Egoic Issues Rising to the Surface and Surrendering Fear of Death

Category Ego, Enlightenment, Healing, Surrender

This past weekend I drove up to North Carolina for a marching band shoot. (I currently live in Georgia and do a lot of photography events.) While driving in the car, I listened to the Sedona Method audio course. It really helps me become conscious of and subsequently let go of various egoic patterns. One of the things I love best about the Sedona Method is that it’s basically a program to systematically dissolve the human ego.

What AM I??

For the past few weeks, there’s been a lot of frustration present regarding my own nonexistence. See, it’s starting to sink in on a fundamental level that “I” really don’t exist, beyond just some hollow wise-sounding words, and there’s a certain amount of fear in this realization. There is a frustration in that there is not even a “me” to experience this frustration! It’s a very strange experience…

Now as this sinks in, all sense of location is also dissolving. Not only can I not find a “me” outside of thought, but I also can’t find a place where I, whatever I am, exist.

Sure, if you asked me, it could be recognized where this body that I have is, but that feels completely and totally irrelevant. It’s like if you asked where I am and I told you where my car was. That doesn’t have anything to do with me.

So not only can I not find a me and I don’t know who I am, I also can’t even find out where I am! Talk about frustrating!!

It’s truly shattering my entire sense of reality. Utterly. It’s a frustrating experience to the ego… and the ego I have is putting up a lot of resistance to this experience. All that can be done is to surrender, to let go of resisting.

Wanting to Control Money

While applying the Sedona Method, I’ve been hitting a number of large resistances related to money… the desire to control it, to obtain a sense of safety and security from it, a rejection of it due to various associations of money with snobby people, a feeling of disapproving of money because it’s not spending enough time around me, and so on. The issues are becoming more prominent lately, both due to my own personal experiences, as well as due to the current financial meltdown going on in this country.

Facing my issues with money triggered a painbody attack rooted in the desire to control money itself. It felt very foreign because it’s been so long since I’d had a painbody attack, but I let it play out nonetheless.

Now, I’m doing a lot of personal work regarding releasing on money not only because it will make it easier for me to allow financial abundance into my life, but also, and more importantly, any negative blocks in this area are a sign that there’s still a lot of egoic resistances to the natural state of well-being and abundance.

Letting go of my resistances to money is a great exercise in personal and spiritual growth.

Thank God for the Sedona Method…

I can’t recommend it enough.

(If you want to find the audio course cheaper, get it from Amazon.)

Spiritual Growth has Highs and Lows

I want you guys to know that I’m not some super enlightened dude with all the answers. Similarly, I don’t want to paint myself as some guy who’s always on the ball. I’ve got the human periods of confusion and egoic clouds over my perception at times as well. I want to share with you my personal experiences of both the highs and lows of the spiritual pathway in the hope that you have a more complete picture of what it entails. Hopefully this will help you later on. It’s about the whole truth, not half-truths.

Now in addition to this resistance and frustration, I’m noticing an acutely increased sensitivity to egoic negativity. As in, when I allow myself to experience a negative situation such as worrying, trying to control reality, being around destructive people, or even something as simple as giving in to an egoic desire, the body starts to feel physical pain, particularly in my stomach/solar plexus area.

In a sense, the hellish pain of my own personal ego is becoming progressively more pronounced. It’s becoming more and more clear that the world of ego truly is suffering.

It’s almost like the universe is giving me less slack if I choose ego over liberation.

Synchronistically, I leafed through my copy of Power vs. Force this evening and found a particular passage that the author, Dr. David R. Hawkins, shares regarding his own experiences which are strikingly similar to what I’m currently experiencing, as well as the role of these experiences in the context of the path towards spiritual enlightenment.

In my own case, the fear of nonexistence was formidable, and I drew back from it repeatedly. The purpose of the agonies, of the dark nights of the soul, then became apparent–they’re so intolerable that their exquisite pain spurs one on to the extreme effort required to surmount them. When vacillation between heaven and hell becomes unendurable, the desire for existence itself has to be surrendered. Only once this is done may one finally move beyond allness or nothingness, beyond existence or nonexistence. This culmination of the inner work is the most difficult phase, the ultimate watershed, where one is starkly aware that the illusion of existence one transcends here is irrecoverable. There’s no returning from this step, and this specter of irreversibility makes this last barrier appear the most formidable choice of all.

But, in fact, in this final apocalypse of the self, the dissolution of the sole remaining duality–that of existence and non-existence, identity itself–dissolves in the universal divinity, and no individual consciousness is left to choose. The last step, then, is taken by God alone.

-Dr. David R. Hawkins, Power vs. Force

This helps tremendously. I’d mentioned earlier in this post the frustration I’ve been experience about the nonexistence of “me” and the ego’s resistance and struggle that’s present for nobody. Ultimately it seems that the ego’s main fear is fear of annhialation. Fear of death. Fear of nonexistence. Thus what’s necessary at this point is for me to surrender the desire for existenece itself.

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11 Responses to “Egoic Issues Rising to the Surface and Surrendering Fear of Death”

Robin said:

Hi there Ariel

I think there’s nothing wrong with the ego if it is used in it’s right place – i.e. as a tool for carrying out the wishes of the intuition.

I don’t think surrendering the ego means heading for non-existence, but rather it means heading for an existence and identity that it far more magnificent than we could have imagined.

I think the issues you have described here could be best handled by following intuition more. Cheers!

Robins last blog post..Ice And Global Warming

Ariel Bravy Reply:
October 1st, 2008 at 12:01 am
Hey there Robin, it’s good to see you.

I agree with you totally. There’s nothing wrong with the ego and it can certainly serve us in this lifetime when recognized to be the tool that it is rather than something to identify with. By analogy, a hammer is a tool we can use, but it’s not us. Thus the goal is not to get rid of the tool, but to let go of all false sense of identification with it.

You are also correct that surrendering the ego doesn’t mean heading for non-existence, not really. Nevertheless, this is how it feels on an experiential level for what is experienced is literally the death of the self-image, the idea of a separate “me” as a real reality.

As you aptly pointed out, the “death” of the idea of an egoic self doesn’t send one into non-existence, but rather into realization of the supreme existence as the One and the All.

nitkuma Reply:
November 4th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
when the ego is dead who will experience its absence?.

Ariel Bravy Reply:
November 4th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
The true nature of what you are, the part of you that is beyond death.

nitkuma Reply:
November 4th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Ariel,
how would one go about surrendering the desire for existence with the same ego mind that is experiencing existence?.plse do enlighten me.

Ariel Bravy Reply:
November 4th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
2 ways:

1) Ask yourself who is it that notices the desire to exist.

2) Apply the Sedona Method by letting go of the desire for existence.

That said, in the end, surrender is designed to simply be a pure state of transparency and non-resistance. It can be expressed through action, but at its core it is simply a way of being in the world.
Scott said:

Cogito, ergo sum – you think, therefore you exist. How can one ponder his own existence while at the same time not exist?

Ariel Bravy Reply:
October 1st, 2008 at 12:07 am
Salut Scott!

Thank you for bringing up Descartes’ famous dictum.

More accurately, that statement should be something along the lines of:

“Thought happens, therefore there is the belief in the existence of a separate self.”

In Reality, there is no separate self as a real being. When one begins to inquire into one’s true nature, there will be a sense of awareness found that is even prior to thought. At first it may seem that there is a separate self who is aware, but when one traces the sense of awareness back, it will be found that there is no separate self who is aware. There is only awareness itself being aware. There is only consciousness itself being conscious.

The idea of a separate self arises due to thinking and thus, on this limited level, Descartes’ statement was correct. When traced back even more fundamentally to find both who thinks and from where thought arises, it is found that there is no “me” that exists. Just pure existence itself.
Annie said:

Hey Ariel – I’m kind of hitting this same thing myself at the moment – though I notice it’s like I have a knot of conflict in my mind and can’t seem to find the way in to start unravelling the resistance. Even though I can be some what aware of awareness and the field, that knot/block of conflict and resistance is still being held firmly in mind and keeping the past coming around and concept of lack occurring.

I don’t know if anyone else has had similar experiences in their undoing of egoic structures where you come up against what feels like a tight knot of conflict that no amount of being still with dissolves it.

It feels like there must be some thoughts or judgements holding it in place that prevents the unravelling occurring.

If you have experience with this and found your way in please let me know how you went about it and discovered what was preventing the way “in” so to speak.

much love

Ariel Bravy Reply:
October 27th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Hey Annie. I understand exactly what you mean about the knots. The knots are physical manifestations of tension and resistance in your ego.

What thoughts and beliefs would you have to have to feel the emotions related to that tension? Chances are you haven’t quite yet brought awareness to the root thoughts that create this tension. With clarity comes release.

Can you look at the tension and allow it to be there without trying to do anything about it in any way? Can you simply allow it to be? Don’t manipulate. Just look.

Can you then allow it to release?

The two last paragraphs, bring them into your meditation and allow them to penetrate your entire being. Instead of using them as surface level mental questions, really dive in and feel the answer with your whole body.

The level of surrender I’m talking about here, I’m not talking about 98% surrender. I mean 100% surrender. Complete and TOTAL surrender to what is.

Experiment with this and then let me know if you experience any release.
BINNOY said:

Dear Ariel

While during the path of emotional healing one connects and listens to the now moment.After healing usually one feels much better.Currently I too am feeling much better than before.

I would like to know if emotional healing if completed i.e all of our limiting beliefs trapped in our pain body release itself is this enough to get enlightenend or would there still be a possibility of emotional garbage accumulating in ones body.

Is emotional healing just a process of cleaning up of emotional garbage or is it the process of enlightment itself just with a different approach?

If yes can I say that cleansing of emotional debris makes the mind silent enough for one to get the feeling-knowing that everything is here-now?

WITH LOVE ALWAYS
BINNOY

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