We’ve spoken about fear and desire, in the idea of aversions and attachments.
These two forces maintain the stability of the ego, the identity. I know many people wish to remove their fears, or maybe overcome their desires, which is fine and a natural process. Trying to force it though, might not be the best idea.
If achieved, new fears and new desires have to come into existence, in order to maintain a separate ego. If you were to have no fears, you would have no desires, and vice versa. Thus missing out on the ability to feel at play with the creation.
When it comes to all this, we can usually only see one side of this coin consciously. To give an example, an individual might have a fear of being tortured, just some irrational fear. This fear of being completely helpless and vulnerable. But what’s fueling that fear is a repressed desire to be a superhero—to be an invincible protector. These are shadow opposites working together.
So we have these two forces working simultaneously. What we desire, we grasp for, which only reinforces the feeling of lack. What we fear, we resist and push against, which perversely pulls it into the center of our attention. Every push creates an equal resistance. The fear feeds the desire, and the desire feeds the fear—two sides of the exact same energy.
The fear fuels the desire, and the desire fuels the fear. It’s the same energy, but we are divided. There are things we like about the energy and things we dislike about the energy.
Remember, the greatest desire is for separation—to be an individual. So everything, including the current Logos (the framework we use to rationalize and justify our own existence), is constructed to achieve or maintain that desire.
That desire to be seperate.
I know there is a lot of talk about killing the ego. This is the rise and fall. Kill the ego, a new one is birthed, and thus the desire comes back for separation.
How do you kill the ego? You make the two into one. Uniting the two poles. But once that is achieved, it’s just moving into a new interpretation, a new identity. Where the same game is played all over again.
Our identity and our external circumstances mirror each other. When an old identity shatters and a new one forms, the outer world usually shifts to match it: a sudden career pivot, the end of a relationship, or adopting an entirely new belief system to house the new self. The Identity and The Creation are two sides of the same coin.
Ego death could result in unpleasant experiences. The uniting of the two poles, could create a lot of emotion. And when the Logos – that framework—the very model we use to make sense of reality—fractures or becomes obsolete, the system collapses. In my experience, psychosis, losing self control, suicidal ideations, and all sorts of unpleasant experiences can occur, including a diagnosis. Commonly this is what is spoken about in the idea of the Dark Night of the Soul.
So this whole ego death thing is not always roses and rainbows, and is it truly worth it? We are pushed and pulled by outside forces, call it god, call it the cosmos, call it whatever. Do we have a choice in any of it? I can’t manufacture desire, motivation, or fear out of thin air. What gives me the appetite to eat is fundamentally beyond my control. So asking whether this process is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ misses the point. The real question is: is the cost worth the reward? And that’s a very personal preference.
