By George A. Boyd ©2003
Layer
|
Experience
|
Description
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1
|
Core
|
Feelings about your life, your basic reactions to the way your
life is going
|
2
|
Achievements
|
What you believe you have successfully achieved, feelings of
pride and self-esteem
|
3
|
Career Path
|
What you visualize as avenues for future study or advancement
in your career, how you may increase your wealth and income
|
4
|
Relationship
|
What you sense is going on in your current relationship and your
history of relationships, how you might establish a relationship
if you are not currently in one
|
5
|
Appearance
|
What you think you look like to others, what is attractive about
you and what needs improvement
|
6
|
Possessions
|
What you own and your feelings about them, what you need to add
to your possessions and what you need to discard, give away or
sell
|
7
|
Environment
|
Your living space and what you feel about it, how you wish to
modify it, what you need to augment it
|
8
|
Reality
|
Identifying what you are doing and experiencing in the present
time, your orientation to the external world in the present time
|
"Healthy" religion and spirituality take a life-affirming
approach towards the ego. They recognize that the ego has its place in
the ordered mansions of consciousness—otherwise the Creator would
not have made the ego and the structures of the conscious mind in the
first place. The ego needs to be understood and appropriately disciplined
in its excesses, but it is not inherently evil.
"Unhealthy" religion and cultic groups adopt a life-negating
approach. The ego is seen as demonic or inherently evil, and must be dissolved,
destroyed or held in check through unwavering austerity. Its mission is
seen as to continually deceive the individual and hold the individual
back from spiritual communion and inward progress.
When we contrast the views of the layers of experience
within the ego by the two approaches, we find the following:
Layer
|
Life-Affirming
|
Life-Denying
|
Core
|
The essence of the ego is good. Its mission is to ensure that
the body survives so the Soul can have an instrument of expression
in the physical world.
|
The ego is evil. It is a child of the Devil. Its essence is to
deceive the Soul so that the Soul wont wake up. The urge
to survive as a body creates fear, and fear paralyzes the mind.
This must be rooted out so that one can realize ones true
spiritual nature.
|
Achievements
|
Achievements build self-esteem. Self-esteem yields positive attitudes,
lessens depression and reinforces positive attitudes about the
world and other people. They are natural, pleasurable and expected
elements of personal growth.
|
Achievements build false pride and conceit. Man is nothing and
mans achievements amount to nothing. Only those achievements
that are in service to God and the Spiritual Master have any value.
|
Career Path
|
Career growth is an expression of a persons gifts and talents.
It provides livelihood to the family, support for the community
and the possibility for charitable giving.
|
Career is a distraction from the only true work: realizing God
and serving the Spiritual Master. Career is only meaningful if
it provides money to serve God and/or the Spiritual Master. All
available income must be donated to the Spiritual Master.
|
Relationship
|
Where partners are compatible, loving relationship fulfills many
human needs. Friendship and spousal relationships are the foundation
of human community and provide a nexus of love and belongingness
in which personal growth can occur. Individuals on the same spiritual
path can support and encourage one another.
|
Most relationships with friends and spouse imprison the mind
in superficial mundane activities or activate sensual passions.
Only the spiritual relationship with God and the Spiritual Master
is valuable and worthwhile. Devoted disciples of the Master can
encourage and inspire meditation and spiritual progress. If one
can be a celibate renunciate, then one can make the most spiritual
progress.
|
Appearance
|
One should strive to be in the best health and look ones
best in order to embody beauty. This helps one to attract a mate
but is also expected behavior in the workplace.
|
Concern with appearance feeds vanity and puffs up the false ego.
One should be concerned with the purity of the heart and devotion
to God only inner things are important, not outer things.
|
Possessions
|
Possessions are the tools of life that allow one to function
in the world.
|
Possessions are fetters that tie one down with worries and chores
the fewer possessions that one owns, the better. When one
dies, one loses all possessions. Better to focus on meditation
and spirituality.
|
Environment
|
One should bring beauty, order and harmony into the environment
in order to bring serenity and efficiency to living.
|
The world revealed by the senses is false. Turn off the senses
and commune with God. Only spiritual objects should be in the
environment to remind one of God, the Spiritual Path and the Spiritual
Master.
|
Reality
|
The external world is real and our lives are real and meaningful.
Our present time experience is the crux of our life.
|
The external world is an illusion and human life is only a dream.
Spirituality is the only real and legitimate activity of life.
|
We believe that the life-affirming approach to the ego
yields better physical and mental health than the life-denying approach.
Suppression of natural propensities will only move them underground in
the unconscious. We find that checking inappropriate tendencies of the
ego coupled with the nurturing of its experience yields a more balanced
and natural personality expression. Moreover, the fixation in altered
states of consciousness engendered by the life-denying approach can interfere
with normalized personality expression.
We hope that you will reflect upon the perspective through
which you regard the ego. We encourage you to consider the long-term consequences
of holding your current view and whether making constructive changes would
produce better results.