Higher consciousness and Ego

I shared the following post today (19 Jan 2019) and got a request to explain it further. So here’s my attempt. Though I have been on my spiritual path from my childhood, I am still on my path. I don’t claim I know everything, so this answer is coming from my limited understanding.

We are all souls who have come to the earth plane to have a human experience. It is quite common to think the contrary, that we are humans with a soul, and this can totally change the outlook to life. With this approach, we live a mechanical, materialistic, highly ambitious and stressful life.

Those persons who have realised the full potential of a human life and knows what great heights can be achieved through this human body, keep giving pointers for us to stop and think and take a deviation from this mad rat race. One common idea instilled into the minds is the existence of God (and Satan), who is keeping an account of all your deeds and gives rewards/punishments according to that. This creates fear and fear is a strong deterrant for misdeeds.

This works good for many whose understanding is at a certain level. When one goes beyond, the idea of macrocosm and microcosm can be grasped. During the journey of understanding, one moves from dwaita (duality) philisophy to advaita (nonduality) philosophy. Here, there is no ‘other’. There is only ONE energy that exists, which can be called as higher consciousness. And we are all part of that higher consciousness.

What is preventing us from having this knowledge at the experiential level? Because there are layers and layers of ignorance that we have accumulated over many incarnations, and ego is one strong last layer. These different layers need to be removed, just like peeling off layers of onion. When the last layer of onion is removed, there is only empty space.

With our efforts which are consistent and persistent, we keep removing the layers of ignorance and comes to the ego, which when removed (which is not easy, a Guru may help), you are in touch with your higher consciouness. Now this higher consciousness can help us to overcome lower ego desires. The ego desires make our life unhappy in the least, and hell at the worst. Once we overcome them, our life can be a daily celebration!