How Does Ego?

[PretentiousHuman]

How does Ego get nastier when you get some likes on facebook, get validation from your crush, boss and people you want to please, when you get the things you wanted the most and anything you think will make you happy or satisfied? Is this a bad thing? I'm confused. What are the things that you can do to escape this kind of trap. Thanks!!! 

[Dizzy]

The key is to reconize the form of happiness and satisfaction the ego seeks. 

Or so I found it for myself

 

[Nahm]

@PretentiousHuman  Your separation from source, your individuality - is strengthened by utilizing Facebook. As in "look at me, pretentious skull guy who is not the universe." Your separation is strengthened by validation, which is an idea in your head to begin with. Even when you feel validated, no one but you is actually doing the validation.  I'm a "boss" (terrible term) and I dream of having a team of individuals who do not need validation. Your boss is playing you like a fucking sheep when he / she gives you validation. Stop needing it and you'll probably become a boss, no offense. It is beneficial to want and to get what you want, evidenced by clean and clear good feelings. It is not beneficial to be emotionally attached to any of it, evidence by a feeling of lack which is your mind making up a belief to sooth you by blaming. 

To escape this trap, skip over the typical years or decades most endure bullshitting themselves about meditation, and DO IT. Every morning for at least 20 minutes. Just sit there and return your focus to your breathing. Breathe involuntarily & naturally, but realize you are not breathing, rather the universe is breathing, as well as beating it's heart and orchestrating trillions of atoms that you refer to as your body, or skull guy. Within roughly two weeks, around the 16 minute mark, you will experience a sort of separation from your ego self. Kind of like a bird's on view on your mind and emotions.  

Another thought, if you're still reading... learn about the uncertainty principle. From what I can deduce, we live in a world where the vast majority don't change, even to benefit themselves. When people do change, it's usually painfully slow and then they undo it and return to habits. Don't be a creature of habit. The only reason for habit, or doing the next most probable thing, is you. It is equally as easy to do more and more and more of what you want. Not that - ... what you really fucking want. You can do it. The only thing that will hold you back is your perspective on it. The uncertainty principle is the best thing I've found to get deep enough into the perspective of choice within myself. Will most likely be something else that get's deeply into you, that's just a reference of what worked best for me. Btw, I might be kidding myself but it sure seems like you have a very very special energy. Feel free to tell I'm a weirdo, but am I right? Like, have you always known there is something about you that is hard to place or verbalized that is very different? 

Odd, I know, but I'm feelin it so I'm expressing it. And I'm curious. 

[Nahm]

@Dizzy That's so beautiful. 

[Christian]

The ego is like a shark in water; always moving, always distracting you from the divine. Yes, the ego can get nastier when external reality is in alignment with its wants or expectations. Nastier in the sense that the ego now favors certain experiences over others and becomes more protective of the things that validate its existence. When you are more protective, you feel more anxious, suspicious and that leads to suffering.

One way to break out of the trap of materialism is noticing that it will never fulfill you. Noticing the suffering it brings and the constant struggle for happiness which seems just around the corner, but never arrives. Grasping this at a deep emotional level is the gateway to liberation from materialism.

Doing some regular meditation and contemplation is important  for this insight occur

[SOUL]

@Nahm I have seen you cite the uncertainty principle in relation to choice a few times on this forum and it seems you are conflating two different quantum phenomena. Superposition is often said to suggest choice through the indeterminate nature as the very basis of physics through observation. Uncertainty principle is a different phenomena where complementary variables of an electron cannot be known even through observation.

So superposition implies variability and determination through observation although the uncertainty principle explicitly shows us that observation cannot bring complete knowledge. Both of these are a thorn in the side of reductionists and materialists that want to ignore consciousness role in determining through observation while simultaneously also clinging to the false notion that through observation we can ultimately be able to know everything.

[Nahm]

@SOUL THANKS!

How does the uncertainty principle and the superposition apply to you, right now, directly? Are they relative to you?

[SOUL]

@Nahm Well, since with uncertainty we cannot know everything through observation it allows me to free my mind from being fixated on knowing everything which instead feeds my mind into acceptance of things as they are even if I don't know what that is.... an ultimate acceptance. Also, with the indeterminate it relates in the way I choose to view life and it's circumstances determines the influence they have in my psyche.

[Nahm]

@SOUL That's cool that that is working for you! I wish you well.