The Ego is a Black Hole
The ego is the black hole of Consciousness that devours the light that illuminates our divine essence. The profound experience of separation creates the perpetual grasping for completeness. But the grasping for “some other” is another action of the ego, perpetually pulling its own misunderstanding back on itself. That which you seek outside of yourself is already present inside of you.
Divine essence is ever-present within us, and because it is our essence, we must respond to that truth with something more than, “isn’t that nice?” Many of us have a deep aspiration and intent to live this highest knowledge in the face of everything that tries to prevent us from doing so. The greatest masters of many traditions have told us that in order to have a direct experience that we are this divine essence, all we need to do is to recognize that truth. Some of the greatest masters within the Tantric Tradition emphatically state that there’s nothing that needs to be done — no meditation, service, or action necessary because Consciousness and divine essence cannot be the object of some pursuit.
This is correct, yet we don’t actually experience this highest form of consciousness. To understand why, it is helpful to look at the Trika’s teachings on the upāyas (the means of liberation). The upāyas describe the progression of coming to know our divine essence as being both a gradual and immediate unfolding. Anupāya, the highest of the means, is the only state in which nothing is to be done, but very few people begin their sādhana at this level of realization. Most start with āṇavopāya, the path of individual effort.
Within the Trika tradition, the upāyas are a part of a larger conversation on what is called śaktipāta, or the “descent of grace.” I describe grace as śakti — the power of the divine to liberate us from our contracted, disillusioned state. When grace descends it has a singular urge and purpose which is to reveal to us that we were never bound in the first place. The degree to which God reveals Himself to us determines the requirement and necessity of our sādhana, as well as its depth, scope, and intensity. The level of grace that is revealed to us determines whether there is nothing to be done (anupāya), or a lot to be done (āṇavopāya). It is the intensity of śaktipāta and the brightness of its illumination that determines our journey.
For the rare individual whose path is anupāya, the ability to see God is as effortless and natural as looking in a mirror. This immediate recognition, called pratibhā, results in the insight that we are not separate from God or each other, but that we are a part of the field of Oneness in which all diversity is expressed. For the rest of us, śaktipāta is experienced as an intense call from God to “come back home.” Then, we must do our sādhana to get there!
Why Ego is a Barrier
In our sādhana we encounter the resistance of the ego — the one place of consciousness within us that doesn’t know the truth of its divine essence and continually attempts to prove that it is separate from its Source. Ego is the self-defining willfulness of our individuality, and it is the black hole of consciousness. This dark place in us consumes all light and all possibility for freedom in order to reinforce its own existence. It fundamentally misunderstands itself and believes that it is separate from the Divine, thereby causing us enormous suffering. In fact, the ego believes that it is separate from everything, which leaves a huge hole in our heart that we perpetually try to fill with things that cannot fill it. It is this place of misunderstanding that renders us unable to recognize our oneness and identity with God.
The ego has the same power to deny our freedom as grace does to bestow it. Even though we might intellectually acknowledge our oneness with the Divine, we often experience an ongoing internal conflict in which we try to convince ourselves that we really don’t need to do our sādhana. Succumbing to this conflict is a denial of the grace and insight that God has given us. Yet, our capacity and willingness to see our own state — conflicted or otherwise — ultimately allows us to recognize the highest within us, moment by moment. The discipline of sādhana entails a willingness to hold ourselves to our intention to realize our divine essence when everything else is telling us that it isn’t true or isn’t possible. Our sādhana helps to free us from this misunderstanding.
Once we see that the ego is not separate from Consciousness, we must stop identifying with it as “my misunderstanding.” On the other hand, the ego is part of Consciousness, and although limited in its capacity for knowledge, it is not evil. Instead of trying to kill the ego, we should instead be kind to ourselves, because this black hole only gets stronger when we give more energy to it. The tendency to spin endless stories about our ego’s trauma or karma only intensifies the darkness.
Sādhana is the Gift of Grace
The solution is to wake up, see the ego functioning every day, and then surrender it! Surrender this misunderstanding so that you can respond to grace and the liberating power of the Divine that is calling you home. We cannot allow the ego to deny us our own freedom, our God-given right to live in unconditional joy.
Sādhana is the gift of grace for those of us who need it. It is sometimes referred to as tapasyā, or fire. By holding ourselves within the clarity of our intention, we burn the impurity of the ego and misunderstanding. It’s hot, yet we must not fight to get out! We must surrender and remain in the fire of transformation. This fire is this same divine power that expresses itself as kuṇḍalinī; the same power we use to reverse the experience of duality, in which we see the world as other than ourselves.
What if we were denied grace and denied the possibility of doing our sādhana? What if instead of receiving the message, “You are God,” all we heard from Him was, “You are God, but you don’t know it, and you never will”? Be grateful for the possibility of knowing your divine essence. Respond to that call of grace by doing your spiritual work.
I encourage you to think very carefully about this. Tomorrow morning when you wake up, ask yourself what you really want: Do you want to live in the darkness of ego? Or do you want to live in the light of God? The extraordinary thing is that you have been given a choice. Choose wisely.