Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
A.H. Almaas
Read between
November 19 - December 20, 2024
in time you’ll become present mainly because you will not go along with the judgments and the preferences of the ego.
What stops us from being present are our beliefs and going along with the attitudes of the mind or the ego.
ultimately you need to be present without effort, to just let yourself be.
To some extent, you can be present by trying to be present, but this is not being freely present.
as long as you have to make that effort, you’re not present naturally.
To recognize the essential aspect, you must first of all accurately recognize your ego ideal. Second, you have to have some experience of the essential aspect in order to isolate it.
recognizing the ego ideal precipitates certain emotional experiences.
to be able to recognize the essential aspect, you need to know something about the essential aspect and you need to know to some extent how your childhood history shaped the ego ideal.
One way to recognize the ego ideal is to actually fulfill it. This happens once in a while. You actually achieve your ego ideal, and then you find it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do.
You generally don’t question your ego ideal until you reach this point. Until then, you’re basically trying to live up to it.
If you have enough sincerity and have reached that point, you just need to let go. Let yourself sink into the experience and don’t try to fill the void that results.
if you learn to accept the voidness, then there is the possibility of transformation.
The best approach is simply to understand it. Then you’ll see what will happen.
Even when you sincerely feel that you want to be free from it, you have to ask yourself why you want to be free from it.
It’s important to remember that the idealization is experienced not only as an aim to accomplish, but also that the activities are always colored by that aim.
You believe, in a very deep place, consciously and unconsciously, that if you just do a certain thing perfectly, it will get you what you want.
The ego ideal is a self-image, an ideal image of yourself that contains many qualities. But the central pillar is the essential aspect that you idealize.
ego ideal has a lot to do with what your parents idealized.
Generally speaking, action and movement and accomplishments are the ideals here.
the false pearl, or the personality, is the result of living or trying to live according to the ego ideal.
When you see your ego ideal on the level of subtle perception, you see a dark dot; and when you open it, you feel that you are an idea.
the false pearl is what you have become by living or trying to live according to the ego ideal.
The Pearl Beyond Price is the connection between this genuine center and all the capacities, skills, and understanding that are a part of your growth as a human being.
the personal essence is connected with your unique function, your unique work in this life.
To actualize your particular unique work in this life means to be your personal essence. It is the essence of all that you have developed and integrated in your soul as you live a real life.
The personal essence is the person, actualized in his or her life, while the essential self—the point—is beyond this life and, in a sense, does not need a body. It is always the same; it never changes.
When you experience yourself as your beingness, as your personal essence, you feel that you’ve accomplished yourself—not just yourself in the sense of knowing who you truly are, but by knowing who you truly are you start growing and developing your potential.
When you recognize your ego ideal and also recognize the essential aspect in it, what I call your particular “channel” opens. Your channel has levels of the essential quality which you don’t recognize immediately; these levels manifest as part of a process.
the ego ideal is not only an attempt to regain a positive state, but it is also a way to defend against a negative state. As long as a person needs to defend against this negative state, he or she will just modify it. Otherwise the person will have to deal with that state of disillusionment and negativity and emptiness.
A narcissist didn’t have a chance to develop an ego ideal, and developed the defense of grandiosity, which is a much flimsier defense than the ego ideal.
The grandiose self will tend to uphold itself by devaluing other people and refusing to see the reality around them.
Grandiosity is mainly a defense against deep hurt and vulnerability.
breaking through the grandiosity will bring out the insecurity of having no support, the sense that there is nothing there to help.
To be able to disidentify, to turn away from a certain experience, a certain self-image, your identity needs to be at a deeper level than the self-image at that moment. You cannot disidentify from something if you are identified with something that is more superficial than what you’re intending to disidentify from. So if you are identified with a certain self-image and then some feeling arises and you find yourself unable to turn away from it, it might be because it is at a deeper level than you are operating at the moment. If it is deeper than you are, then you cannot disidentify. You need
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First you have to become aware of it, understand it; then your awareness will be deeper than it. Then it is possible to turn away from it. So turning away from something is always turning away from something you have seen and understood. Turning away means not indulging in something you understand.
if it is not a matter of indulgence, if it’s something you actually don’t understand, and if you are unconsciously identified with it, how can you turn away? There is no way.
Notice in your experience of understanding yourself, part of the process is this immersion, is an involvement with the experience, whether it is a belief, an emotion, a contraction in the body, a sense of frustration, a sense of attachment to something—whatever is there is experienced completely, without trying to get rid of it. When there is a complete involvement with what is there in you, then after a while an understanding arises. Without involvement, the understanding will not arise.
For the process of understanding to happen, three elements need to be there at the same time. The element of disidentification is one of them, involvement is another. The third element is the quality of allowing. These elements can be there when there is harmony among the three centers—the belly center, the chest center, and the head center. When there is this harmony, it is possible to experience fully, to allow, and to disidentify.
If the head center is functioning correctly, it means that space or emptiness is allowed.
Space and emptiness make possible the quality of allowing. When there is space in the mind, there is no self-image.
the head center’s participation or contribution is space, which is an allowing, a welcoming in a sense—space for things to happen without rejection, without trying to hold on. You become complete allowing.
The heart center’s contribution has to do with its central quality, which is the personal essence. The contribution of the personal essence is the diving movement, the actual living of the experience. You not only allow it, you’re in the midst of it, you’re one with it. You’re really it, you let it happen, you feel it fully, you sense it fully, you experience it fully,
The belly center has its contribution, which is represented by the self, the essential self. The contribution of the essential self is the disidentification, the turning away. When you are truly functioning in the belly, you are completely present, and being completely present, you are being yourself. So...
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when these centers are functioning, allowing, involvement, and disidentification, are there all at the same time. The mind has space in which to allow whatever is happening; the heart is deeply involved, allowing you to dive, to expand into the experience; and the presence in the belly allows the identity to be there in the moment, not involved with images and ideas about past and future.
Disorientation is always the result of the presence of space and the resistance against it.
Space means an allowing or a change is starting to happen, but it is not complete; there is still a resistance against it. So, there is the experience of temporary disorientation.
the best thing to do is to let the disorientation happen. If you try to resist it, you’re resisting space, beca...
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When you learn to pay attention to yourself, you can be in external reality with a minimum of attention, really.
The more you pay attention to yourself, the more awareness you have, and the more you’re able to do it.
In the head center, the correct attitude is to allow things to happen. In the heart center, the correct attitude is involvement, participation. In the belly center, the correct attitude is disidentification.