The Ego and your Spiritual Wellbeing

Welcome to this short essay on The Ego and Your Spiritual Wellbeing

Close your eyes and ask yourself this question: "What am I?" and also, "Who am I?" Then don't allow your verbal thought to automatically come up with its usual explanations such as: "I'm a middle aged married Australian man with two children who lives in Sydney and works as a plumber-" that sort of thing. Why?

Because we are not these things. These are just roles that we temporarily fill. Once our role was that of dependent infant. Later it was dependent child. But even as a child we had our roles, son or daugher, errand-runner, paper-deliveriy boy, inside-right in the school's reserve grade soccer team, etc.. Then there were all the even more imaginary make up roles: Spiderman, Zorro, and perhaps Robin Hood.

It might come as a suprise to you as a grown up that we still play roles. "Oh, what are you, then?"

"I'm a teacher." "I'm a policeman." No you're not. You are a person who teaches. You are a person who is a member of the police force. Certainly you are not a teacher. For what were you before you became that? And what will you be after that? Didn't you exist at all then?...

We are not our labels. We are not those common nouns which people ascribe to what we happen to be doing with our lives. We are the constant "I am" which looks out through our eyes, or takes in light through our eyes, take whatever tack you want, and knows itself to "be."

When you were two years old you saw a world. When you were twenty-two you did the same. And when you're ninety-two, if the body your consciousness resides in lasts that long, it will be the same you looking out - or receiving the data within. How can it not be so?

You might say, I'm forty-three. No, you're not forty-three. Your body has been renewing itself as a human form for forty-three years. The life in it, which is about as close as you can get to your real self, has been residing in and around it for forty-three years.

Do you believe this?

You don't believe it? Then you need a bit of education as to what a physical body is. I'm not going to go into a scientific discourse here. For one thing, I'm not sufficiently educated to do so. But I will tell you the obvious and you can work it out for yourself.

A body is made up of cells- right? Skins cells, liver cells, muscle cells, etc.. These in turn are comprised of molecules - right. And molecules are comprised of....yes, atoms. And atoms are comprised of sub-atomic particles such as protons, neutrons and electrons - right?

How long does an electron last? How long do you think? What is the life of a subatomical particle in terms of time? According a learned professor from Berkely University in the United States, around a zillion zillionths of a second! More accurately: naught to the power of forty-two, or a decimal point with 42 zeros after it and then a one. Pretty fast, eh?

This means that the base blocks of our physically is ever-changing, and changing at an incredibily rapid rate. Every atom is losing and taking on new 'material' if we can call it that, incessantly. The pattern remains largely the same. An atom of oxegen is still an atom of oxegen, but it is not the same atom as it was a trilionth of a second ago. Old materila has been shed, new material has come into being.

All our molecules are constantly changing. All of our cells are constantly changing, therefore our body is constantly changing. As I've said before, the physical body we put under a shower in the morning is not the one we get out ten minutes later. It looks the same. How much do we change in appearance in ten minutes? But it is not the same. If it were, we would never age.

Why it looks the same is that the matrix, the pattern which gives us shape, changes very, very slowly. Sub-atomic particles are fitted into atoms, atoms into molecules, molecules into cells which change to our pattern as a human being. But there is change. That's why at seventy-four my skin is now a lot dryer and more wrinkly than it was just a few years ago.

This body of mine is aging. But it isn't me. It is my earthly intrument. Same as yours is yours.

What am I? Who am I?

We could talk about a lot of other things that we are not. But I won't get into that here. It is enough to say that once you understand, at an intellectual level, that you're not your body, ( or our labels ) you might be motivated to learn just who and what you are. I hope so, anyway. I also hope that you got something worthwhile out of this short piece on the Ego and your Spiritual Wellbeing

Be happy.

Tom.