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The Ego Mind

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 Following on from Do We Have a Soul or Consciousness?… If it is our consciousness that observes us getting angry, then it is our ego mind that is getting angry. So what is the ego mind? The ego mind is part of us that looks out for our survival - obviously this is a good thing. However, its survival strategies are based on experience - again, often good, but not always. Consider the following: As a child you get beaten up at school by a bully. Next time you see them in the playground you steer clear of them to avoid getting hurt again. It is your ego mind that is guiding you to do this and you will do it repeatedly, possibly even after you are grown up you will feel a reluctance to be near the bully even though by now you are capable of dealing with them. So, as a child what the ego mind leads you to do protects you, however until you learn a different thing about the bully or allow your conscious mind to decide what to do you will forever be afraid of the bully. This means that many
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Do We Have a Soul?

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Some people call it a soul, but maybe that sounds religious; others refer to it as consciousness. Whatever it is, there is a part of us that is seperate from our body and mind. It may be easy to think that we are what we are, this person, and that’s that. But there is more to it, we just don’t take the time to notice.   We have a body that is born, grows old and dies. Are we our body? Think about when you touch your arm; you can feel it, you are aware that you are touching your arm. Think about when you smell a perfume: you are aware that you are smelling an odour. Think about a time when you got cross about something, but before you get caught up in dwelling on your reaction, what was it like to be angry? Try to feel what it feels like to be angry. It has a feeling, this is what angry feels like. Maybe you feel it in your belly, maybe in your head, maybe your shoulders tense up. You are aware that you are angry. Then consider this If you are aware that you are angry, who is ‘you’? Cle
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More about Our Shadow Side

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From the Common English Bible, Mark 4:21-22   21  Jesus said to them, “Does anyone bring in a lamp in order to put it under a basket or a bed? Shouldn’t it be placed on a lamp stand?  22  Everything hidden will be revealed, and everything secret will come out into the open. Jung and Our Shadow According to Carl Jung, each of us has a shadow which is an unconscious aspect of our personality that the ego does not identify with. This means that although it exists, we are not consciously aware of it until it is brought to our attention. Within the shadow are hidden many different aspects of our character, most of which we view as negative, but they can also be positive if we have low self-esteem or false beliefs.  A ‘negative’ aspect hidden in the shadow might be:    a desire to show off As will be clear, there is an element of judgement needed (albeit subconscious) to decide whether something should be in the shadow . For example, if you lived in a pious family, showing off would
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The Split and our Shadow

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There is a universal principal that we are all one; that everything is connected. People talk abut “what goes around comes around”, there is the Buddhist belief in karma where we get back whatever we put out and in Christianity there is the lesson where we are told to ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself.’ On some level we know that we are connected. And yes, OK, it is a bit like we are all connected to a Matrix, as in the film. The point is that we have forgotten this truth and we need to remember it. The Delusion That We Are Separate Christianity has the story about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When they are there everything is fine, they don’t know that they are different to anything else and they can communicate with everything, even animals like the snake - they are all connected. However once they eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge everything changes.  They are thrown out from the Garden of Eden, but something else comes with this disconnectio
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Thoughts on Spirituality for You
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