Ethos of the Ego - Part II, Question 2 and 3

Question #2: OK, so here we are on this side.. now what?

Deliberation: Now the actual deliberation begins, so having understood the context, the premise and the circumstances that could have landed us in the position that we are in, we need understand whats next. The next obvious step is to cross over and commence the next part of our journey of evolution, Lets call this entire journey 'spirituality' and the desire to pursue this journey, a Spiritual inclination.  So for all those with this inclination, we have established that there exists a need to crossover to the other side, we need to figure out how, and that leads us to the next question...

Question #3: How do we cross ?

Deliberation: Well, how does anyone cross a raging river? We can either jump in and swim across, or build ourselves a boat that can carry us through. We'll consider both these cases and liken it to our context and premise.In this allegory so far, somethings might seem disconnected, lets string them together.

To put it literally, in the case where we just dive in and swim across, there is a need for high degree of clarity (of the route to take), a very high level conviction (to overcome challenges), an extremely trained physical body with swimming skills, an extremely determined intent of will and mind and courage. Such training most certainly calls for a dedicated trainer, arduous training and complete surrender on the part of the trainee, with I am sure most will agree is itself  very intimidating.

Metaphorically speaking,
'clarity'  is achieved with intense intellectual discernment and understanding of the path ahead and the need that drives this  pursuit.
'conviction'  refers to the intensity of spiritual conviction in the sadhaka's (pursuer),
'skill' refers to the techniques that the sadhaka pursues to better his chances of survival and enhance his potential, it could be any or many of the paths of yoga (Jnana, Raja, Karma, Bhakti) or different schools of practices, like the Kriya yoga, or other esoteric techniques.
The 'dedicated trainer' has a to be an effective Guru who has the bandwidth of time, space and capacity to train, protect, guide, mentor and initiate the sadhaka throughout his pursuit.
ALL of these falling into place seems seems less likely for most of us, and hence we find ourselves amidst the remaining set of people, the "boat builders".

99.99% of the human life forms will find themselves in this category, i.e. this side of the river and needing a boat to build, however it is imperative that we remind ourselves often, that our objective is  to simply cross. Most of the times we find ourselves so engrossed in our boat building affair, that by the time we remind ourselves of our true objective and get the damn boat into the water to test its strength and resolve, its time for us to leave and come back in another form (depending on our karmic obligations) and start building a new one. This BOAT .. is what I liken to the EGO, while on one hand the ego is undoubtedly essential for most of us to cross this deceptively perilous river (of maya), on the other we get so carried away with it, that we forget why we started building it in the first place.

Bottom-line is, to cross, we need to build ourselves a boat, flexible enough to navigate the river, and resilient enough to withstand withstand it's perils (known and known).

Ethos of the Ego - Part II, Question 1

I had elaborated on the premise on my previous post, let me proceed on it by attempting to emulate my understanding on the premise.

Question #1: How / why did we all land up on this island /on this side of the river in the first place?

Deliberation: Now, to my best knowledge  I have come to believe that, we are all here on this earth to evolve our conscious, and have it resonate with the vibrations of the universe, apparently there is a higher power, and by higher power i mean a higher state of vibration that is more stable and has the ability to stabilize the subtle energies (prana) within and around us, this stability allows us to resonate with the super conscious of the universe and become one with it.

(Now why do we have to become one with it I am not certain of, but it seems to be a much better and stable state than this constantly wavering state that we are in, and its nature's way of ensuring that every element in due course of time keeps interacting with its surroundings and exchanges its energies to reach a state where it no more has to do so and simply co exist with its surroundings, thats why a few elements are volatile "at room temperature"a few a radioactive when exposed to the environment etc. Its nature way of ensuring that every element of it does whats required of it to co exist and / or merge within it to a stable state.)

The substantial part of this evolution (spiritual journey) i believe begins once we are out of the web of maya, or after we have rid ourselves from this web of material disposition.

Digressing a bit, it seems that every soul on the verge of beginning this journey enters this world as a human being, because it is only in this form that further evolution seems possible; and quite apparently so, because it is only as human that one is bestowed upon with the faculties of conscious awareness, intellect, an extremely potent intelligence, will and the ability to navigate or at least, map the journey ahead, something like a gateway to ascension if i may call it that. Such being the case, it makes most sense to fathom that a soul at this stage will descend to this material plane again as a human baby, all ready to commence the journey i.e. on the other side. What the baby seems to lack here though are some of the most important faculties of discernment which need nurturing and support to develop and perform. But this development requires the physical body itself to survive in such an ambient environment that in turn requires a certain degree of material comfort. and where is this material comfort available to nurture the body ? of course on the other side ! and hence dependent on this fertility and ambiance, the new born soul makes its way to the other side under the protection of maternal and paternal wraps. By the time the mind of this newborn becomes aware of its conscious and its intended journey it is already absorbed in the humdrum of the island, from where my premise was established.

(Here i am not referring to those soul who are a step ahead in this evolution and are already aware of their conscious and journey at their birth or very early so and are not as helplessly dependent for the nourishment so as to cross over; the likes of ascended masters and spiritual leaders like the shankracharyas, the christs, the ramakrishna paramahamsas that we have heard of).

Now that the context is set, we can now move on to the next question... in the next part ...