The
conceptual image your mind has made of yourself is relating to its own
creation, which is the conceptual image it has made of the other person. The other person's mind has probably done the same, so very egoic
interaction between tow people is in reality the interaction between for
conceptual mind?made entities that are ultimately fictions. It is therefore
not surprising there is so much conflict in relationships. There is no true
relationship.A New Earth
T H E  M O N K  W I T H  S W E A T Y  P A L M S
Kasan, a Zen teacher and monk, was to of ficiate at a funeral of a famous
nobleman. As he stood there waiting for the governor of the province
and other lords and ladies to arrive, he noticed that the palms of his
hands were sweaty . The next day he called his disciples together and confessed he was not
yet ready to be a true teacher . He explained to them that he still lacked
the sameness of bearing before all human beings, whether beggar or
king. He was still unable to look through social roles and conceptual
identities and see the sameness of being in every human. He then left and
became the pupil of another master . He returned to his former disciples
eight years later , enlightened.A New Earth
H A P P I N E S S  A S  A  R O L E  V S . T R U E
H A P P I N E S S
How are you? Just great. Couldn't be better . T rue or false? In many cases, happiness is a role people play , and behind the smiling
facade, there is a great deal of pain. Depression, breakdowns, and
overreactions are common when unhappiness is covered up behind a
smiling exterior and brilliant white teeth, when there is denial,
sometimes even to one's self, that there is much unhappiness. Just fine is a role the ego plays more commonly in America than in
certain other countries where being and looking miserable is almost the
norm and therefore more socially acceptable. It is probably an
exaggeration, but I am told that in the capital of one Nordic country you
run the risk of being arrested for drunken behavior if you smile at
strangers in the street. If there is unhappiness in you, first you need to acknowledge that it is
there. But don't say , I'm unhappy . Unhappiness has nothing to do with
who you are. Say: There is unhappiness in me. Then investigate it. A
situation you find yourself in may have something to do with it. Action
may be required to change the situation or remove yourself from it. If
there is nothing you can do, face what is and say , W ell, right now , this is
how it is. I can either accept it, or make myself miserable. The primary
cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be
aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation,
which is always neutral, which always is as it is. There is the situation or
the fact, and here are my thoughts about it. Instead of making up stories,
stay with the facts. For example, I am ruined is a story . It limits you and
prevents you from taking ef fective action. I have fifty cents left in my
bank account is a fact. Facing facts is always empowering. Be aware that
what you think, to a lar ge extent, creates the emotions that you feel. See
the link between your thinking and your emotions. Rather than being
your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.Don't seek happiness. If you seek it, you won't find it, because seeing is
the antithesis of happiness. Happiness is ever elusive, but freedom from
unhappiness is attainable now , by facing what is rather than making up
stories about it. Unhappiness covers up your natural state of well?being
and inner peace, the source of true happiness.A New Earth
P A R E N T H O O D :  R O L E  O R  F U N C T I O N ? Many adults play roles when they speak to young children. They use
silly words and sounds. They talk down to the child. They don't treat the
child as an equal. The fact that you temporarily know more or that you
are bigger does not mean the child is not your equal. The majority of
adults, at some point in their lives, find themselves being a parent, one of
the most universal roles. The all?important question is: Are you able to
fulfill the function of being a parent, and fulfill it well, without
identifying with that function, that is, without it becoming a role? Part of
the necessary function of being a parent is looking after the needs of the
child, preventing the child from getting into danger , and at times telling
the child what to do and not to do. When being a parent becomes an
identity , however , when your sense of self is entirely or lar gely derived
from it, the function easily becomes overemphasized, exaggerated, and
takes you over . Giving children what they need becomes excessive and
turns into spoiling; preventing them from getting into danger becomes
overprotectiveness and interferes with their need to explore the world
and try things out for themselves. T elling children what to do or not to do
becomes controlling, overbearing. What is more, the role?playing identity remains in place long after the
need for those particular functions has passed. Parents then cannot let go
of being a parent even when the child grows into an adult. They can't let
go of the need to be needed by their child. Even when the adult child is
forty years old, parents can't let go of the notion I know what's best for
you. The role of parent is still being played compulsively , and so there is
no authentic relationship. Parents define themselves by that role and are
unconsciously afraid of loss of identity when they cease being parents. If
their desire to control or influence the actions of their adult child is
thwarted as it usually is they will start to criticize or show their
disapproval, or try to make the child feel guilty , all in an unconscious
attempt to preserve their role, their identity . On the surface it looks as if
they were concerned about their child, and they themselves believe it,
but they are only really concerned about preserving their role?identity .All egoic motivations are self?enhancement and self?interest, sometimes
cleverly disguised, even from the person in whom the ego operates. A mother or father who identifies with the parental role may also try to
become more complete through their children. The ego's need to
manipulate others into filling the sense of lack it continuously feels is
then directed toward them. If the mostly unconscious assumptions and
motivations behind the parent's compulsion to manipulate their children
were made conscious and voiced, they would probably include some or
all of the following: I want you to achieve what I never achieved; I want
you to be somebody in the eyes of the world, so that I too can be
somebody through you. Don't disappoint me. I sacrificed so much for
you. My disapproval of you is intended to make you feel so guilty and
uncomfortable that you finally conform to my wishes. And it goes
without saying that I know what's best for you. I love you and I will
continue to love you if you do what I now is right for you. When you make such unconscious motivations conscious, you
immediately see how absurd they are. the ego that lies behind them
becomes visible, as does its dysfunction. Some parents that I spoke to
suddenly realized, My God, is this what I have been doing? Once you
see what you are doing or have been doing, you also see its futility , and
that unconscious pattern then comes to an end by itself. A wareness is the
greatest agent for change. If your parents are doing this to you, do not tell them they are
unconscious and in the grip of the ego. That will likely make them even
more unconscious, because the ego will take up a defensive position. It is
enough for you to recognize that it is the ego in them, that it is not who
they are. Egoic patterns, even long?standing ones, sometimes dissolve
almost miraculously when you don't oppose them internally . Opposition
only gives them renewed strength. But even if they don't, you can then
accept your parents' behavior with compassion, without needing to react
to it, that is to say , without personalizing it. Be aware also of your own unconscious assumptions or expectations that
lie behind your old, habitual reactions to them. My parents should
approve of what I do. They should understand me and accept me for who
I am. Really? Why should they? The fact is they don't because they can't. Their evolving consciousness hasn't made the quantum leap to the levelof awareness yet. They are not yet able to disidentify from their role. Y es, but I can't feel happy and comfortable with who I am unless I have
their approval and understanding. Really? What dif ference does their
approval or
disapproval truly make to who you are? All such unexamined
assumptions cause a great deal of negative emotion, much unnecessary
unhappiness. Be alert. Are some of the thoughts that go through your mind the
internalized voice of your father or mother , saying perhaps something
like, Y ou are not good enough. Y ou will never amount to anything, or
some other judgment or mental position? If there is awareness in you,
you will be able to recognize that voice in your head for what it is: an old
thought, conditioned by the past. If there is awareness in you, you no
longer need to believe in every thought you think. It's an old thought, no
more. A wareness means Presence, and only Presence can dissolve the
unconscious past in you. If you think you are so enlightened, Ram Dass said, go and spend a week
with your parents. That is good advice. The relationship with your
parents is not only the primordial relationship hat sets the tone for all
subsequent relationships, it is also a good test for your degree of
Presence. The more shared past there is in a relationship, the more
present you need to be; otherwise, you will be forced to relive the past
again and again.A New Earth
C O N S C I O U S  S U F F E R I N G
If you have young children, give them help, guidance, and protection to
the best f your ability , but even more important, give them space space to
be. They come into this world through you, but they are not yours. The
belief I know what's best for you may be true when they are very young,
bu the older they get, the less true it becomes. The more expectations
you have of how their life should unfold, the more you are in your mind
instead of being present for them. Eventually , they will make mistakes,
and they will experience some form of suf fering, as all humans do. In
fact, they may be mistakes only from your perspective. What to you is a
mistake may be exactly what your children need to do or experience. Give them as much help and guidance as you can, but realize that you
may also at times have to allow them to make mistakes, especially as
they begin to reach adulthood. At times, you may also have to allow
them to suf fer . Suf fering may come to them out of the blue or it may
come as the consequence of their own mistakes. W ouldn't it be wonderful if you could spare them from all suf fering? No,
it wouldn't. They would not evolve as human beings and would remain
shallow , identified with the external form of things. Suf fering drives you
deeper . The paradox is that suf fering is caused by identification with
form and erodes identification with form. A lot of it is caused by the ego,
although eventually suf fering destroys the ego but not until you suf fer
consciously . Humanity is destined to go beyond suf fering, but not in the way the ego
thinks. One of the ego's many erroneous assumptions, one of its many
deluded thoughts is I should not have to suf fer . Sometimes the thought
gets transferred to someone close to you: My child should not have to
suf fer . That thought itself lies at the root of suf fering. Suf fering has a
noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the
ego. the man on the Cross is an archetypal image. He is every man and
every woman. As long as you resist suf fering, it is a slow process
because the resistance creates more ego to burn up. When you acceptsuf fering, however , there is an acceleration of that process which is
brought about by the fact that you suf fer consciously . Y ou can accept
suf fering for yourself, or you can accept it for someone else, such as
your child or parent. In the midst of conscious suf fering, there is already
the transmutation. The fire of suf fering becomes the light of
consciousness. The ego says, I shouldn't have to suf fer , and that thought makes you
suf fer so much more. It is a distortion of the truth, which is always
paradoxical. The truth is that you need to say yes to suf fering before you
can transcend it.A New Earth
C O N S C I O U S  P A R E N T I N G
Many children harbor hidden anger and resentment toward their parents
and often the cause is inauthenticity in the relationship. The child has a
deep longing for the parent to be there as a human being, not as a role, no
matter how conscientiously that role is being played. you may be doing
all the right things and the best you can for your child, but even doing the
best you can is not enough. In fact, doing is never enough if you neglect
Being. The ego knows nothing of being but believes you will eventually
be saved by doing. If you are in the grip of the ego, you believe that by
doing more and more you will eventually accumulate enough doings to
make yourself feel complete at some point in the future. Y ou won't. Y ou
will only
lose yourself in doing. The entire civilization is losing itself in doing that
is not rooted in Being and thus becomes futile. How do you bring Being into the life of a busy family , into the
relationship with your child? The key is to give your child attention. There are two kinds of attention. One we might call form?based
attention. The other is formless attention. Form?based attention is always
connected in some way with doing or evaluation. Have you done your
homework? Eat your dinner . T idy up your room. Brush your teeth. Do
this. Stop doing that. Hurry up, get ready . What's the next thing we have to do? This question pretty much
summarizes what family life is like in many homes. Form?based
attention is of course necessary and has its place, but if that's all there is
in the relationship with your child, then the most vital dimension is
missing and Being becomes completely obscured by doing, by the cares
of the world, as Jesus puts it. Formless attention is inseparable from the
dimension of Being. How does it work? As you look at, listen to, touch, or help your child with this or that, you
are alert, still, completely present, not wanting anything other than that
moment as it is. in this way , you make room for Being. In that moment,if you are present, you are not a father or mother . Y ou are the alertness,
the stillness, the Presence that is listening, looking, touching, even
speaking. Y ou are the Being behind the doing.A New Earth
R E C O G N I Z I N G  Y O U R  C H I L D
Y ou are a human being. What does that mean? Mastery of life is not a
question of control, but of finding a balance between human and Being. Mother , father , husband, wife, young, old, the roles you play , the
functions you fulfill, whatever you do all that belongs to the human
dimension. It has its place and needs to be honored, but in itself it is not
enough for a fulfilled, truly meaningful relationship or life. Human alone
is never enough, no matter how hard you try or what you achieve. Then
there is Being. it is found in the still, alert presence of Consciousness
itself, the Consciousness that you are. Human is form. Being is formless. Human and Being are not separate but interwoven. In the human dimension, you are unquestionably superior to your child. Y ou are bigger , stronger , know more, can do more. If that dimension is
all you know , you will feel superior to your child, if only unconsciously . And you will make your child feel inferior , if only unconsciously . There
is no equality between you and your child because there is only form in
your relationship, and in form, you are of course not equal. Y ou may
love your child, but your live will be human only , that is to say ,
conditional, possessive, intermittent. Only beyond form, in Being, are
you equal, and only When you find the formless dimension in yourself
can there be true love in that relationship. The Presence that you are, the
timeless I Am, recognizes itself in another , and the other , the child in this
case, feels loved, that is to say , recognized. T o love is to recognize yourself in another . The other's otherness then
stands revealed as an illusion pertaining to the purely human realm, the
realm of form. The longing for love that is in every child is the longing
to be recognized, not on the level of form, but on the level of Being. If
parents honor only the human dimension of the child but neglect Being,
the child will sense that the relationship is unfulfilled, that something
absolutely vital is missing, and there will be a buildup of pain in the
child and sometimes unconscious resentment toward the parents. Whydon't you recognize me? This is what the pain or resentment seems to be
saying. When another recognizes you, that recognition draws the dimension of
Being more fully into this world through both of you. That is the love
that redeems the world. I have been speaking of this with specific
reference to the relationship with your child, but it equally applies, of
course, to all relationships. It has been said God is love but that is not absolutely correct. God is the
One Life in and beyond the countless forms of life. Love implies duality:
lover and beloved, subject and object. so love is the recognition of
oneness in the world of duality . This is the birth of God into the world of
form. Love makes the world less worldly , less dense, more transparent to
the divine dimension, the light of consciousness itself.A New Earth
G I V I N G  U P  R O L E ? P L A Y I N G
T o do whatever is required of you in any situation without it becoming a
role that you identify with is an essential lesson in the art of living that
each one of us is here to learn. Y ou become most powerful in whatever
you do if the action is performed for its own sake rather than as a means
to protect, enhance, or conform to your role identity . Every role is a
fictitious sense of self, and through it everything becomes personalized
and thus corrupted and distorted by the mind?made little me and
whatever role it happens to be playing. Most of the people who are in
positions of power in this world, such as politicians, TV personalities,
business as a well as religious leaders, are completely identified with
their role, with a few notable exceptions. They may be considered VIPs,
but they are no more than unconscious players in the egoic game, a game
that looks so important yet is ultimately devoid of true purpose. It is, in
the words of Shakespeare, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury ,
signifying nothing. Amazingly , Shakespeare arrived at this conclusion
without having the benefit of television. If the egoic earth drama has any
purpose at all, it is an indirect one: It creates more and more suf fering on
the planet, and suf fering, although lar gely ego?created, is in the end also
ego?destructive. It is the fire in which the ego burns itself up. In a world of role playing personalities, those few people who don't
project a mind made image and other are some even on TV , in the media,
and the business world but function from the deeper core of their Being,
those who do not attempt to appear more than they are but are simply
themselves, stand out as remarkable and are the only ones who truly
make a dif ference in this world. They are the bringers of the new
consciousness. Whatever they do becomes empowered because it is in
alignment with the purpose of the whole. Their influence, however , goes
far beyond what they do, far beyond their function. Their mere presence
simple, natural, unassuming has a transformational ef fect on whoever
they come into contact with.When you don't play roles, it means there is no self (ego) in what you do. There is no secondary agenda: protection or strengthening of yourself. As a result, your actions have far greater power . Y ou are totally focused
on the situation. Y ou become one with it. Y ou don't try to be anybody in
particular . Y ou are most powerful, most ef fective, when you are
completely
yourself. But don't try to be yourself That's another role. It's called
natural, spontaneous me. As soon as yo are trying to be this or that, you
are playing a role. Just be yourself is good advice, but it can also be
misleading. the mind will come in and say , Let's see. How can I be
myself? Then, the mind will develop some kind of strategy: How to be
myself. Another role. How can I be myself? is, in fact, the wrong
yourself. It implies you have to do something to be yourself. But how
doesn't apply here because you are yourself already . Just stop adding
unnecessary baggage to who you already are. But I don't know who I am. I don't know what it means to be myself. If you can be absolutely
comfortable with not knowing who you are, then what's left is who you
are the Being behind the human, a field of pure potentiality other than
something that is already defined. Give up defining yourself to yourself or to others. Y ou won't die. Y ou
will come to life. And don't be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it's their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function
or a role, but as a field of conscious Presence. Why does the ego play roles? Because of one unexamined assumption,
one fundamental error , one unconscious thought. That thought is: I am
not enough. Other unconscious thoughts follow: I need to play a role in
order to get what I need to be fully myself; I need to get more so that I
can be more. But you cannot be more than you are because underneath
your physical and psychological form, you are one with Life itself, one
with Being. In form, you are and will always be inferior to some,
superior to others. In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to
anyone. T rue self?esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self?esteem and humility are contradictory . In
truth, they are one and the same.A New Earth
T H E  P A T H O L O G I C A L  E G O
In a wider sense of the word, the ego itself is pathological, no matter
what form it takes. When we look at the ancient Greek root of the word
pathological, we discover just how appropriate that term is when applied
to the ego. Although the word is normally used to describe a condition of
disease, it is derived from pathos, which means suf fering. This is, of
course, exactly what the Buddha already discovered 2,600 years ago as a
characteristic of the human condition. A person in the grip of ego, however , does not recognize suf fering as
suf fering, but will look upon it as the only appropriate response in any
given situation. The ego in is blindness is incapable of seeing the
suf fering it inflicts on itself and on others. Unhappiness is an ego?created
mental? emotional disease that has reached epidemic proportions. It is
the inner equivalent of the environmental pollution of our planet. Negative states, such as anger , anxiety , hatred, resentment, discontent,
envy , jealousy , and so on, are not recognized as negative but as totally
justified and are further misperceived not as self?created but as caused
by someone else or some external factor . I am holding you responsible
for my pain. This is what by implication the ego is saying. The ego cannot distinguish between a situation and its interpretation of
and reaction to that situation. Y ou might say , What a dreadful day ,
without realizing that the cold, the wind, and the rain or whatever
condition you react to are not dreadful. They are as they are. What is
dreadful is your reaction, your inner resistance to it, and the emotion that
is created by That resistance. In Shakespeare's words, There is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. What is more, suf fering or
negativity is often misperceived by the ego as pleasure because up t the
point the ego strengthens itself through it. For example, anger or resentment strengthen the ego enormously by
increasing the sense of separateness, emphasizing the otherness of others
and creating a seemingly unassailable fortress?like mental position ofrightness. If you were able to observe the physiological changes that take
place inside your body when possessed by such negative states, how they
adversely af fect the functioning of the heart, the digestive and immune
systems, and countless other bodily functions, it would become
abundantly clear that such states are indeed pathological, are forms of
suf fering and not pleasure. Whenever you are in a negative state, there is something in you that
wants the negativity , that perceives it as pleasurable, or that believes it
will get you what you want. Otherwise, who would want to hang on to
negativity , make themselves and others miserable, and create disease in
the body? So, whenever there is negativity n you, if you can be aware at
that moment that there is something in you that takes pleasure in it or
believes it has a useful purpose you are becoming aware of the ego
directly . The moment this
happens, your identity has shifted from ego to awareness. This means the
ego is shrinking and awareness is growing. If in the midst of negativity you are able to realize At this moment I am
creating suf fering form myself it will be enough to raise you above the
limitations of conditioned egoic states and reactions. It will open up
infinite possibilities which come to you when there is awareness ? other
vastly more intelligent ways of dealing with any situation. Y ou will be
free to let go of your unhappiness the moment you recognize it as
unintelligent. Negativity is not intelligent. It is always of the ego. The
ego may be clever , but it is not intelligent. Cleverness pursues its own
little aims. Intelligence sees the lar ger whole in which all things are
connected. Cleverness is motivated y self? interest, and it is extremely
short?sighted. Most politicians and businesspeople are clever . V ery few
are intelligent. Whatever is attained through cleverness is short?lived and
always turns out to be eventually self? defeating. Cleverness divides;
intelligence unites.A New Earth
T H E  B A C K G R O U N D  U N H A P P I N E S S
The ego creates separation, and separation creates suf fering. The ego is
therefore clearly pathological. Apart from the obvious ones such as
anger , hatred, and so on, there are other more subtle forms of negativity
that are so common they are usually not recognized as sch, for example,
impatience, irritation, nervousness, and being fed up. They constitute the
background unhappiness that is many people's predominant inner state. Y ou need to be extremely alert and absolutely present to be able to detect
them. Whenever you do, it is a moment of awakening, of
disidentification from the mind. Here is one of the most common negative states that is easily
overlooked, precisely because it is so common, so normal. Y ou may be
familiar with it. Do you often experience a feeling of discontent that
could best be described as a kind of background resentment? It may be
either specific or nonspecific. Many people spend a lar ge part of their
lives in that state. They are so identified with it that they cannot stand
back and see it. Underlying that feeling are certain unconsciously held
beliefs, that is to say , thoughts. Y ou think these thoughts in the same way
that you dream your dreams when you are asleep. In other words, you
don't know you are thinking those thoughts, just as the dreamer doesn't
know he is dreaming. Here are some of the most common unconscious thoughts that feed the
feeling of discontent or background resentment. I have stripped away the
content from those thoughts so that the bare structure remains. They
become more clearly visible that way . Whenever there is unhappiness in
the background of your life (or even in the foreground), you can see
which of these thoughts applies and fill in your own content according to
your personal situation:
There is something that needs to happen in my life before I can be at
peace (happy , fulfilled, etc.). And I resent that it hasn't happened yet. Maybe my resentment will finally make it happen.Something happened in the past that should not have happened, and I
resent that. If that hadn't happened, I would be at peace now . Something is happening now that should not be happening, and it is
preventing me from being at peace now . Often the unconscious beliefs are directed toward a person and so
happening becomes doing:
Y ou should do this or that so that I can be at peace. And I resent that you
haven't done it yet. Maybe my resentment will make you do it. Something you (or I) did, said, or failed to do in the past is preventing
me from being at peace now . What you are doing or failing to do now is preventing me from being at
peace.A New Earth
T H E  S E C R E T  O F  H A P P I N E S S
All of the above are assumptions, unexamined thoughts that are confused
with reality . They are stories the ego crates to convince you that you
cannot be at peace now or cannot be fully yourself now . Being at peace
and being who you are, that is, being yourself, are one.The ego says:
Maybe at some point in the future, I can be at peace and if this, that, or
the other happens, or I obtain this or become that. Or it says: I can never
be at peace because of something that happened in the past. Listen to
people's stories
and they could all be entitled Why I Cannot Be At Peace Now . The ego
doesn't know that your only opportunity for being at peace is now . Or
maybe it does know , and it is afraid that you may find this out. Peace,
after all, is the end of the ego. How to be at peace now? By making peace with the present moment. The present moment is the field on which he game of life happens. It
cannot happen anywhere else. Once you have made peace with the
present moment, see what happens, what you can do or choose to do, or
rather what life does through you. There are three words that convey the
secret of the art of living, the secret of all success and happiness: One
W ith Life. Being one with life is bing one with Now . Y ou then realize
that you don't live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer , and you
are the dance. The ego loves its resentment of reality . What is reality? Whatever is. Buddha called it tatata the suchness of life, which is no more than the
suchness of this moment. Opposition toward that suchness is one of the
main features of the ego. It creates the negativity that the ego thrives on,
the unhappiness that it loves. In this way , you make yourself and others
suf fer and don't even know that you are doing it, don't know that you are
creating hell on earth. T o create suf fering without recognizing it this is
the essence of unconscious living; this is being totally in the grip of the
ego. The extent of the ego's inability to recognize itself and see what it isdoing is staggering and unbelievable. It will do exactly what it condemns
others for and not see it. When it is pointed out, it will use angry denial,
clever ar guments, and self?justifications to distort the facts. People do it,
corporations do it, governments do it. When all else fails, the ego will
resort to shouting or even to physical violence. Send in the marines. W e
can now understand the deep wisdom in Jesus' words on the cross:
For give them for they know not what they do. T o end the misery that has af flicted the human condition for thousands of
years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for your
inner state at any given moment. That means now . Ask yourself, Is there
negativity an me at this moment? Then, become alert, attentive to your
thoughts as well as your emotions. W atch out for the low?level
unhappiness in whatever form at hat I mentioned earlier , such as
discontent, nervousness, being fed up, and so on. W atch out for thoughts
that appear to justify or explain this unhappiness but in reality cause it. The moment you
become aware of a negative state within yourself, it does not mean you
have failed. It means that you have succeeded. until that awareness
happens, there is identification with inner states, and such identification
is ego. W ith awareness comes disidentification from thoughts, emotions,
and reactions. This is not to be confused with denial. The thoughts,
emotions, or reactions are recognized, and in the moment of recognizing,
disidentification happens automatically . Y our sense of self, of who you
are, then under goes a shift: Before you were the thoughts, emotions and
reactions; now you are the awareness, the conscious Presence that
witnesses those states. One day I will be free of the ego. Who is talking? The ego. T o become
free of the ego is not really a big job but a very small one. All you need
to do is be aware of your thoughts and emotions as they happen. This is
not really a doing, but an alert seeing. In that sense, it is true that there is
nothing you can do to become free of the ego. When that shift happens,
which is the shift from thinking to awareness, an intelligence far greater
than the ego's cleverness begins to operate in your life. Emotions and
even thoughts become depersonalized through awareness. Their
impersonal nature is recognized. there is no longer a self in them. They
are just human emotions, human thoughts. Y our entire personal history ,
which is ultimately no more than a story , a bundle of thoughts andemotions, becomes of secondary importance and no longer occupies the
forefront of your consciousness. It no longer forms the basis for your
sense of identity . you are the light of Presence, the awareness that is prior
to and deeper than any thoughts and emotions.A New Earth
P A T H O L O G I C A L  F R O M S  O F  E G O
As we have seen, the ego is in its essential nature pathological, if we use
the word in its wider sense to denote dysfunction and suf fering. Many
mental disorders consist of the same egoic traits that operate in a normal
person, except that they have become so pronounced that their
pathological nature is now obvious to anyone, except the suf ferer . For example, many normal people tell certain kinds of lies from time to
time in order to appear more important, more special, and to enhance this
image in the mind of others: who they know , what their achievements,
abilities, and possessions are, and whatever else the ego uses to identify
with. Some people, however , driven by the ego's feeling of insuf ficiency
and
its need to have or be more, lie habitually and compulsively . Most of
what they tell you about themselves, their story , is a complete fantasy , a
fictitious edifice the ego has designed for itself to feel bigger , more
special. Their grandiose and inflated self?image can sometimes fool
others, but usually not for long. It is then quickly recognized by most
people as a compete fiction. The mental illness that is called paranoid schizophrenia, or paranoia for
short, is essentially an exaggerated form of ego. It usually consists of a
fictitious story the mind has invented to make sense of a persistent
underlying feeling of fear . The main element of the story is the belief that
certain people (sometimes lar ge numbers or almost everyone) are
plotting against me, or are conspiring to control or kill me. The story
often has an inner consistency and logic so that it sometimes fools others
into believing it too. Sometimes or ganizations or entire nations have
paranoid belief systems at their very basis. The ego's fear and distrust of
other people, its tendency to emphasize the otherness of others by
focusing on their perceived faults and make those faults into their
identity , is taken a little further and makes others into inhuman monsters. The ego needs others, but its dilemma is that deep down it hates andfears them. Jean?Paul Sartre's statement Hell is other people is the voice
of the ego. The person suf fering from paranoia experiences that hell most
acutely , but everyone in whom the egoic patterns still operate will feel it
to some degree. The stronger the ego in you, the more likely it is that in
your perception other people are the main source of problems in your
life. It is also more than likely that you will make life dif ficult for others. But, of course, you won't be able to see that. It is always others who
seem to be doing it to you. The mental illness we call paranoia also manifests another symptom that
is an element of every ego, although in paranoia it takes on a more
extreme form. The more the suf ferer sees himself persecuted, spied on,
or threatened by others, the more pronounced becomes his sense of being
the center of the universe around whom everything revolves, and the
more special and important he feels as the imagined focal point of so
many people's attention. His sense of being a victim, of being wronged
by so many people, makes him feel very special. In the story that forms
the basis of his delusional system, he often assigns to himself the role of
both victim and potential hero who is going to save the world or defeat
the forces of evil. The collective ego of tribes, nations, and religious or ganizations also
frequently contains a strong element of paranoia: us against the evil
others. It is the cause of much human suf fering. Th Spanish Inquisition,
the persecution and burning of heretics and witches, the relations
between nations leading up to the First and Second W orld wars,
Communism throughout its history , the Cold W ar , McCarthyism in
America in the 1950's, prolonged violent conflict in the Middle East are
all painful episodes in human history dominated by extreme collective
paranoia. The more unconscious individuals, groups, or nations are, the more
likely it is that egoic pathology will assume the form of physical
violence. V iolence is a primitive but still very widespread way in which
the ego attempts to assert itself, to prove itself right and another wrong. W ith very unconscious people, ar guments can easily lead to physical
violence. What is an ar gument? T wo or more people express their
opinions and those opinions dif fer . Each person is so identified with the
thoughts that make up their opinion, that those thoughts harden into
mental positions which are invested with a sense of self. In other words:Identity and thought mer ge. Once this has happened, when I defend my
opinions (thoughts), I feel and act as if I were defending my very self. Unconsciously , I feel and act as if I were fighting for survival and so my
emotions will reflect this unconscious belief. they become turbulent. I
am upset, angry , defensive, or aggressive. I need to win at all costs lest I
become annihilated. That's the illusion. The ego doesn't know that mind
and mental positions have nothing to do with who you are because the
ego is he unobserved mind itself. In Zen they say: Don't seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions. What does that mean? Let go of identification with your mind. Who you
are beyond the mind then emer ges by itself.A New Earth
W O R K  W I T H  A N D  W I T H O U T  E G O
Most people have moments when they are free of ego. Those who are
exceptionally good at what they do may be completely or lar gely free of
ego while performing their work. They may not know it, but their work
has become a spiritual practice. Most of them are present while they do
their work and fall back into relative unconsciousness in their private
life. This means their state of Presence is for the time being confined to
one area of their life. I have met teachers, artists, nurses, doctors,
scientists, social
workers, waiters, hairdressers, business owners, and salespeople who
perform their work admirably without any self?seeking, fully responding
to whatever the moment requires of them. They are one with what they
do, one with the Now , one with the people or the task they serve. The
influence such people have upon others goes far beyond the function
they perform. They bring about a lessening of the ego in everyone who
comes into contact with them. Even people with heavy egos sometimes
begin to relax, let down their guard, and stop playing their roles when
they interact with them. It comes as no surprise that those people who
work without ego are extraordinarily successful at what they do. Anybody who is one with what he or she does is building the new earth. I have also met many others who may be technically good at what they
do but whose ego constantly sabotages their work. Only part of their
attention is on the work they perform; the other part is on themselves. Their ego demands personal recognition and wastes ener gy in resentment
if it doesn't get enough and it's never enough. Is someone else getting
more recognition than me? Or their main focus of attention is profit or
power , and their work is no more than a means to that end. When work is
no more than a means to an end, it cannot be of high quality . When
obstacles or dif ficulties arise in their work, when things don't go
according to expectation, when other people or circumstances are not
helpful or cooperative, instead of immediately becoming one with the
new situation and responding to the requirements of the present moment,they react against the situation and so separate themselves from it. There
is a me that feels personally of fended or resentful, and a huge amount of
ener gy is burned up in useless protest or anger , ener gy that could be used
for solving the situation if it were not being misused by the ego. What is
more, this anti?ener gy creates new obstacles, new opposition. Many
people are truly their own worst enemy . People unknowingly sabotage their own work when they withhold help
or information from others or try to undermine them lest they become
more successful or get more credit than me. Cooperation is alien to the
ego, except when there is a secondary motive. The ego doesn't know that
the more you include others, the more smoothly things flow and the
more easily things come to you. When you give little or no help to others
or put obstacles in their path, the universe in the form of people and
circumstances gives little or no help to you because you have cut
yourself of f from the whole. The ego's unconscious core feeling of not enough causes it to react to
someone else's success as if that success had taken something away from
me. It doesn't know that your resentment of another person's success
curtails your own chances of success. In order to attract success, you
need to welcome it wherever you see it.A New Earth
T H E  E G O  I N  I L L N E S S
An illness can either strengthen or weaken the ego. If you complain, feel
self?pity , or resent being ill, your ego becomes stronger . It also becomes
stronger if you make the illness art of your conceptual identity: I am a
suf ferer of such and such a disease. Ah, so now we know who you are. Some people, on the other hand, who in normal life have a big ego,
suddenly become gentle and kind and much nicer people when they are
ill. They may gain insights they may never have had in their normal life. They may access their inner knowing and contentment and speak words
of wisdom. Then, when they get better , ener gy returns and so does the
ego. When you are ill, your ener gy level is quite low , and the intelligence of
the or ganism may take over and use the remaining ener gy for the healing
of the body , and so there is not enough left for the mind, that is to say ,
egoic thinking and emotion. The ego burns up considerable amounts of
ener gy . In some cases, however , the ego retains the little ener gy that
remains and uses it for its own purposes. Needless to say , those people
who experience a strengthening of the ego in illness take much longer to
recover . Some never do, and so the illness becomes chronic and a
permanent part of their false sense of self.A New Earth
T H E  C O L L E C T I V E  E G O
How hard it is to live with yourself! One of the ways in which the ego
attempts to escape the unsatisfactoriness of personal self?hood is to
enlar ge and strengthen its sense of self by identifying with a group a
nation, a political party , corporation, institution, sect, club, gang, football
team. In some cases the personal ego seems to dissolve completely as someone
dedicates his or her life to working selflessly for the greater good of the
collective without demanding personal rewards, recognition, or
aggrandizement. What a relief to be freed of the dreadful burden of
personal self. The members of the collective feel happy and fulfilled, no
matter how
hard they work, how many sacrifices they make. They appear to have
gone beyond ego. The question is: Have they truly become free, or has
the ego simply shifted from the personal to the collective? A collective ego manifests the same characteristics as the personal ego,
such as the need for conflict and enemies, the need for more, the need to
be right against others who are wrong, and so on. Sooner or later , the
collective will come into conflict with other collectives, because it
unconsciously seeks conflict and it needs opposition to define its
boundary and thus its identity . Its members will then experience the
suf fering that inevitably comes in the wake of any ego?motivated action. At that point, they may wake up and realize that their collective has a
strong element of insanity . It can be painful at first to suddenly wake up and realize that the
collective you had identified with and worked for is actually insane. Some people at that point become cynical or bitter and henceforth deny
all values, all worth. This means that they quickly adopted another belief
system when the previous one was recognized as illusory and therefore
collapsed. They didn't face the death of their ego but ran away and
reincarnated into a new one.A collective ego is usually more unconscious than the individuals that
make up that ego. For example crowds (which are temporary collective
egoic entities) are capable of committing atrocities that the individual
away from the crowd would not be. Nations not infrequently engage in
behavior that would be immediately recognizable as psychopathic in an
individual. As the new consciousness emer ges, some people will feel called upon to
form groups that reflect the enlightened consciousness. These groups
will not be collective egos. The individuals who make up these groups
will have no need to define their identity through them. They no longer
look to any form to define who they are. Even if the members that make
up those groups are not totally free of ego yet, there will be enough
awareness in them to recognize the ego in themselves or in others as
soon as it appears. However , constant alertness is required since the ego
will try to take over and reassert itself in any way it can. Dissolving the
human ego by bringing it into the light of awareness this will be one of
the main purposes of these groups, whether they be enlightened
businesses, charitable or ganizations, schools, or
communities of people living together . Enlightened collectives will
fulfill an important function in the arising of the new consciousness. Just
as egoic collectives pull you into unconsciousness and suf fering, the
enlightened collective can be a vortex for consciousness that will
accelerate the planetary shift.A New Earth
I N C O N T R O V E R T I B L E  P R O O F  O F
I M M O R T A L I T Y
Ego comes about through a split in the human psyche in which identity
separates into two parts that we could call I and me or me and myself. Every ego is therefore schizophrenic, to use the world in its popular
meaning of split personality . Y ou live with a mental image of yourself, a
conceptual self that you have a relationship with. Life itself becomes
conceptualized and separated from who you are when you speak of my
life. The moment you say or think my life and believe in what you are
saying (rather than it just being a linguistic convention), you have
entered the realm of delusion. If there is such a thing as my life, it
follows that I and life are two separate things, and so I can also lose my
life, my imaginary treasured possession. Death becomes a seeming
reality and a threat. W ords and concepts split life into separate segments
that have no reality in themselves. W e could even say that the notion my
life is the original delusion of separateness, the source of ego. If I and
life are two, if I am separate from life, then I am separate form all things,
all beings, all people. But how could I be separate from life? What I
could be there apart from life, apart from Being? It is utterly impossible. So there is no such thing as my life, and I don't have a life. I am life. I
and life are one. It cannot be otherwise. So how could I lose my life? How can I lose something that I don't have in the first place? How can I
lose something that I Am? It is impossible.C H A P T E R  F I V E  T H E  P A I N ? B O D Y
The greater part of most people's thinking is involuntary , automatic, and
repetitive. It is no more than a kind of mental static and fulfills no real
purpose. Strictly speaking, you don't think; Thinking happens to you. The statement I think implies volition. It implies that you have a say in
the matter , that there is choice involved on your part. For most people,
this is not yet the case. I think is just as false a statement as I digest or I
circulate my blood. Digestion happens, circulation happens, thinking
happens. The voice in the head has a life of its own. Most people are at the mercy
of that voice; they are possessed by thought, by the mind. And since the
mind is conditioned by the past, you are then forced to reenact the past
again and again. The Eastern term for this is karma. When you are
identified with that voice, you don't know this, of course. If you knew it,
you would no longer be possessed because you are only truly possessed
when you mistake the possessing entity for who you are, that is to say ,
when you become it. For thousands of years, humanity has been increasingly mind? possessed, failing to recognize the possessing entity as not self. Through
complete identification with the mind, a false sense of self the ego came
into existence. The density of the ego depends on the degree to which
you the consciousness are identified with your mind, with thinking. Thinking is no more than a tiny aspect of the totality of consciousness,
the totality of who you are. The degree of identification with the mind dif fers from person to person. Some people enjoy periods of freedom from it, however brief, and the
peace, joy , and aliveness they experience in those moments make life
worth living. These are also the moments when creativity , love, and
compassion arise. Others are constantly trapped in the egoic state. They
are alienated from themselves, as well as from others and the world
around them. When you look at them, you may see the tension in their
face, perhaps the furrowed brow , or the absent or staring expression in
their eyes. Most of their attention is absorbed by thinking, and so they
don't really see you, andthey are not really listening to you. They are not present in any situation,
their attention being either in the past or future which, of course, exist
only in them ind as thought forms. Or they relate to you through some
kind of role they play and so are not themselves. Most people are
alienated from who they are, and some are alienated to such a degree that
they way they behave and interact is recognized as phony by almost
everyone, except those who are equally phony , equally alienated from
who they are. Alienation means you don't feel at ease in any situation, any place, or
with any person, not even with yourself. Y ou are always trying to get
home' but never feel at home. Some of the greatest writers of the
twentieth century , such as Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, T .S.Eliot, and
James Joyce, recognized alienation as the universal dilemma of human
existence, probably felt it deeply within themselves and so were able to
express it brilliantly in their works. They don't of fer a solution. Their
contribution is to show us a reflection of the human predicament so that
we can see it more clearly . T o see one's predicament clearly is a first step
toward going beyond it.A New Earth
T H E  B I R T H  O F  E M O T I O N
In addition to the movement of thought, although not entirely separate
from it, there is another dimension to the ego: emotion. This is not to say
that all thinking and all emotion are of the ego. The turn into ego only
when you identify with them and they take you over completely , that is
to say , when they become I. The physical or ganism, your body , has its own intelligence, as does the
or ganism of every other life?form. And that intelligence reacts to what
your mind is saying, reacts to your thoughts. So emotion is the body's
reaction to your mind. The body's intelligence is, of course, an
inseparable part of universal intelligence, one of its countless
manifestations. It gives temporary cohesion to the atoms and molecules
that make up your physical or ganism. It is the or ganizing principle
behind the workings of all the or gans of the body , the conversion of
oxygen and food into ener gy , the heartbeat and circulation of he blood,
the immune system that protects the body from invaders, the translation
of sensory input into nerve impulses that are sent to the brain, decoded
there, and reassembled into a coherent inner picture of outer reality . All
these, as well as thousands of others simultaneously occurring functions,
are coordinated perfectly by that intelligence. Y ou don't run your body . The
intelligence does. It also is in char ge of the or ganism's responses to its
environment. This is true for any life?form. It is the same intelligence that brought the
plant into physical form and then manifests as the flower that comes out
of the plant, the flower that opens its petals in the morning to receive the
rays of the sun and closes them at nighttime. It is the same intelligence
that manifests as Gaia, the complex living being that is planet earth. This intelligence gives rise to instinctive reactions of the or ganism to any
threat or challenge. It produces responses in animals that appear to be
akin to human emotions: anger , fear , pleasure. These instinctiveresponses could be considered primordial forms of emotion. In certain
situations, human beings experience instinctive responses in the same
way that animals do. In the face of danger , when the survival of the
or ganism is threatened., the heart beats faster , the muscles contract,
breathing becomes rapid in preparation for fight or flight. Primordial
fear . When being cornered, a sudden flare?up of intense ener gy gives
strength to the body that it didn't have before. Primordial anger . These
instinctive responses appear akin to emotions, but are not emotions in the
true sense of the word. The fundamental dif ference between an
instinctive response and an emotion is this: An instinctive response
response is the body's direct response to some external situation. An
emotion, on the other hand, is the body's response to a thought. Indirectly , an emotion can also be a response to an actual situation tor
event, but it will be a response to the event seen through the filter of a
mental interpretation, the filter of thought, that is to say , through the
mental concepts of good and bad, like and dislike, me and mine. For
example, it is likely you won't feel any emotion when you are told that
someone's car has been stolen, but when it is your car , you will probably
feel upset. It is amazing how much emotion a little mental concept like
my can generate. Al though the body is very intelligent, it cannot tell the dif ference
between an actual situation and a thought. It reacts to every thought as if
it were a reality . It doesn't know it is just a thought. T o the body , a
worrisome, fearful thought means I am in danger , and it responds
accordingly , even though you may be lying in a warm and comfortable
bed at night. Th heart beats faster , muscles contract, breathing becomes
rapid. There is a buildup of
ener gy , but since the danger is only a mental fiction, the ener gy has no
outlet. Part of it is fed back to the mind and generates even more anxious
thought. The rest of the ener gy turns toxic and interferes with the
harmonious functioning of the body .A New Earth
E M O T I O N S  A N D  T H E  E G O
The ego is not only the unobserved mind, the voice in the head which
pretends to be you, but also the unobserved emotions that are the body's
reaction to what the voice in the head is saying. W e have already seen what kind of thinking the egoic voice engages in
most of the time and the dysfunction inherent in the structure of its
thought processes, regardless of content. This dysfunctional thinking is
what the body reacts to with negative emotion. The voice in the head tells a story that the body believes in and reacts to. Those reactions are the emotions. The emotions, in turn, feed ener gy
back to the thoughts that created the emotion in the first place. This is the
vicious circle between unexamined thoughts and emotions, giving rise to
emotional thinking and emotional story?making. The emotional component of ego dif fers from person to person. in some
egos, it is greater than in others. Thoughts that trigger emotional
responses in the body may sometimes come so fast that before the mind
has had time to voice them, the body has already responded with an
emotion, and the emotion has turned into a reaction. Those thoughts exist
at a pre? verbal stage and could be called unspoken, unconscious
assumptions. They have their origin in a person's past conditioning,
usually from early childhood. People cannot be trusted would be an
example of such an unconscious assumption in a person whose
primordial relationships, that is to say , with parents roe siblings, were not
supportive and did not inspire trust. Here are a few more common
unconscious assumptions: Nobody respects and appreciates me. I need to
fight to survive. There is never enough money . Life always lets you
down. I don't deserve abundance. I don't deserve love. Unconscious
assumptions create emotions in the body which in turn generate mind
activity and/or instant reactions. In this way , they create your personal
reality .The voice of the ego continuously disrupts the body's natural state of
well?being. Almost every human body is under a great deal of strain and
stress, not because it is threatened by some external factor but from
within the mind. The body has an ego attached to it, and it cannot but
respond to all the dysfunctional thought patterns that make up the ego. Thus, a stream of negative emotion accompanies the stream of incessant
and compulsive thinking. What is a negative emotion? An emotion that is toxic to the body and
interferes with its balance and harmonious functioning. Fear , anxiety ,
anger , bearing a grudge, sadness, hatred or intense dislike, jealousy , envy
all disrupt the ener gy flow through the body , af fect the heart, the immune
system, digestion, production of hormones, and so on. Even mainstream
medicine, although it knows very little about how the ego operates yet is
beginning to recognize the connection between negative emotional states
and physical disease. An emotion that does harm to the body also infects
the people you come into contact with and indirectly , though a process of
chain reaction, countless others you never meet. There is a generic term
for all negative emotions: unhappiness. Do positive emotions then have the opposite ef fect on the physical body? Do they strengthen the immune system, invigorate and heal the body? They do, indeed, but we need to dif ferentiate between positive emotions
that are ego?generated and deeper emotions that emanate from your
natural state of connectedness with Being. Positive emotions generated by the ego already contain within
themselves their opposite into which they can quickly turn. Here are
some examples. What the ego calls love is possessiveness and addictive
clinging that can turn into hate within a second. Anticipation about an
upcoming event, which is the ego's overvaluation of future, easily turns
into its opposite letdown or disappointment when the event is over or
doesn't fulfill the ego's expectations. Praise and recognition make you
feel alive and happy one day; being criticized or ignored make you
dejected and unhappy the next. The pleasure of a wild party turns into
bleakness and a hangover the next morning. There is no good without
bad, no high without low . Ego?generated emotions are derived from the mind's identification with
external factors which are of course, all unstable and liable to change atany moment. The deeper emotions are not really emotions at all but
states of Being. Emotions exist within the realm of opposites. States of
Being can be obscured, but they have no opposite. They emanate from
within you as the love, joy , and peace that are aspects of your true nature.A New Earth
T H E  D U C K  W I T H  A  H U M A N  M I N D
In The Power of Now , I mentioned my observation that after two ducks
get into a fight, which never lasts long, they will separate and float of f in
opposite directions. Then each duck will flap its wings vigorously a few
times; thus releasing the surplus ener gy that built up during the fight. After they flap their wings, they float on peacefully , as if nothing had
ever happened. If the duck had a human mind, it would keep the fight alive by thinking,
by story?making. This would probably be the duck's story: I don't
believe what he just did. He came to within five inches of me. He thinks
he owns this pond. He has no consideration for my private space. I'll
never trust him again. Next time he'll try something else just to annoy
me. I'm sure he's plotting something already . But I'm not going to stand
for this. I'll teach him a lesson he won't for get. And on and on the mind
spins its tales, still thinking and talking about it days, months, or years
later . As far as the body is concerned, the fight is still continuing, and the
ener gy it generates in response to all those thoughts is emotion, which in
turn generates more thinking. This becomes the emotional thinking of
the ego. you can see how problematic the duck's life would become if it
had a human mind. But this is how most humans live all the time. No situation or event is ever really finished. The mind and the mind? made me and my story keep it going. W e are a species that ahas lost its way . everything natural, every flower
or tree, and every animal have important lessons to teach us if we would
only stop, look and listen. Our duck's lesson is this: Flap your wings
which translates as let go of the story ? and return to the only place of
power: the present moment.A New Earth
C A R R Y I N G  T H E  P A S T
The inability or rather unwillingness of the human mind to let go of the
past is beautifully illustrated in the story of two Zen monks, T anzan and
Ekido, who were walking along a country road that had become
extremely muddy after heavy rains. Near a village, they came upon a
young woman who was trying to cross the road, but the mud was so deep
it would have ruined the silk kimono she was wearing. T anzan at once
picked her up and carried her to the other side. The monks walked on in silence. Five hours later , as they were
approaching the lodging temple, Ekido couldn't restrain himself any
longer . Why did you carry that girl across the road? he asked. W e monks
are not supposed to do things like that. I put the girl down hours ago, said T anzan. Are you still carrying
her? Now imagine what life would be like for someone who lived like Ekido
all the time, unable or unwilling to let go internally of situations,
accumulating more and more stuf f' inside, and you get a sense of what
life is like for the majority of people on our planet. What a heavy burden
of past they carry around with them in their minds. The past lives in you as memories, but memories in themselves are not a
problem. in fact, it is through memory that we learn from the past and
from past mistakes. It is only when memories, that is to say , thoughts
about the past, take you over completely that they turn into a burden,
turn problematic, and become part of your sense of self. Y our
personality , which is conditioned by the past, then becomes your prison. Y our memories are invested with a sense of self, and your story becomes
who you perceive yourself to be. This little me is an illusion that
obscures your true identity as timeless and formless Presence.Y our story , however , consists not only of mental but also of emotional
memory old emotion that is being revived continuously . As in the case of
the monk who carried the burden of his resentment for five hours by
feeding it with his thoughts, most people carry a lar ge amount of
unnecessary baggage, both mental and emotional, throughout their lives. They limit themselves through grievances, regret, hostility , guilt.
_OceanofPDF.com_A_New_Earth_-_Tolle_Eckhart.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        The
conceptual image your mind has made of yourself is relating to its own
creation, which is the conceptual image it has made of the other person. The other person's mind has probably done the same, so very egoic
interaction between tow people is in reality the interaction between for
conceptual mind. made entities that are ultimately fictions. It is therefore
not surprising there is so much conflict in relationships. There is no true
relationship. A New Earth
T H E  M O N K  W I T H  S W E A T Y  P A L M S
Kasan, a Zen teacher and monk, was to of ficiate at a funeral of a famous
nobleman. As he stood there waiting for the governor of the province
and other lords and ladies to arrive, he noticed that the palms of his
hands were sweaty. The next day he called his disciples together and confessed he was not
yet ready to be a true teacher. He explained to them that he still lacked
the sameness of bearing before all human beings, whether beggar or
king. He was still unable to look through social roles and conceptual
identities and see the sameness of being in every human. He then left and
became the pupil of another master. He returned to his former disciples
eight years later, enlightened. A New Earth
H A P P I N E S S  A S  A  R O L E  V S. T R U E
H A P P I N E S S
How are you. Just great. Couldn't be better. T rue or false. In many cases, happiness is a role people play, and behind the smiling
facade, there is a great deal of pain. Depression, breakdowns, and
overreactions are common when unhappiness is covered up behind a
smiling exterior and brilliant white teeth, when there is denial,
sometimes even to one's self, that there is much unhappiness. Just fine is a role the ego plays more commonly in America than in
certain other countries where being and looking miserable is almost the
norm and therefore more socially acceptable. It is probably an
exaggeration, but I am told that in the capital of one Nordic country you
run the risk of being arrested for drunken behavior if you smile at
strangers in the street. If there is unhappiness in you, first you need to acknowledge that it is
there. But don't say, I'm unhappy. Unhappiness has nothing to do with
who you are. Say: There is unhappiness in me. Then investigate it. A
situation you find yourself in may have something to do with it. Action
may be required to change the situation or remove yourself from it. If
there is nothing you can do, face what is and say, W ell, right now, this is
how it is. I can either accept it, or make myself miserable. The primary
cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be
aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation,
which is always neutral, which always is as it is. There is the situation or
the fact, and here are my thoughts about it. Instead of making up stories,
stay with the facts. For example, I am ruined is a story. It limits you and
prevents you from taking ef fective action. I have fifty cents left in my
bank account is a fact. Facing facts is always empowering. Be aware that
what you think, to a lar ge extent, creates the emotions that you feel. See
the link between your thinking and your emotions. Rather than being
your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them. Don't seek happiness. If you seek it, you won't find it, because seeing is
the antithesis of happiness. Happiness is ever elusive, but freedom from
unhappiness is attainable now, by facing what is rather than making up
stories about it. Unhappiness covers up your natural state of well. being
and inner peace, the source of true happiness. A New Earth
P A R E N T H O O D :  R O L E  O R  F U N C T I O N. Many adults play roles when they speak to young children. They use
silly words and sounds. They talk down to the child. They don't treat the
child as an equal. The fact that you temporarily know more or that you
are bigger does not mean the child is not your equal. The majority of
adults, at some point in their lives, find themselves being a parent, one of
the most universal roles. The all. important question is: Are you able to
fulfill the function of being a parent, and fulfill it well, without
identifying with that function, that is, without it becoming a role. Part of
the necessary function of being a parent is looking after the needs of the
child, preventing the child from getting into danger, and at times telling
the child what to do and not to do. When being a parent becomes an
identity, however, when your sense of self is entirely or lar gely derived
from it, the function easily becomes overemphasized, exaggerated, and
takes you over. Giving children what they need becomes excessive and
turns into spoiling; preventing them from getting into danger becomes
overprotectiveness and interferes with their need to explore the world
and try things out for themselves. T elling children what to do or not to do
becomes controlling, overbearing. What is more, the role. playing identity remains in place long after the
need for those particular functions has passed. Parents then cannot let go
of being a parent even when the child grows into an adult. They can't let
go of the need to be needed by their child. Even when the adult child is
forty years old, parents can't let go of the notion I know what's best for
you. The role of parent is still being played compulsively, and so there is
no authentic relationship. Parents define themselves by that role and are
unconsciously afraid of loss of identity when they cease being parents. If
their desire to control or influence the actions of their adult child is
thwarted as it usually is they will start to criticize or show their
disapproval, or try to make the child feel guilty, all in an unconscious
attempt to preserve their role, their identity. On the surface it looks as if
they were concerned about their child, and they themselves believe it,
but they are only really concerned about preserving their role. identity. All egoic motivations are self. enhancement and self. interest, sometimes
cleverly disguised, even from the person in whom the ego operates. A mother or father who identifies with the parental role may also try to
become more complete through their children. The ego's need to
manipulate others into filling the sense of lack it continuously feels is
then directed toward them. If the mostly unconscious assumptions and
motivations behind the parent's compulsion to manipulate their children
were made conscious and voiced, they would probably include some or
all of the following: I want you to achieve what I never achieved; I want
you to be somebody in the eyes of the world, so that I too can be
somebody through you. Don't disappoint me. I sacrificed so much for
you. My disapproval of you is intended to make you feel so guilty and
uncomfortable that you finally conform to my wishes. And it goes
without saying that I know what's best for you. I love you and I will
continue to love you if you do what I now is right for you. When you make such unconscious motivations conscious, you
immediately see how absurd they are. the ego that lies behind them
becomes visible, as does its dysfunction. Some parents that I spoke to
suddenly realized, My God, is this what I have been doing. Once you
see what you are doing or have been doing, you also see its futility, and
that unconscious pattern then comes to an end by itself. A wareness is the
greatest agent for change. If your parents are doing this to you, do not tell them they are
unconscious and in the grip of the ego. That will likely make them even
more unconscious, because the ego will take up a defensive position. It is
enough for you to recognize that it is the ego in them, that it is not who
they are. Egoic patterns, even long. standing ones, sometimes dissolve
almost miraculously when you don't oppose them internally. Opposition
only gives them renewed strength. But even if they don't, you can then
accept your parents' behavior with compassion, without needing to react
to it, that is to say, without personalizing it. Be aware also of your own unconscious assumptions or expectations that
lie behind your old, habitual reactions to them. My parents should
approve of what I do. They should understand me and accept me for who
I am. Really. Why should they. The fact is they don't because they can't. Their evolving consciousness hasn't made the quantum leap to the levelof awareness yet. They are not yet able to disidentify from their role. Y es, but I can't feel happy and comfortable with who I am unless I have
their approval and understanding.
The interaction is between four conceptual mind-made entities that are ultimately fictions.
What is the nature of the interaction between two people, according to the author?
The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but rather the thoughts about it.
What is the primary cause of unhappiness, according to the text?
The key is to face what is, and then investigate and accept the situation, rather than making up stories about it.
What is the key to overcoming unhappiness, according to the author?
The author suggests that it is important to fulfill the necessary functions of being a parent, but not to identify with the role, as this can lead to overprotectiveness and control.
What is the author's view on the concept of "being a parent"?
The author argues that happiness is an illusion and that true happiness comes from recognizing and accepting the present moment, rather than seeking it through external means.
What is the author's perspective on the concept of "happiness"?