The Word Ego
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 3 years before Jun 27, 2016
MiBeloved 3 years ago
This entry is based on this Video here.
Video Title: Eckhart Tolle talks about persons who don't react to negativity.
I don’t follow Tolle in that video in relation to the use of the word ego. Now that should not be surprising since the word is one of the most abused words ever to appear in human language. It is like the word devil in the Middle Ages, where everything that went wrong was tagged as being caused by the devil. The poor guy was hung a million times for everything everyone else did.
Everything Tolle described before he mentioned the name of Obama was a description of deliberate indifference to circumstances. So as far as what I understand Tolle is calling indifference as being the lack of ego.
I am neither endorsing nor objecting to what he said, I am just trying to get it clear as to what he is saying. He is speaking about deliberate indifference. There is what is called involuntary indifference which is when a person is indifference due to a mood. This is indifference to be sure but it is not deliberate. It is instinctive. I feel he is speaking about the deliberate kind and the kind which one might develop over time after practicing the deliberate kind.
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In regards to what he said about Obama, I do not agree with Tolle that Obama is doing this. Obama is not a transcendentalist but he is a very shrewd politician. In my view he is a master propagandist, born with the ability to convince others that he can take care of their problems. If anything he is similar to Goebbels, the master propagandist for Hitler.
This might sound outlandish but please take into consideration that a knife is only a threat to a human being if it is used as weapon on a human body. When the same knife is used to cut up vegetable or animals which human beings want to eat, it is not considered to be a threat even though it is the same dangerous object.
One does not have to be good in every life to be good in one specific life. In fact one can be terribly evil in one life and then be so good in the next as to be labeled as a saint.
Obama in my opinion is not genuinely indifferent. He is indifferent out of political necessity to not cause any resistance to what he is doing. For example if we compare Obama to the Bush person who was president before, we find that if Bush wanted to bomb some Taliban camp with a drone, he would proudly declare it. Then the next day we would hear a report on the TV where the Taliban pledged to take revenge, or we might hear that they sent a suicide bomber into a market in Kabul and killed 30 Afghanis.
But with Obama, he will send the same done with a bigger bomb but he will not declare it on TV and if the Taliban reacts, you won’t hear about it, because the media finds it inconvenient to mention something which is not an obvious reaction to American interference.
I do not see that Obama is genuinely indifferent. It is a political method which is his instinct, carried over from his many many past lives as a leader. He knows what to do to keep the dust down, while Bush knew what to do to sensationalize the incidence.
In both cases a strong ego is there but in Obama the ego acts while taking a back seat in terms of publicity, while in Bush it acts up-front. I do not see a lack of ego in Obama. I see a lack of display of ego, which really is even more dangerous.
What is word that comes to mind?
It is sly.
There is an old British saying I learned as a kid in British Guiana.
It reads like this:
As sly as a fox.
Alfredo 3 years ago
The word ego is anathema to you, Acharyaji!
Even though I have advocated Tolle as having sustained a profound spiritual realization, that video was a disaster. He was catering to Obama from a platform of looking good to others. I don't like that.
Michael Wrote: [If anything he is similar to Goebbels, the master propagandist for Hitler.]
Alfredo’s Reply:
Yes, but! When Ann Coulter said that Obama's so-called autobiography belongs in the same shelf, in a dime bookstore, with Hitler's "Mein Kampf", I know she was exaggerating, but then look at that biography and how Obama invented himself. If he is African-American, I am Fu Manchu. He grew up in secluded environment and school with no minorities.
He is cool as a cucumber, said Charles Krauthammer. I agree.
However, please do not compare him to a master criminal like Goebbels, at least in their last lives. I know the history of the Shoa and Germany well, and know that Goebbels was primarily responsible for Kristalnacht. As the cripple he was, and a Gauleiter for Berlin, he was sure that every Jew in Berlin was oppressed or destroyed. He was behind Hitler all the way. Also, Goebbels was rarely his own man, and Obama is.
MiBeloved 3 years ago
If you can't accept this statement:
One does not have to be good in every life to be good in one specific life. In fact one can be terribly evil in one life and then be so good in the next as to be labeled as a saint.
then that is okay. But it also means that you do not understand what the subtle body is and how it can convert from being a lion to being a cow and will act in whatever way is expedient in a new circumstance.
It may be that this threatens your idea of yourself, where you cannot bear to hear that a good guy like you may have been................(fill in the worse name from history) in a past life.
That too is okay!
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Obama is his own man?
Which Obama?
In which parallel universe?
Which President of the USA can be his own man?
The whole idea of becoming the President of this country is to sell out to the people who really control what is happening here.
Obama is no exception!
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I have no qualms about the word ego, just be clear to define it and stick to the definition, instead of using it for everything which is not preferred, because then it loses meaning and just becomes a trendy jargon.
Alfredo 3 years ago
Ha, ha, OK.
Michael Wrote:
[then that is okay. But it also means that you do not understand what the subtle body is and how it can convert from being a lion to being a cow and will act in whatever way is expedient in a new circumstance.]
Alfredo’s Reply:
No, I do understand that, notice I wrote: [at least in their last lives], in that regard I was comparing the 2 men as per their last historicity.
But I am writing in this site, and the subtle body here is paramount.
Still, try to go out there and explain that and they will sequester the site and place it in the Internet funny farm.
When I compared Goebbels and Obama and said "his own man", it was also in the historical sense, as Hitler was his own man, and Goebbels his stooge. But Obama is, in that sense, his own man. Of course, finally, there are forces behind both, that propped them up.
Besides, if you go by Chapter 3 of the Gita and your commentary there, no one here can be his own man finally.
And I do agree. I find that conclusion fascinating, and our relationship to the supernaturals of subordination, both enriching and alarming.
it may be that this threatens your idea of yourself, where you cannot bear to hear that a good guy like you may have been................(fill in the worse name from history) in a past life.]
First off, I am not a very good guy, even now. Even in this life I have mostly been an asshole, so I would not be surprised if I was worst before.
Actually, let me know if you know if I was a saint. That would be nice to know.
MiBeloved 3 years ago
Always keep in mind that as great and as non-violent of a person as Gautam Buddha, was said to be capable of the exact opposite by the astrologers who told his father at his birth ceremony something to the effect, that this person will become either a world conquering monarch or the greatest ascetic of all time.
That means he could have been a Ghenghis Khan, with the blood of millions on his hands.
Instead of thousands of youths following him into asceticism they would have followed him to the battlefields of his conquests.
And once a mystic lama said that Mao Tse Tung was a great lama in his past life, who somehow took rebirth to help the mass under-class in China, and look what history he carved out on millions of unlucky heads.
Let us not confuse the person with the opportunity, nor the subtle body with any specific good physical body.
sf_thompson 3 years ago
Interesting discussion!
I think Tolle is talking about a fluid yet detached approach.
