THE SAGAN SERIES - The Pale Blue Dot
Quoted from the video:
"The earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future to which our species can migrate."
- Carl Sagan
So then why are we committing suicide, fighting each other, suffering from depression, suffering from poverty, engaged so deeply in our earthly activities while forgetting at all times this wonderful truth about Earth and the universe? Perhaps every now and then we remember but can we actually grasp this reality? Why do we forget? Why can't we grasp this truth all the time?
The Ego is expressed through our individuality. The Ego exists in you and is naturally perceived by you. It is who you are, your personality, your character. It does NOT age, which is why we 'feel' like we are the same age even though our body ages. We tend to hinder the communication because the thinking mind is waging war on the Ego. Because we are constantly told that our emotions and thoughts are BAD, this has traumatized us as children into separating our thinking mind from the Ego. There are no 'good' and 'bad' thoughts and emotions. How is this so? Here is a typical example: Take a situation where someone offends you: you could judge an angry emotion as good and then a happy emotion as bad in that situation. The belief in what's a good thought/emotion and bad thought/emotion become blurred, to reveal that there is only GOOD.
There is a misidentification on how the world knows Ego so let me explain. The world defines the ego as the Illusion, the 'I', when it is in fact the thinking mind's Story. There is a difference between character and connecting your identity to a Story which you believe is alive! So the ego is one thing and the thinking mind's story is another! The Ego is our character; the thinking mind is waging war on our uniqueness. There is a war going on in which people and those in authority in religion and governments and schools mistakenly tell us that we are supposed to be homogeneous! This is waging war on the character. The only thing that is certain within us is our character. Ask yourself honestly, can you change your character? It's the thinking mind that is waging war on our character and that our uniqueness should be shunned and not expressed in full. The feelings of low confidence, and guilt, and self-sabotage, and jealousy, and other afflictions are coming from the thinking mind which has created a story you always refer to -- not the Ego, not our character. The tragedy is that we lose our beautiful potential and make hasty decisions and bad choices because of this separation.
We need to heal this and begin to trust our mind, body, and emotions as GOOD. Because none are BAD. We were made perfectly, just like the natural world around us. We must be in union again. The Ego is invisible to the physical world, it is non physical and therefore CONSTANT, it is always around and it is permanent (you can't change your character!). The physical world follows the Law of Change, and so everything in the physical world CHANGES, including our physical brain and emotions. That means we can change our thoughts and emotions -- but we can't change our character! We need to stop the insanity of constantly JUDGING the physical world as either bad or good which is the thinking mind waging war on the reality of the world. There is only good, NOT bad, only what is true and what is false, we need to cease judging falsely because we are using our brain to constantly judge something as either good or bad, good or bad, good or bad because we were traumatized into believing our emotions and thoughts are BAD, we were traumatized into actually thinking some part of us was made bad. We don't trust ourselves anymore. Cease judging and judge only your brain's judgement so that you can decipher the true from the false. Watch what you tell yourself. When we discard all false judgements, we become more and more true and natural which is good and so we don't need to rely on our brain to keep judging. So the Ego, which is invisible, is actually peaceful since it is CONSTANT. We tend to believe we are the physical brain and emotions, which are CHANGING all the time since both are physical. We rely on our brain to give us the answer which is through an emotion or a thought, and so we are moving from one emotion to another. But we are always searching for peace which cannot be found if we think we are our physical brain and vibrational information (emotions). Because Peace is constant and emotions are subject to change. We need to undo and heal the error in conditioning. The real us is actually our individual Egos (and not the brain and thoughts and emotions!) and the physical body with the brain and emotions is the physical manifestation, the expression of the Ego, our wonderful individualities. Not one of us is like the other. We are each beautiful and unique vibrant flowers in the most beautiful garden. The hanging garden of Babylon. The illusion has no conscience, but who we are, the Ego, our character is ALIVE!
"In cultivation practices, you first bring about a quiet mental cessation, or samadhi, and then use wordless insight to look into that state of mental calm which you produce. Then you'll be able to see that both 'existence' and 'nonexistence,' which are our terms of the two states of mentation and emptiness (the no-thought state of samadhi), are both dualistic terms that appear in the bright, formless, clear mind of voidness which extends everywhere. We blind ourselves to fixing it to one location, because we're so attached to our body, but the true mind extends everywhere. Because it's everywhere we say it's empty and formless, or void. Being empty it encompasses all things. When you can identify that state, which is the true one that knows, then you will begin to truly climb the ranks of spiritual practice."
- Twenty-Five Doors to Meditation: A Handbook for Entering Samadhi by William Bodri, Lee Shu-Mei