Egoic Mind - excerpt from Radical Happiness

Here's Gina's latest blog post at www.radicalhappiness.com:

The world, without thoughts intervening, has a neutral or positive impact on us: When we look at the sky, we feel expanded (positive), unless the egoic mind comes into that moment with a complaint or judgment about the sky or something else. When we feel the breeze, we experience that (neutral), unless the egoic mind comes into that moment with a complaint or judgment about the breeze. Where we get into trouble (negativity) is when we encounter other egoic minds or our own. When the egoic mind mediates between us and experience, we generally suffer because it tends to put a negative spin on experience or take us out of the experience altogether.

Once you notice the impact of the egoic mind on your experience of life, you can begin to ignore it and notice the true impact of life. You can “step around” that mediator and choose to experience life as it actually is. If you encountered an unpleasant stranger, you would probably avoid that stranger, and this is what you can do with your own (and other people’s) egoic minds. You “step around” or move beyond that interference to a place of peace, a place of no tension.

The way you know you are giving your attention to the egoic mind (yours or someone else’s) is when you feel tension or stress. That’s the time to “step around” that unpleasant intruder into reality. Life, itself, is benign, but the ego makes life feel threatening, or at best dull. It is either fending off its perceived difficulties or problems or trying to drum up some excitement, drama, and specialness. It doesn’t know how to play the game of life simply; it opts for trouble and drama. But drama doesn’t equal happiness, and simplicity and peace don’t equal boredom—the ego has it backwards. It tries to create a happy life, and all it does is take us away from happiness.

To free ourselves from the egoic mind, we just have to notice the impact it has on our experience of life. Does the experience you are having cause you to contract and feel bad or does a thought about the experience you are having cause this? This distinction is huge. Once you see that it is your thoughts and only your thoughts that cause you to feel contracted, then you can begin to free yourself from these thoughts. This sounds like work, but the truth is that the only thing that keeps us tied to our thoughts (imprisoned by them) is the belief that they belong to us and are therefore valid and necessary. They are not “your” thoughts and they are not valid or necessary. What a revelation that is when we finally see this—and so obvious, actually.

Every thought except the most mundane or functional ones, such as “this is a pencil,” has an impact on our consciousness, or energy. It causes us to contract or expand. If you notice, you’ll see that most thoughts cause contraction because most are judgments that attempt to make us feel superior. The ego tries to make itself feel good through judgments and being right, but the result is always a contraction. How interesting! The best the ego can do to make us feel good is to come up with a fantasy of something good, but fantasies actually result in a contraction too, if you notice. Anytime, the ego is in play, the result is a contraction.

Thoughts that are positive and true are expressions of essence, and they cause us to feel spacious, expansive, and at peace. The truth feels good! This is a clue to our true nature. When we are in touch with it, we feel good. This is why life without the mediation of the egoic mind feels good—because life is good. When we notice the impact of life on us in every moment, without the intervention of the mind, we feel the excitement and joy of essence, which is glad to be alive and grateful for everything it’s experiencing through us. That is the truth. When we learn to “step around” the egoic mind as it tries to intervene between us and life, we can finally be happy.