Ego and Bliss

Ego and Bliss

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If only you knew what bliss I find in being nothing ! ~ Rumi

The picture and quote were shared by Rumi Quotes Facebook Page.

I remembered that many years ago I was given the name Anandamurti by Swami Niranjananda. As part of an initiation I brought him a coconut as a gift. He asked me if I knew the meaning of the gift and I said that I did. I had been told that it signified the surrender of the ego. Niranjananda gave me three things in return, the yogic name Anandamurti, the mantra ‘So Hum’ and the psychic symbol of white light that I should visualise. He said that Ananda means bliss and that where there is bliss there is no ego and where there is ego there is no bliss.

‘So Hum’ is the mantra of the breath and commonly used in yoga meditations, white light is an image I found hard to visualise and ananda, meaning bliss, seemed to point to nothing more than being ‘blissed out’ and the yogic name indicates a potential rather than a present reality. My ego was disappointed that I had not been given a more personally significant name, mantra and symbol. Maybe my ego understood that the name the mantra and the symbol all pointed to the dissolution of ego.

So many years later my ego has not dissolved. But I am more fully aware of my ego. Tolle says once you know the ego is there it is not strictly speaking ego any more, it is a set of ego habits and you are free to choose something different. I say that I am ‘more fully’ aware of ego because I’m sure that while I am aware of many of my ego driven motivations I am not aware of them all. Also it is not so easy to ‘chose something different’ even when you are aware of your habitual thinking, emotions and behaviour. Nevertheless Tolle is right to say that awareness of the presence of ego makes a difference to our relationship with ego:

Being able to dis-identify with ego is like being aware that you are living in a prison, you can see the way out but you don’t know if you want to take it because prison is all you have known and you’re afraid of dropping its routines and security and stepping out into the unknown. Maybe prison’s not so bad after all.

We understand ego, we don’t understand bliss. Someone wrote in response to my comment on the Rumi post:

“…and yet, are we not born to experience ego? Bliss is stasis – ego is energetic.”

I replied “Perhaps we are born to experience ego and to transcend it. Sometimes we feel at our most dynamic in those moments when the ego disappears and we feel we’re one with whatever we’re doing, when we’re ‘in the zone’. Maybe the sages who transcend are there all the time. There is a zen poem that seems to make this point: http://www.osholeela.com/poetry/zenbull1.htm.

bull1

Knowing I have to transcend the prison of egoic action and knowing that there is a way out am I better off than the other prisoners or am I more culpable because I choose to remain within its walls?

Nestle and Water

Nestle and Water

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In the village of Bhati Dilwan, Pakistan, the close proximity of a Nestlé factory extracting water from two deep wells has caused springs in the area to dry up. Citizens have been deprived of their own means of extracting water and rendered dependent on the bottled Pure Life brand for clean water.
 
In Nigeria, a country ranked relatively low in GDP per capita, Pure Life is sold to upper class consumers spending large portions of their incomes on bottled water. The cost of Pure Life is more expensive than the average daily income of a Nigerian citizen, and even pricier than 1L of petrol. In this scenario, citizens are faced with the unfair choice between health and poverty, becoming ill from drinking bad water but unable to afford Nestlé’s inflated prices.
 
Source: Urban Times.

Nestle sounds like an evil corporation using its power to gain rights to exploit water sources at the expense of local communities. This can only happen because communities do not have collective stewardship of natural resources and these can be sold off by governments that are essentially owned by the corporations. What we have is a failure in governance and communities need to empower themselves. Abby Martin gives a good summary of the issue:

Family and Feelings

Family and Feelings

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The blog has become a way of expressing my feelings but there are some things that cannot be expressed in a public blog. They are part of us being human, about our relatives and relationships and not just our own story. There are a few such personal issues on my mind but the one that is most prominent is the matter of my mother’s Alzheimer’s which is becoming more difficult to manage. It is part of my life so I mention it here but I’m not going into details.

The picture was taken at a birthday lunch for my brother-in-law Alan.

On The Rebel Atrocities in Syria

On The Rebel Atrocities in Syria

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This video is, as it warns, extremely graphic and violent. It shows members of the rebel forces executing people by throwing them off buildings, by beheading and by shooting. It shows small children being indoctrinated into an ideology of terrorism. It argues that the rebels are persecuting minorities in Syria and using rape as a weapon.

Everything I have read and seen on alternative media or non-western media sources convinces me that the rebels are worse than the Syrian government and its army, yet the US/UK mainstream media and politicians continue to push the line that while elements in the rebel forces have committed atrocities the government forces have done far worse. This is a dangerous lie and an increasingly obvious one and it is for this reason that I’m sharing this graphic and emotive video.

While I cannot endorse the Syrian government and the Syrian Arab Army, I am suspicious of any propaganda against them and their President Assad. And whatever the merits or otherwise of the government forces the fact that they are fighting against the brutal rebels means that attacks against them such as the illegal and unprovoked strikes by Israel support the rebels in their atrocities. There is a lot of evidence that the West and their regional allies are facilitating the rebels and are therefore at least indirectly responsible for these atrocities.

Privatisation

Privatisation

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The poem in the video from this Scriptonite “Open Letter to the PM” says:

They sold off all our railways, and they gave away our trains

It made some folks a lot of cash, but we just felt the pains

They sold off schools and hospitals, now police stations too

Things once owned by all of us, now owned by the likes of you

Who should own/control the services and resources that are necessary for supporting society? Services and resources for the provision of health, energy, transport, food, water, communication, shelter? The options are ownership/control by private corporations, the government, community or some mixture of the three.

Government in a democracy is supposed to represent the will and interest of the community of citizens but the case can be made that government in the UK (by all three main parties) represents the interests of private corporations rather than those of the community. If we think that there is a collusion between government and big corporations then we must see privatisation as theft. This article from opendemocracy.net alerts us to a government intention to privatise the National Health Service:

Trade talks quietly taking place between the US and the EU could see England’s NHS tied into a privatised model semi-permanently. Yet this deeply concerning backdrop to the Coalition’s deplorable NHS privatisation has received scant media attention. People must act.
 
When we say that the NHS is being denationalised and privatised, it means several things are happening. At the top, the Health Secretary no longer has a legal duty to provide a universal healthcare system. Regionally, there will be Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), which will have to offer contracts to any willing provider, namely private companies. And every hospital trust will need to attain Foundation Trust status, making it an independent organisation responsible for its own financial wellbeing[1].

The article says ‘people must act’ but ‘people’ are not well informed and are not organised so we are being defrauded.

passion

Still Running

Still Running

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The map of my route looks quite impressive, even though I have run a lot further in the past. I missed tai-chi last night. It’s pre-paid so I almost never skip class but I didn’t feel good. This morning I woke a little after 5:00 and was tempted to put off running for another day but I resisted and also resisted the temptation to do the shorter run. The 2.76 miles felt more difficult than on my previous run, six days ago, but I completed the distance in a slightly shorter time, improving my mile-pace by 11 seconds.

Running opposes the lethargy and depression that I feel. A good run resets my week and motivation to some extent but I need to keep this going.

Autumn Running

Autumn Running

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This is an image from my running log. Whatever else I do, whatever else is going on in my life I must resolve to run and I must resolve to meditate. Some combination of running, yoga asanas, pranayama, tai-chi/qigong and meditation would seem good.

I completed this morning’s run in a little under 36 minutes, which is significantly slower than my best time of 30 minutes about a year ago. While running I mentally repeating the Ho’oponopono mantra: “I’m sorry, please forgive me, I love you and I thank you”.

My meditation was ‘japa’ meditation on my personal mantra using a mala. I followed this up with zhan zhuang or standing stake.