North Bay Feb. 25,2010

1.  Outline of the lecture   2.  Dictionary   3.  Ai, Authentic Identity   4.  The ego, how did it happen to us?   5.  Healing   6.  Questions   7.  Closing Outline of the lecture.  I will speak to you about the entrapment of human conditioning and about the path toward liberation from that trap. I will speak about Ego and Ai, or Authentic identity, which is what I call the timeless, true Self. I will go into how the ego is created, how it is manifested and how it differs from the true you. In the healing part I will speak to you about three kinds of psychotherapy and three kinds of therapists. If we have time, there will be an opportunity to ask questions if not, I encourage you to go to my website www.yaga.ca where I will post a copy of this lecture, and where you can write me questions to which I will answer either by direct emails or in my weekly postings. When I share here my ideas I want you to listen with an understanding that all of what I say, I experienced either as an observer or a participant. Some experiences were painful, if not tragic, and some were mystical and enlightening. My conclusions I am offering you today represent today’s level of my truth. Truth and Essence.  When we speak about our perception of either outer reality, or our inner world of thoughts, emotions or feelings, we speak our truth. Unless one intentionally lies, we all speak the truth. A speech with integrity is not one that carries impeccable, highest truth, but one that the speaker believes in. Our understanding of the truth has the limitations of our own context. In a famous quote by Albert Einstein, “I want to know God's thoughts ... the rest are details,” he wanted to know essential truth, which he attributed to God’s thoughts. It is knowledge on the highest level of perception that considers specific circumstances. Essential truth is truth that works in every context, with no exceptions. These essential truths are sometimes referred to as “laws of the universe.” An example of an essential truth on our earthly plane would be: “a mother never abandons her own child.” No exceptions. One can debate on what would meet the criteria of abandonment, or bring arguments of specific circumstances, and create justifications, rationalizations and excuses. With that the truth becomes diluted and the levels of removal from essential truth will be represented by the amount of struggle one experiences in life. That’s why it is important to seek a higher understanding of a greater context of truth. The least confused life is a life lived according to the deepest truth. In order to help others we need to be truth seekers ourselves. The deepest truth gives us a profound connection with others and the most loving life is lived accordingly to the deepest truth. Unless you are enlightened, there is a difference between your individual perception of truth and essential truth. The Consciousness Consciousness is a non-local “library” of truth on every level. Everything what was ever experienced with the conclusion of a human truth goes to the library of wisdom. The library is accessible by everyone. You do not need permission or a membership card. Your access is free and you can enter the consciousness based on your desire to know the truth. Now, not only do we access Consciousness to seek the knowledge of pertinent truth, but we can also expand this truth by living courageously for that very purpose. Knowledge through our understanding of experiences is recorded in the library of wisdom based on two conditions: it needs to be true and it needs to be new. If we repeat previous human experiences, our learning can add a yay or nay to Consciousness, but it doesn’t serve the purpose of life. Many seekers of truth confirmed a realization that the highest human accomplishment is not only to seek truth by studying the library of wisdom, but also to have the courage to live by it amongst people with the intention of experiencing unrealized truth. There are levels of truth relevant to human life and they can be divided into two main categories. First level is how not to be and the second, how to be. The second one is not the opposite, but is beyond the first one. If you are not supposed to be aggressive in interactions with others, to be passive or quiet is not an advancement in the library of wisdom. - To become loving and act on it is a shift to the second level, or “room,” of truth. To be and to do accordingly to the highest truth - is wisdom. To know love and ***live by it - is wisdom because only the experience of the highest truth of this moment of the history of humanity- is wisdom. No living human knows ultimate truth, which is called essence. Truth that is applicable in every context requires living in every context and no one has done that. We wouldn’t be here if we did. That small glitch is a safety valve that protects us from being led by self-proclaimed gurus to a kool-aid drink. If you are looking for a guru, then you are not listening to the one that you already have – it is in your Authentic You. Looking for a guide to learn that you are an Authentic being and to understand the difference between the ego and Ai is a right path but taking your teachers’ truth as yours is a deception of the ego that prevents you from living life from Authentic Self. Consciousness is the library of wisdom and we are potential Authors. The Spirit When we speak about the Spirit we can make a distinction between an individual and a group spirit. The Spirit is a totality of universal energy. As we come to this life we access The Spirit to grow from the first two cells to the last whiskers on our chin. We use energy to keep living but we also transform and generate energy. To become an energetic asset, and not a liability to the universe, we firstly need to grow up. Secondly, we need to understand that we are a self-propelling life that has built itself a mechanism of self-sustenance and it doesn’t need anyone or anything to keep living. Ok, that is perhaps far removed from present human reality. Ego convinced us that we need food and drink and it takes GREAT pleasure in it, and we see nothing wrong with it. As I cannot see any way to reverse it, we can accept it to be a truth at this point of the evolution of humanity. There are well-documented cases of people who freed themselves from that contemporary truth, but for now their stories stay in the realm of unbelievable legends. Energy is generated by a thought and stored in physical body.  Energy is not good or bad. The thought that energy carries can be good or bad. Thought can add to or drain the energy. What drains energy, we perceive as bad, we intuit as wearing. We try to avoid it or change it. Usually we try to change it by controlling it, imposing our will or suppressing its presence by the force of our ego. Most of those methods are generated by our ego that wants to avoid discomfort, and with that, it ads to negativity, and drains more energy from us and the Universe. If people say that there was “a bad energy” in a room it means they pick up the “ego” information the energy carries. If you want to benefit from interaction with others, regardless if they are an asset or a drain, you can learn to strip their energy from unfavorable messages, by seeing it as a life struggling to co-create and failing. Take the energy, leave the message. The Soul This is an interesting one. The concept of the soul is as old as the world. An individual Soul is a complete account of all that happened to an entity, called I. In previous theories it was called capital letter “Self” or Ego. I call it Authentic Identity and I will speak about it in a moment. My many experiences with reading data from an individual soul brought me to an understanding that with the permission of the subject those files are accessible to anyone. I am not particularly gifted. I think many of you experienced a sudden awareness that you know about your client things that you could never know through inference, even with a great eye for clues. It had to be with a client who genuinely asked for help, and with that gave you a permission to access his/her “soul file.” The Soul is a record keeper. It is an archive file of complete data, pertaining to you – the Ai. It keeps records of every manifestation of your being, from the beginning. As a record keeper the Soul does not make decisions. Your Authentic Identity makes most of the decisions if you live unaware of your Authentic Self life, your ego, or other people’s egos, make decisions in your life. If you are a child and unaware of your Ai (many children now are aware), the fact that people make decisions in your life does not necessarily mean that their egos do it. But when you are an adult and still others make decisions for you, that definitely comes from their egos. Your Ai will be constantly adjusting the course of your life to absorb all events as material for gaining wisdom. It is Ai’s attempt to get us out of the victim mode. Looking for a soul mate is our attempt is to find a person with compatibility or similarities in our files. You are an Authentic Identity Since we are not the Consciousness, neither the Soul, nor are we the Spirit, I needed to find a name for true Self, and it appeared to me that Authentic Identity - “Ai” would be a true one, and although it is a mouthful it says the truth. You are Ai. In this state you are a formless, data-less being that can create any form, and access any energy and information you decide. You, the Ai, have a freedom of will; you have the access to wisdom - the Consciousness, to information - the Soul, and the energy - the Spirit, and you are free to create your reality. If you would be the very first entity in the universe you would be completely in charge of your creation, you could make anything, but perhaps you would decide to create an entity to your liken image, to share the joy of creation - that being would call you God. It would see that you are in charge of everything. But then you would insist that this new Authentic Being would be free to do the same as you do – be free to create and there is so much to do! But that new being would insist that you would be in charge and would call you “father”. And the ego is born! When you create anything at this moment in the history of the universe, there are a huge number of entities competing for a word in the process of creation. Now when you create, there are limitations to your freedom. It ends at the place where another person’s freedom begins. There are limitations of conditions that you arrived to, and circumstances that you have no control over. The wind will blow; you can learn to position yourself to withstand it, but you cannot change the wind. From the first one to the last all Authentic Identities are the only reality. Only Ai never changes - everything else is transitory. The well known concept “anything that changes is illusionary,” doesn’t mean that our physical world doesn’t exist. It means that it exists only in a relationship with time. Sooner or later it disappears, - and given enough time it will be doubted that it ever existed. Therefore holding on to a transitory “reality” will inevitably leave us empty-handed and will create the pain of loss and disappointment. Perhaps not right in the beginning of the birth of the physical reality, but further along - when we became enthusiastic about our ability to create - and from potentiality we brought to actuality a multitude of ideas, that expanded to what we call now The World, - we needed a program that would run our creation when we are looking elsewhere, and so we designed it! It’s a complicated, multifaceted and multileveled myriad of programs that is the totality of The Ego. Before I will move to speak about the ego allow me to recap my understanding of Ai. Ai is a formless pure being and the “holder” of free will. It is the “isness” itself with its own history recorded by the soul. It has no characteristics or dimensions. World of Ai – feelings Feelings are state of mind and have a lasting presence, often long-lasting. Examples are: *   Feeling of love (not falling in love) *    Feeling interested (not anxious) *    Intuiting *    Knowing *    Sense of presence *    Feelings at times feel as if they would be outside of the body, body feels nothing Again Ai: *    Creates peace, joy, enthusiasm, serenity *    It brings sense of “I am OK” *    Is interested in cooperation *    It gives energy to the universe *    Focuses on giving, sharing, accepting *    It lives in the world of abundance of love and goods     What is Ego? *   Ego is the self interest of life for the sole purpose of survival. *    The Ego is a property of the physical realm. When the world appeared or evolved whatever you want to name it - evolution is a creation over time, all living beings needed a code of information that is both nonlocal and local. Nonlocal is consciousness and soul, that all living beings have access to. Local is a program that would run our creation when we are looking elsewhere: we designed it and we now call it The Ego. We designed the codes that replicate the program to run living bodies and we call it DNA. We created programs that run social structures and we call them ethics, culture, manners, codes of conduct, law and many others. All that I listed above is Ego. Now you can see that many of ego programs are needed for functional social structures, but on a personal level, identifying with the ego is a source of suffering. Reducing your being to the ego programs is to abdicate your power to create own reality – and to become a victim of genetics, family settings, social systems or the weather… *    Ego is a program that makes sure that the physical body will survive. *    Ego is now not only looking after the host’s physical survival but also expands with new concepts of self-gratification. *    Ego talks; Ai is silent.  To help to reduce individual Egos there is a requirement of silence in meditations and contemplations. *    Ego also evolved to become a destructive, virus-like program that demands more and more attention. It became the way of thinking, way of living. It became all education that children receive and became all health care that is offered to the public. Yes, you can have private education and health care to receive and Ai’s approach to it, but you are still publically obligated by taxes and law to pay for the system that it is only true on one basic level. *   It thinks only about self. *    Ego’s basic concept is: I am not OK. *    It drains the energy from the universe. *    It can generate needs that are essentially destructive. *    Is focused on taking, getting, winning. *    Gives only as exchange, always hoping for a good bargain. *   It lives in the world of shortage of love and goods. *   It essentially feels lack and is a root of competition. *   Ego needs more and it needs now.    Ego needs Discipline *    Ego is like a dog - it needs training. We are born with a preprogrammed brain that has downloaded an ego from our mother and from those around her. We had no way to prevent it, nor would it be necessary. Remember – we need the ego to function in the world in this shape. Throughout our lifetime we are open to various ego upgrades as if our brain belonged to the world around us. Most people have no knowledge of their true identity throughout their whole lives, and free, automatic downloads of the ego become their only identity. Ego convinces them that there is nothing else, employs the best minds and the most skilled speakers for it because the stakes are high. Either you serve the ego or the ego serves you. Well, if you look at society, the majority of people serve the ego as if it were God, and leave the power over their lives in the hands of genes and their environment. Sometimes one makes a shift - and the Ai resides in the brain as the only identity. And if one has life left to live - because most people make the shift in the last minutes of their lives - so if we are those amazing people that woke up early enough to become masters of our own fate, we want to spend the time left practicing two things: on disciplining the ego and on the enjoyment in being the Ai. Bear in mind, there is no third entity. We are either the ego or the Ai. There is no third being that decides to shift from one state or the other. The being that spots the ego – that is the Ai. The Ai sees the ego’s presence in our words and actions (in ourselves and in others). *   A note: When we discipline our children we discipline their ego, not the Ai *    Children raised without parental discipline, have no blueprint of how to discipline their egos and experience difficulties in life. They have difficulties in saying no to destructive emotions and behaviors. Comparing Ai and Ego Ego and Ai *    Ego knows about the world. Ai is the world. *    All egos are the same. Every Ai is original. *    Ego thinks. Ai knows. *    Ego is the content – it carries the substance. Ai is the context – law of the universe. *    Ego is an addict. Ai is free of attachments. *    Ego is lazy and bored. Ai is the same at work, play or rest. *    Ego is the source of pain. Ai is the source of healing   Psychotherapy is teaching not healing There are two kinds of psychotherapy based on psychology: 1.    Teaching the ego to be an asset, without bringing the Ai perspective. 2.    Connecting with an Ai of the client, and through this reinforced connection, a client shifts their perception of self from the ego to the Ai, and gains power over the ego’s destructive mechanisms. There are also a variety of teachings rooted in spirituality that we can view as psychotherapy: •    One of them is Guidance towards enlightenment. •    Another one is teaching love. The first kind of psychotherapy - Ego psychotherapy is teaching a client secular ethics. The evolution of humanity created a variety of social structures, with their own operational codes that, when followed, enable us to become functional and thriving in a particular social structure, and to become valued members of that structure. Example: when you do well in school, you will be encouraged to become a teacher. The codes of acceptable conduct became an important part of the ego programs, often as important as physical survival. The parts of ego programming that we need to learn in order to be successful and belong to a particular society - like culture, manners, codes of conduct or law - are “offered” from the time of a baby’s brain formation by downloading thoughts and emotions, through upbringing, conditioning, coaching, educating and socializing. When we have difficulty in learning, we are labeled challenged, and are offered special education and drugs. When we have difficulty in applying the code of conduct we are offered psychotherapy (still rarely), but mostly drugs. Since it is obvious that the majority of dysfunctional people are those who are living lives from the ego perspective only and have no interest, and perhaps no capacity to shift their perspective - the therapist’s approach needs to be from the ego as well. The ego of your client doesn’t hear your Ai that’s why your ego has to become top dog - and the cleverer the ego of the client is, the more competent, commanding and skilled the therapist’s ego needs to be. Only when the client’s ego becomes the underdog will he follow your lead. Or not. A psychotherapist helping someone in the ego position cannot be democratic. Queen Victoria, said: “I will be an autocrat. That’s my job, and God will forgive me. That’s his”. If you cannot assume a top dog position with a client’s ego, you are not in the right profession. You would ask perhaps, what about those who are victims of top dogs, what about those in pain? A gifted energy healer from Vancouver, BC, Adam, learned in the very first healing session which happened to be of his mother, that if you are not aware and careful you will end up in pain. Ego wants to disarm the help and the helper. In the world of emotions, ego created a word that leads not only therapists into the trap of ego – the word is compassion. ORIGIN is Latin pati, patior, it means to suffer or to endure. THE Passion is the suffering and the death of Jesus. So if you speak about compassion you are talking about co-suffering. Ego is the source of pain, and if you feel for or with a client you are traumatizing yourself. To be free of such a trauma is not to feel nothing, become aloof or callous, but to understand the difference between - an event - and the emotional suffering afterwards. Even if you do not see it at this moment, your feeling of the meaningfulness of it all, the awareness of learning from the moment, is the best approach to a suffering person. You can bring your supportive energy to better see if the suffering still makes sense, or doesn’t. Do not suffer with them. – It is an ineffective kind of help from the perspective of Ai. You are validating and adding energy to the suffering and with that to the ego. The unrealized goal of help from the perspective of ego is to create life without pain. Hundreds of therapeutic techniques were invented to cover up the luck of success. One that literally shocked me when I heard it the first time was: “Fake it ‘till you make it.” It is still repeated by those on both sides of addiction treatment. Ego is a supreme imposter and this approach gives it a legitimate status. Ai psychotherapy is teaching the difference between those two identities, and when that is established, the therapy moves on to helping a client to make a choice and eventually shift their life from the ego to Ai position. I do not believe that you are a healer simply because you have the coherency of heart and mind - to see the difference between Ai and the ego, and as importantly, you see a purpose in offering your understanding to others. Glorifying the results and taking credit for a client’s changes creates idolatry and feeds the therapist’s ego. No one is a healer in unfavorable conditions. The more permanent and obvious the Ai’s presence in therapist’s mind, the more successful the therapist becomes. Both Ego and Ai use the same brain to manifest their presence. They both create their own separate minds. Anyone who has an awareness of both entries in the brain function knows that it is a constant effort to keep your ego quiet and make the brain open to Ai. When you do therapy from the Ai perspective, the ego of the client will not challenge you, because it doesn’t see you. When you are in the Ai state of mind, your ego is invisible, so the client’s ego is puzzled. It can now either relax or become vigilant. In both states are many options but there are two main directions: either you connect with the Ai of a client, when his ego is relaxed, or he will leave therapy thinking that it was a waste of time, because there was no ego to poke at, geez! When the ego is vigilant and challenges everything you say or perhaps manipulates to check your integrity or strength, you have to call your ego and let it play top dog.  When you want to practice psychotherapy from Ai position, a client must see that either your ego is no threat to his ego because is not present at all or he sees it as a well trained top dog. When you practice psychotherapy from Ai position, you will arrive to the place where you will hardly ever have people leaving therapy without a shift from ego to Ai.   The third kind of teachings I listed here, is a progression in the sequence 1. Ego no Ai.  2.Ego some Ai.  3. Ai less ego. 4. Ai no ego. It is spiritual guidance, rather than psychotherapy, and its aim is to tutor and enlighten a student until he makes a shift to live life without ego. The intention to live in society and be a part of it makes the elimination of the ego illogical. The fact that you want to live with others, that you have to participate in the operation of the society, speak a language, protect your children, tells you that you need the ego. There are spiritual teachings that have lofty goals, but not only do they have conflicting dogmas, but also the teacher’s interpretations would create only confusion between the authentic identity and the ego. Confusion is a struggle that prevents you from moving forward to find your path to authenticity, the path that is straight and narrow as Buddha said. The enlightened being guiding toward enlightenment is a myth. No enlightened being would be interested in guiding anyone. I travelled far and wide listening to and talking to many gurus and by their own admission, including Dali Lama they know they are not enlightened, they still have their ego and their brain at times closes to the Ai. They are advanced on their path by their own effort or by designation, and by the virtue of their advancement they will be honest about it. There are also those who are claiming to guide people to enlightenment, who confuse an altered state of mind with a stage of enlightenment and teach people tricks that are supposed to be a proof of legitimacy of the school and the guru. Yeah right! Another kind of teaching is teaching love. All religions advocate love, and some claim to teach it, but if you look around we can see they have failed, with an exception of a few saints of course. Why? Because you cannot successfully teach love if the student is not committed to learn it. And if one is on the path of learning love, they will have to create experience, because no one learns love by talking about it. We can guide people toward love through our wisdom.  But… we cannot blame fake gurus or anyone for that matter. The responsibility for all that happens to you in life has no exceptions. Ai gravitates through the domain of our own choices, therefore the justice is absolute. Conclusion. I want to say that I fully appreciate that the ideas that I present here are not every day topics discussed during our coffee breaks or in a line-up in Tim Horton’s. There is no single person in this room who doesn’t have an authentic identity. Actually, I’ve never met one who wouldn’t have an Authentic Identity. But I rarely meet a person who keeps a sharp eye on their ego and is fully in control of the programming of the ego. Remember that unless you are independent of an institution, your workplace represents the ego. All institutions represent the well-being of the institution, not the well-being of its clients. A church is an institution, and as such represents the well-being of the church, - not of the parishioners. But still there is a priest who cares about the people sitting in the pews. I hope - that this will be you who will bring his or her authentic identity into your interactions with every client, and that you will lead the institution, instead of the ego of the institution leading you. You need to be a part of your own evolution and changes. I agree with the poet W.H Auden who said: “We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for, I don’t know.”