UNBURDENING

O man, You practice greed, avarice and great falsehood,
(i.e. all evil passions) and you carry such a heavy burden (sggs 154).
Those who chant and meditate on God, who single-mindedly focus their
consciousness on Him, are rid of the burden of their ego (sggs 302).
<><><><>  

Ego (Haume) is the great crushing burden. We are crippled carrying it around for too long! Now, in this present life, we are given an another chance to unburden ourselves. Choice is ours. Either we can chose to carry it around longer and keep suffering, or we can chose to end it here, right now. To end it here right now will need courage, watchfulness, determination and constant spiritual discipline. For the ego-mind is a great trickster and a liar. By attaching us to the mirage like world-appearance, it hides the Truth from us and makes us chase the illusion or the falsehood. Without getting rid of the burden of our ego, there will be no Freedom from repeated suffering and linking with the Supreme Consciousness. Ego (ignorance) is bondage, the living hell, and the body identity (body consciousness) that has turned our lives into a battlefield, where there is no pure love, compassion and humility. As a result, everybody seems to be an enemy. It's the mind's constant noise of "mine, mine". The ego is self-centered. Therefore, it hungers for attention, name, fame, power, prestige, and self-glorification. Due to the pull of such cravings, it will misappropriate, steal, loot or take everything from the world. It's manifestations are very subtle, therefore, not easy to guard against. The Gurbani insists we must completely Transcend it.

The faults of this self-centered ego are numerous, of which the most talked about are the following "Panch" or five demons: lust, anger, greed, attachment, and pride. Some of the numerous other variations of these five demons are, jealousy, stubborn mindedness, doubts, falsehood, slandering, and all the rest of the mental negativity and impurities. Thus, the ego-consciousness makes us sin by committing misdeeds. Ego and the mind are one and the same. It is mad and crazy. It only destroys. But we do not realize the destruction because its working is very subtle. We carry the load of this destructive consciousness all our life. In the process, we start believing it to be real, and our True Nature ("Joti-Svaroopa") to be false. It thus hides the Reality and deceives us believing in falsehood that this world is the play of ego instead of the Divine. When we grow up, our egos also grow stronger and subtle. We thus get accustomed to living in a limited cocoon of ego-mind, unaware of the disastrous consequences. A silkworm spins silk cocoon around itself, unaware. Upon completion of the cocoon, the initial step in manufacture of the silk is to kill the insect inside the cocoon. This is done by throwing the silkworm either into the boiling water or in an preheated oven. Thus, a silkworm shapes its own fate and destiny by weaving silk around itself. Similarly, we also weave our destiny by our own thoughts, speech and deeds. By weaving the cocoon of false ego around ourselves, we suffer here in this world and hereafter. Our birth is the proof of this.

Such conditioning results in false self-identifications (i.e. body identity or body consciousness) with the time-bound consciousness, resulting in forgetfulness of the state of one's Pure Being ("Joti-svaroop"). The Gurbani urges us to abandon this "burden" of false self-identifications with the time-bound consciousness (ego) if we wish to retrace our steps back to our Pure, Original State which we all were born with — Baal Budhi, the state of egolessness or desirelessness, Timeless Awareness or Intact Consciousness. An infant's mind is unconditioned for it is not influenced by the ego or the world. Such Pure mind is free of imprisonment from false ego. As an infant, we all were born with such a Pure mind! However, afterwards, while growing up, we were programmed and trained to identify with the feeling of "mine, mine!". In the process, side by side, false ego gets developed as we grow from infancy to adolescence. It then gets firmly-rooted after we marry and entangle in the achievement of various worldly desires. The moment physical ego becomes stronger in us, we become prisoner of cravings, fears and delusions. Consequently, the world-appearance looks real to us. And we take this body-frame to be our true Self. It is the defiled senses that bring the external world into the mind for it to further develop its own world of attachments and emotions. Thus each individual lives in a world of his own based on his impressions and judgments, which have no bearing on the Reality. It is this false identity that the Gurbani and the Realized Souls want us to give up. The Gurbani calls it the "great disease" and "chronic disease" responsible for one's birth and death and related repeated suffering. The Gurbani says we must overcome our attachment to the false ego-sense.

Even after so many births we are still in bondage! To get out of this vicious cycle, this baggage of ego and the related inner "garbage" or the baggage of misdeeds or the baggage of memories of the dead past and anxieties of the unknown future has to be shed. This is what the soul has to aspire for. The Lord is eager to help the suffering soul who wishes to be liberated from the mundane world. He promises to free the soul from this bondage, if the Jeeva (individual being) unconditionally surrenders his false ego-sense to Him. Then the Divine Grace is awakened within, which redeems us. But it is not easy for us to surrender our ego for we are so much attached to it. But we have no other choice. Sooner the better. Meditation on the Divine Name is the must to unburden ourselves and "dispose of garbage". All spiritual practices are intended to make oneself worthy of the Divine Grace. The more we surrender our ego, the more God will express thorough us.

A Grmukh is the truly unburdened and surrendered being. He is the awakened person. So the Gurbani asks us to become Gurmukhs. Divine virtues and false ego cannot coexist. Hence the ego must be eradicated. Thinning of false ego-sense makes room for noble qualities, which help taking care of and transforming our lives and the society. Exercising attention to the every moment restores the quietude in us, opening doors to firsthand understanding of our living, and thereby changing the way we think and deal with the world. Relaxed or still mind naturally improves our communication, behavior, conduct, assertiveness and humor. It shuns selfishness, upsetting circumstances, bad company, destructive use of energy, frustrations, irrational ideas, emotional upheaval and related physiological arousal. Then, when we realize the false beliefs that our conditioned mind was clinging to, they drop away. The root-cause of evil passions then melts away; true love remains over and spiritual life dawns as there will be no anxieties or material conditionings.

A thread that has the smallest fiber sticking out cannot pass through the eye of a needle! Similarly, one cannot fully realize the Self within (God, Waheguru, True Nature, True Being as "Joti-Svaroopa" etc.) if he has even a least trace of egoism. Therefore, the inner "filth" must be completely dissolved. That is, the false ego-sense must totally disappear — it has to be defeated in order for one to become the Gurmukh or Self-realized. The real life as Jeevanmukta (living liberated, Gurmukh etc.) begins with the death of the ego. The Gurbani says:

— T. Singh
www.gurbani.org

Updated on Thursday, March 15, 2012 4:07 PM (PST)

[Home] [Article Menu]