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Satsang with Stuart Schwartz: Egolessness

Posted August 10th, 2009 by steve schliebs

A letter to share with the integral community:

 Hi Stuart,

I really enjoyed the time with you in satsang yesterday!  The air in your living room was perfumed with the fragrance of truth and scintillating with the light of consciousness!  What I experienced with you yesterday was an exalted trans-egoic state of consciousness, a taste of non-dual awareness gifted to me by the power and grace of direct transmission.  It was ever so sweet, but fleeting and temporary.  The question I would have for you this morning, sir, is this:  Why is it that so many teachers and teachings, ancient and contemporary, sages and mystics the world over, yourself included, are all saying about the same thing, that ego is the problem, the source of suffering, the block to unity consciousness, and yet so few people, pitifully few, ever permanently 'realize' the fruit of this teaching?  It seems like there would be billions of people enlightened by now.  Why the low success rate?    

 
I would like to suggest that if anyone ever succeeded in losing or destroying their ego (which they never will) they would probably be diagnosed as catatonic schizophrenic.  Rather than trying to lose the ego, which is only the sense of being a person, I believe a more integral approach, as I was beginning to suggest in our discussion yesterday, is to first build a healthy and properly functioning ego, an ego free of shadow elements, and then enlist the ego as a friend and ally to transcend the limits of ego-based consciousness.  The problem is not identification of Self with ego, but rather the exclusive identification of Self with ego. The key concept here is 'transcend and include,' and not, please not, 'transcend and dissociate.'   To 'lose' the ego would simply repress the entire ego into the realm of psychodynamic shadow.  God forbid.
 
I look forward to spending more time with you in the future, if there is one ;-)
 
Respectfully,
 
Steve