22 Jul 2012 —
Question
Q211: Ego love?
Question 211:
Amma says:
“Be careful not to fall in love with your own ego, in the name of loving others, serving them or doing spiritual practices.”
How do you understand this?
Please make your answer brief and clear (maximum 5 or 6 lines).
As Amma often says – we should not make friends with our mind as it is very tricky and easily leads to one’s downfall – its like the tail of the dog controlling the dog, can the dog ever rest in peace? and the solution Amma tells us is to develop awareness – by being alert and aware, we can avoid the downfall and make progress towards our goal..let Amma’s grace lead us to our goal this lifetime..
at Her Holy Feet
Say no to Ego love!!ufff what a weight!say no to ego love..!!ufff what a weight!!
be it..a simple, pure,light,effortless with utter devotion for Amma.
how can it be simple?? think mind!think !!why questioning ?
Do you prefer to sleep on stones leaving a soft bed?Do you gift your favourite deity stones?leave about stones!!today even flowers have thorns..but its not about stones or thorns. Its about purity of heart..
Don’t be egoistic. Get rid of that ego…
The ego can act in very subtle and powerful ways quite often. To feel great and special, he could cleverly put on a show of perfoming spiritual practices, doing selfless service or showing love towards others! Amma wants us to be aware of this!
The ego thinks “I am the doer”.
Pridefulness in what we do vs acknowledging that everything we do is by the Grace of God and Guru
One can’t help but notice that it is the ego responding to this question (however subtle). Make friends with it? Or realize we are in for the fight of our life with it?
The only recourse if to hang on to Amma’s words: “Surrender is the only real prayer and Humility is the only goal of spirituality.” Thank you Devi Devi
There are not two but one. The nature of that one is love. All else is a reflection of that love. All goodness is Its expression. Out of ignorance of our true nature, we mistakenly think that expression arises from a limited ego. When we love the goodness we see flowing outward, what we really love is not the limited ego, but the infinite and mysterious Self. Naturally, witnessing its boundless beauty manifested through good action we crave to go deeper into that Divine love.
to become famous and get attention people do lots of work in the name of serving other, love compassion and spirtuality. This is all done just to satisfy the ego. But inside them they and only they know the black side of their nature. MAA my divine MAA please help to overcome this aspect of our life and let us recogn ise ourself. Love u MAA
Perhaps Amma is pointing to the importance of being ruthlessly honest with oneself on the spiritual path. To be constantly conscious of our true motives and to scrutinize them in search of sneaky ego. It is so easy to act in an altruistic manner for personal gratification: recognition,feeling important and special.. etc. Of course, this trap is huge for a spiritual aspirant.
Amma says ” even to lift our finger we need God’s grace”. So lets always remember that God is the power behind all our actions, and not us, our ego. Let us always see ourselves as Gods instruments in doing good. God is the doer not us, so lets not become proud of ourself and lets be humble always.
I act without expectations and the fruit is YOUR MUM
I’m just a stream where you slide your love
(We put in this commitment does not always succeed sorry Mum)
Anything and everything that helps/aids to create an image of oneself is the ego IMHO. As long as one keeps the awareness of this happening, one can use it for achieving what is required in life. But when attachment and desires take hold, then problems occur for a spiritually motivated person!
The lyrics of AMMA’s bhajan titled, “Icchhamayi” is a reminder call telling us to offer ourselves, at the Lotus Feet of the Divine Mother. For, we tend to gloat over our good deeds as much as we wish to overlook our imperfections. AMMA is asking us to rise above the Ego, above good and bad, great and small and perceive the oneness in creation. That is, doing great and noble deeds should be seen as opportunities coming from Her, to proceed towards THE GOAL, and not be hurdles hindering our spiritual path.
experienced and understood this way….(saying inside mind)I am Amma’s Child, I chant my mantra, do morning I AM meditation, chant 1000 names daily, listen to bhajans most of the day, even while I sleep. I help those in need as my work. I will help anyway I can because I am Amma’s Child, I am special. Oh, why are you being mean and speaking so harshly to me when I am here to help you, you must be a demon. Person speaking harshly says, “Oh, I am sorry, I thought you were Amma’s child.” Please forgive me Amma, I forget you are in all beings.
Don’t let ego embrace any sense of satisfaction with any action you perform, especially when doing something good or doing karma yoga — this is my understanding. Satisfaction of the ego indicates it is not selfless action but mere action, as there is still the sense of “I am doing this”. This won’t really purify your inner dirt..
One may help a poor person. But because he had helped somebody, he may start thinking of himself as a very compassionate and kind person and feel proud of himself.
Thus he is falling in love with his own ego. So, instead of getting rid of the ego through seva, he ends up enhancing his ego, which is bad for the spiritual progress.
Ego and Love. so interesting.Out puts of two types Egoes (subtle and gross) are doership and enjoership, pride,and iam something great or iam differnet from others notion . .Both are harmful for our spiritual progress.
Love—-many types of Love are there.Our most beloved Amma always says that we love the cow only the for milk sake.When it stop giving milk we will sell off it to a butcher.Is it a real Love?. no.Only commercial or mutual undertanding.Love should be uncondtional which we can experience from our most beloved Amma.Falling Love with our Ego means we are cheating ourselves.Ego is a very subtle part of our mind. It is a very stange Phinomena.We should be alert and should able to controll this subtle part of our mind(Ego)otherwise it will controll us (Us means our sense organse).Instead of falling Love with our Ego-in the names of loivng,serving,doing spiritual practice,i think it is better to Raise our Love towrads our Pure Self or towards the priciciples of our Guru,Lord(our most beloved Amma.)
“Be careful not to fall in love with your own ego,” called Abhimana
“In the name of loving others, serving them or doing spiritual practices.” like Ravana pretending to be a sage in Dankaranya to kidnap Goddess Sita or Mother Divine Lakshmi.
These stages are most difficult to cross through as they are born of Rajo Guna to be eradicated through Pure Love Divine.
If we go deeper: who loves the ego? the ego does not love. It knows just : ME,I am the best, better than others or I am nothing, worthless, in need of appreciation. Is that love? Love has no choice but to love. If we fall in love with an idea that we are better. That is a clear alarm that we still are trapped. But I think we can love ourselves without comparing ourselves and making s.one wrong, even if its some ego. That is healthy.
Ego comes along with body sense.As long as we are attached to the wrong concept that i am body; insted of right idea that this body is mine but iam not body,will give us the misunderstanding, and that is the root cuse. Once we are clear in our idea about what is perishable and unperishable will lead us to the reality.until such time we are bound to have ego and all our actions and reactions are based on this concept, even seva we do is just to satisfy our ego, nothing else.we become proudy oh! what a great person I am doing seva for others!!
The ego says, “I am so virtuous”, “I am so saintly”, or it compares one to another. “I am better than so and so”. So Amma says do not fall in its trap.
It is good to remember that we are only channels for Amma’s divine love and it is not us that is helping anyone. When I start to believe that it is I who is changing a person’s life or it is I that has succeeded in life, then I am lost again. When I am foreer remembering that it is my Amma’s will, my Amma’s love, and my Amma’s grace, then I am free like a small child.
Amma said: “When the ego is perfectly under control… the master does everything through him, and he himself has no place in what he does. His attitude will be, ‘I am only an instrument. My all-powerful Master does everything through me.’ He takes no credit. But at the same time he will have an adventurous mind, tremendous courage and the power to undertake seemingly impossible tasks and drive them to the goal.”
– Awaken Children 7, p. 203
I act without expectations and the fruit is YOURS MUM
I’m just a stream where you slide your love
(We put in this commitment does not always succeed sorry Mum)
rosaria
Just as an example, my example… If you derive a pleasure, feel great or think that you stand above others when helping anyone, when leading a satsang, when reading scriptures out loud or such, when you share your spiritual experiences (by the Grace of Amma) with others who haven’t had that opportunity and start advicing them, then you are following in love with your ego.
Self improvement is an idea suitable only for “self” spelled with a little “s.” Seeing some behavior or thought pattern at a deep level and stopping it is not the same as action performed with motivation (like the motive to “be better”). We can’t know if surrender is just another concept until we have matured enough to do it without motive, and that won’t happen until there seems to be no other alternative.
Amma perhaps may be saying not to take credit even in our inner mind for the good deeds we may be doing for the unfortunate people,animals or even birds.To think I did it for them itself is wrong in other words. It should be like with god’s help I could do it in his name and the lord gave me the opportunity to do good deeds.We have seen in temples people publicly displaying their names on donated items meant for the temples.
Help those in need or give with your right hand without your left hand knowing it.
We should be vigilant about our ego. “Mana eva manushyanam karanam bandah mokshaye”. It is our mind which is responsible for bondage or liberation. If we get associated with our Ego, it can lead us into untold miseries. The best and easy way is to surrender ourselves completely to Amma. We are mere instruments in the hands of Amma. It is Amma who is doing everything. Always have that alertness and prayer to be humble.
All is ‘Amma’,’Love’. Everything already is taking place in ‘Love’.
To think of the separate self as the doer of anything, simply creates more mind/suffering and strengthens the mind in the illusion of separation.
The Greatest gift to give, is to give attention to ‘Amma’ to ‘Love already’, with that ‘Love’ itself does the giving with out the complication of a illusory me.
To in always be letting go, is not to practice holding on.
may these eyes forever see ‘Amma’,the/our (True Nature) so these hands will always be letting go.