Self-Inquiry And The Grip Of Ego

Q: Hello, Robert. Thanks for your wonderful book, which I have been diving into over the last fortnight. I have a question for you: You have stated a number of times that you did absolutely nothing to awaken and that, in your experience, we have no free will (and that clinging to this belief in free will is what binds us to attachment and desire). Does this mean that when I practice self-enquiry, sit in witnessing, and read your book, I am wasting my time? Will this type of practice not loosen the grips of the ego in any way?

How to let everything go when the mind is not comfortable when I find myself alone (which is often now)? I have almost stopped all of my labeled spiritual practices, yet I find my mind more chaotic than ever before and in a state of desperate aloneness.

A: That's a good question. If you try to make clear to me what you mean by "practice self-inquiry" and what you mean by "sit in witnessing," I will reply as best I can. Please be as specific as you can. I don't want to assume anything.

Q: For a while a practiced meditation and silent sitting asking questions such as who am I, what am I, and rested as the space of the observer and I was influenced by people such as Ramana, Adyashanti, and especially Mooji. I stopped reading or watching anything related to Advaita Vedanta because every time, for example I watched Mooji, something inside wanted to renounce everything and run away.

When I came across your message initially I felt relaxed and flowing with life but now my ego is kicking his heels in and I’m becoming very anxious whenever I contemplate choicelessness.

I guess what I’m attempting to state here is that I’m struggling just be comfortable in my skin like never before. I’m also a Men’s Coach and I facilitate men’s retreats. Now I’m starting to think it’s all a big waste of time

A: To begin with, unlike those guys you mentioned, my work is self-expression, not “teaching.” Like my photographs, these words constitute a kind of report about my experiences, not instructions for how to be “free like Robert." I am an artist and psychotherapist, not a spiritual teacher.

Further, I do say that I find myself awake, but what “awake” means to me might be very different from what you imagine it means and how others, such as the people you mentioned, have viewed these matters.

Awake, 2022

For me, “awake” entails seeing that the character called “I” or “myself” is not in control of this aliveness that just seems to show up on its own all over the planet. I see no one in control of thoughts, perceptions, or feelings. Everything seen, heard, felt, thought, or otherwise experienced seems to materialize spontaneously, and the apparent “myself” becomes aware of it automatically without anyone trying or needing to try.

“Myself” is not something I do. Myself just is, existing as a living animal body and a point of view, both of which flow and change ceaselessly. If you doubt this, try to stop being “myself” for even a moment. Stop your blood from flowing through your veins or your thoughts bubbling up to consciousness, from whence no one knows. Don’t take my word for this. Try it.

Suppose you have been sleeping, and the morning sun awakens you. As you awaken, you become aware that you had been sleeping and are now awake. You don’t have to ask yourself if you are awake; you just know it. That is what I mean by the phrase “choiceless awareness.” Nor do you have to create the world around you—the objects in your bedroom, the sounds you hear, the scene that appears when you look out the window. All that is just there without your having to do anything to make it be there.

This should be obvious. If, for example, you go to the window and see a cloud in the sky, you did not put it there, nor, having seen it, can you “unsee” it. You have no control in this matter. None. Zero. I wonder if this is clear to you. If not, please don’t read further. Instead, contemplate this until it becomes clear. Unless you see that you are not the creator of sights and sounds, there is no understanding of the more profound question about loosening the grip of ego.

OK. Suppose you accept that you are not the creator of sights, sounds, feelings, emotions, thoughts, dreams, etcetera. Suppose you see that all of that information is just here on the table, and "you" are stuck with having to deal with it. The “you” who has to deal with it is what you are calling ego, an imagined entity. When I say imagined, I am not suggesting that ego is nonexistent. “Myself” is just as real as any other thought or feeling, but not more real.

The “myself” that feels itself in the grip of ego is ego. Be sure you understand this. There is no "grip." There is only the self-centeredness we all experience. This self-referential perspective is only a point of view, not an enemy that has you in its grasp and must be defeated or destroyed.

There is no way to choose or practice loosening that supposed grip. There is no grip. The "grip" is you. The “myself” who is “struggling just to be comfortable in my skin like never before” is ego. That’s what “myself” is: a point of view that prefers thoughts and feelings to be one way and not another. That point of view may claim to desire "Truth," but what it really seeks is safety, comfort, and, most of all survival, not “Truth.” Try to see this. Your wish for things to be different from what they are now is ego.

In writing The Ten Thousand Things, there was no way to avoid mentioning free will. That question had been raised in many of the conversations upon which the book is based. But free will is a kind of red herring that has little to do with these matters. So-called “free will” is not some absolute power that you have or you don’t. Perhaps you are free, for example, to make your hand move if you will it to move, but that still leaves unanswered the question of what caused you to want to move your hand in the first place. Where did that desire originate? That, I say, is a mystery, and those guys you mentioned don’t have the answer.

Contemplate this, please. Free will is a fantasy. We do not will our thoughts and feelings into existence. They simply arise from whence we do not know, and then what you call ego imagines having to deal with them. If you truly could choose thoughts and feelings, this entire question would be moot. You would simply choose to feel comfortable in your own skin, and maintain that choice endlessly. If uncomfortable thoughts, such as old age, frailty, and death, arose, you would just erase those thoughts and never think of them again. But it doesn’t work that way, does it?

Now you say that since reading my book, you have almost stopped all your labeled spiritual practices, yet you find your mind more chaotic than ever before and in a state of desperate aloneness. Yes. Perfect. You are in a state of aloneness. We all are. That’s what being human entails: born alone, die alone. And no one will ever really understand you, no matter how much you want to be understood. You won’t even understand yourself—neither right now nor later after sufficient self-inquiry. As I put this in the book:

The ‘I’ of enunciation never thinks just what it thinks it thinks and never simply is what it thinks itself to be.

The practices you mentioned may distract you from noticing this profound aloneness and the death that awaits us all. For example, if I occupy myself with “witnessing,” I may get lost in the process and the role of witness-practitioner and so overlook the facts of what I am witnessing: impermanence and mortality— the slow progression of an absolute personal disaster--the end of so-called "me," usually preceded by plenty of pain and suffering.

The supposed witness is part and parcel of what dies. There is no permanence in it. Myself is a goner—no staying power. This entity to which one feels so profoundly attached is a short-lived, transitory, ephemeral presence, and entirely powerless to be otherwise except, I say, in spiritual fantasies like “Heaven with Jesus” or “Self-realization.” Those fantasies promise a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow All you need is sufficient faith, prayer, or practice, take your pick.

Unfortunately, you came upon my book, which, unlike “spirituality,” promises nothing. Now the tactics of denial offered up by those gurus seem a bit shopworn and paltry, as well they should.

“I am not a living animal like any other with a heart that must keep beating for 'myself' to exist," those gurus claim. "I am the unchanging, deathless ‘witness’ of all that.” That’s what they are selling. And, until reading my book, you were buying it. No wonder your anxiety has deepened since dipping into The Ten Thousand Things. I do not proffer platitudes but only discuss how it feels to be without them.

From my perspective, you have been living in a kind of hypnotic trance—the trance of transcendence—and now you may be snapping out of it. The snake may be shedding its skin. That's what can happen when one is exposed to fresh ideas. Of course, that feels uncomfortable, particularly at first. It's like shaking off an addiction.

So, the short answer is this: there is no method for loosening the grip of ego. The “myself” that imagines being in such a grip, needing that grip to loosen, and working on loosening it is ego. The more one tries, the stronger the grip seems because the one who tries is ego. Spirituality has no cure for this. No one is more gripped by ego than a "self-realizer."

If you see that, perhaps you will take each moment as it comes without always aiming to better your thoughts and feelings. In each moment, we are what we are: perceptions, feelings, and thoughts. That is all one ever has—myself right now. Like it or not, this is it.

By the way, you probably know more about Ramana Maharshi than I do, but as I understand the story, he was not, when the penny dropped for him, practicing self-inquiry, but as a teenager, pretending to be dead. The “self-inquiry” bit is an add-on—a handful of yellow leaves given to children to stop them begging for gold. And so is the “deathless state” idea, which comes from Vedanta, not personal experience (how could it?).

People try to say that my words are not different from what Ramana taught, or Adyashanti, or whomever, but I disagree. Yes, to an extent, there is overlap, but not on such statements as “You are the unchanging manifesting as the changefulness.” (Mooji—I just googled him). No one, I say, could know anything about “the unchanging” except as religious belief based upon hearsay--otherwise known as making shit up.

Nor, in my understanding, is awareness or consciousness previous to or separate from the objects “in” awareness or consciousness, which is an idea—erroneous in my view—that runs through traditional spiritual teaching, particularly Vedanta.

As for your work facilitating men’s retreats, it seems to me that you owe it to yourself and to your clients to ask yourself what exactly you are facilitating. If you are not comfortable in your own skin, what do you really have to facilitate? This is not a judgment, just a question. It might feel better to simply be as you are for a while.


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