letting my identity go. But I eventually realized, I am not letting go any of the beauty I love about "my Self"... rather I am stripping away the false layers of ego (pain) by revealing the truth of Self - One...
Ego will fight to remain as you...
Ego is nothing more than a tool - created at a very early age to help you relate and identify in your human body - conditioned by all around you to behave the way it now does. And when you really grasp within your heart that it is not "real", it will rebel. That is a wonderful thing to move through, because it gives you opportunity after opportunity to re-align your thoughts to those of your truth, and to put ego in it's place - which is nowhere...
Ego is not real. It is a character on stage. Nothing more. Scripted - and scripts can be re-written...
As for the ego of other people - you can not change them. You can only accept that they are letting the character on stage call the shots, and you can love them for being lost in the illusion of the performance, and you can see within them a reflection of yourself...
Because we are all One outside of the ego game...
I hope this is helpful to anyone who is reading it...
By FireWalker
