{"id":5057,"date":"2013-06-03T21:21:11","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T02:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/?p=5057"},"modified":"2013-06-03T21:49:21","modified_gmt":"2013-06-04T02:49:21","slug":"on-ego-page-2-the-cure-is-surrender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/2013\/06\/03\/on-ego-page-2-the-cure-is-surrender\/","title":{"rendered":"On Ego, Page 2, The Cure is Surrender"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To become a god requires complete, unconditional surrender to the all, sacrificing your self (ego) to your Self (nature, Atman). In Norse Mythology, Woton hung himself upon a tree for 9 days, sacrificing himself to himself (Since he was already a god). The sense you get out of that is the need, in order for the &#8216;god&#8217; energy to come through, of sacrificing, of lancing, the individual self, the separate, narrowly contained self (Which sounds a whole lot like the &#8216;Ego&#8217;) in order to let the &#8216;All&#8217; (The infinite, the eternal) come through.<\/p>\n<p>Now this doesn&#8217;t mean you literally go out and &#8216;crucify&#8217; yourself or hurt yourself physically in any way. This is a psychological thing. These metaphors, these allegories, point to psychological, spiritual &#8216;quests.&#8217; It&#8217;s tricky because what is Ego exactly in your day to day life? It may be something relatively benign like this: Am I do this activity (job, hobby, social, sport) because I, myself, my &#8216;inner&#8217; self (That&#8217;s the one closer to the &#8216;Atman&#8217;) want to do it, or am I doing it for something or someone else (attention, money, to please someone else)?<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s one idea. That first paragraph was a big, mythopoetic phrase. It&#8217;s great. It feels good to sing! But then the second paragraph explores how to take that &#8216;Poetic&#8217; language and actually apply it to your life right here and now. I hate to use the word &#8216;practical,&#8217; but it seems one has to find a way to translate these ideas, written thousands of years ago, and also in big, broad, philosophical language, into a &#8216;real world&#8217; application. I think that&#8217;s a good way to continue the exercise, quest, adventure, in a way that honors both sides of the equation: The Mythic, on one hand, which inspires but feels &#8216;out there&#8217; + the &#8220;So, what do I actually do!?!?!?!&#8221; which is of the here and now, feels more mundane, but at the same time feels real.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To become a god requires complete, unconditional surrender to the all, sacrificing your self (ego) to your Self (nature, Atman). In Norse Mythology, Woton hung himself upon a tree for 9 days, sacrificing himself to himself (Since he was already &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/2013\/06\/03\/on-ego-page-2-the-cure-is-surrender\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}