Living the Provisional Ego: a colossal challenge!Dear folks of Baba, I thought we would re-visit this topic of what Baba referred to as “the provisional ego”, the formation of which is one of the major challenges for us in this advent. Putting the provisional ego into practice is profoundly elusive, but it’s where we’re ultimately heading. How do we get there? What are the intermediate steps? Your perspectives are wholeheartedly invited. First, an invaluable quote b...
Living the Provisional Ego: a colossal challenge!
Dear folks of Baba,
I thought we would re-visit this topic of what Baba referred to as “the provisional ego”, the formation of which is one of the major challenges for us in this advent. Putting the provisional ego into practice is profoundly elusive, but it’s where we’re ultimately heading. How do we get there? What are the intermediate steps? Your perspectives are wholeheartedly invited. First, an invaluable quote by Baba on the "provisional ego” (provisional meaning temporary, a substitute arranged for the time being only):
Think of me in everything you do. Eat, dance, but forget yourself in the action and think of me instead. This is union through action. The less you think of yourself and the more you think of Baba, the sooner the ego goes and Baba remains. When you — ego — go entirely, I am one with you. So, bit by bit, you have to go. Today your nose, tomorrow your ears, then your eyes, your hands, everything.
Think of me when you eat, sleep, see and hear. Enjoy everything, but think it is all Baba. Baba enjoys it. Baba is eating. Sleep soundly in Baba, and when you wake up remember it is Baba getting up. Keep this one thought constantly with you. If you do wrong, then think it is Baba doing wrong. If you get a pain, think it is Baba getting a pain. Then it will be all the time Baba ... Try to forget yourself and do all for Baba. Let it be Baba all the time!
It might be said that the provisional ego is the last train stop in Creation. It usually begins as an exercise, but ultimately the truth behind the provisional ego needs to be revealed in us through experience. That is, the provisional ego is useful as a concept, but it has to eventually become a reality.
One day we will realize that all along it has been Baba living what we have always claimed as our life! It really is Baba who gets up in the morning, not us. In watching a movie, for example, we may find ourselves identifying with one of the characters so that when that character is in danger, we feel we are in danger, when they succeed, we succeed, when they fall in love we fall in love.
In the end, when the credits come up, we know that it was all a projection on our part. We get so identified with the character in the movie that we become that character for the time being. But Baba has said that it has never been us. He is the One who plays all the roles. That is, it is Baba who is living the life we see on the screen before us, and we are projecting our consciousness on to Him, and claiming that we are the one who is living this life! This is our colossal mistake. Eruch once disclosed, “There has been no Eruch for years. Through Baba’s grace, I have become the perfect witness!”
In lifetime after lifetime, we identify with the character before us and are pulled into the whole illusion of Creation. What we are being asked to do is to remain fully aware of Creation, but not identify with anything in it. Or put in another way, to be aware that everything and everyone is Baba. Such a detachment, Baba says, is not sterile or passive, but is a state of flowing and dynamic responsiveness to life characterized by a loving spontaneity that always leaves our consciousness free! In this way, love is finally liberated from being bound by Creation and can express itself in each moment as it wishes, unrestrained by what our personality wants.
Baba has said that we are really infinite, but we identify with the mind, and instantly we become a person. If we didn’t do this, we would remain the Infinite that we really are.
All this is a very tall, tall order from Baba. Bit by bit “we” have to go. I know we all sometimes feel in certain moments Baba working through us or eclipsing us in a particular situation. We may feel Him watching us. And now it all has to be reversed, little by little, so that it is us watching Him live what we formerly called “our" life. The mandali have said that people are just playing their roles. We are not really our roles; we are really Baba in disguise.
This is a huge and revolutionary shift in perception! What a seemingly incomprehensible and unfathomable challenge before us, and fortunately Baba is always there to make the impossible possible.
Kitty Davy would often quote this line from the Bible:
“… I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”
In His love, Jeff
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