LESSON OR PURPOSE?

[cyberangel]

Dear Friends,


Everything in our life is to either teach a lesson or serve a purpose


Take our EGO for one example

Many try to rid themselves of EGO but ask yourselves this...

If EGO is to teach a lesson then what is the lesson?

or

If EGO is to serve a purpose what is its purpose?


or

maybe EGO is both a lesson and purpose


Looking forward to reading your comments


Love and Light

[gruntal]

Considering how many times I have been criticized and ridiculed if not outright ostracized for not "tooting my own horn" and taking care of myself I must say my standing with the human race has not exactly been enhanced by being meek. More like I was shunned as an embaressment. But then again I never sat down and decided I was going to be that way. As to being spiritual I havn't found much interconnect. Again at one level I never CHOSE these things; it was the personality I was born with.

At another level I find I have the same problem everyone else in the Cosmos has: nothing much ment anything untill it first ment something to me. Then and only then could I extrapolate what it might mean to the others. How do you even know you are alive except by self consciousness?

I do have reason to believe there are more possibilites but they will not be taken from me; only relinquished when I realise them and willingly let them go.

[donq]

Hi cyberangel,

As for our ego, for the sake of talking, let me say that there could be good and not good ego. :-)

A man driving down a country road got a flat tire. Because he had no jack with which to change the tire, he decided to walk to nearest farmhouse to see if he could borrow a jack. As he walked downed the road, a question occurred to him: “What if the farmer doesn’t want to lend me a jack?”
He continued on his way and resolved to pay the farmer for the use of the jack, if necessary. ‘After all,’ he reasoned, ‘how much could he want for a jack? Ten dollars?’
Farther along, he wondered if the farmer might try to take advantage of his and ask fifty dollars for the jack. At the thought of this, he became quite annoyed. He walked up to the door of the farm house and knocked. When the farmer opened the door, the man exclaimed, “Who needs your damn jack? You can take it and shove it!”
(source unknown)

The kind of ego above always makes troubles for us. Right?
I will not try to talk about non-duality here. It always brings us to nowhere. Let’s say that ego and non-ego are one and cannot be separated. As Chuang Tzu said,

It is because there is “is”that there is “is not”;
It is because there is “is not”that there is “is.”
This being the situation, the sages do not approach things on this level,
but reflect the light of nature.

Also, there a saying in Zen Buddhism (which now becomes a bit cliché) :

“Before I sought enlightenment, the mountains were mountains and the rivers were rivers. While I sought enlightenment, the mountains were not mountains and the rivers were not rivers. After I reached satori, the mountains were mountains and the rivers were rivers.”

Chuang Tzu also criticized about dualistic thinking:

Thereupon, the self is also the other; the other is the “self”…But really are there such distinctions as self and other, or are there no such distinctions? When self and other lost their contrariety, there we have the very essence of the tao.

However, in real life situation, if we still want that jack, to fix our flat tires, at least we should separate our ego from not-ego, should we not? Because our ego have coverd our real selves for a very long time.

For many years snow has covered the mountain,
This year the snow “is” the mountain.
-Dōgen

I believe it will take time before we can befriend with and become one with our ego again (even it used to be or always is one and cannot be separated from us.) And then, only then, we will experience this kind of experience:

A famous Zen master wrote: “When I heard the temple bell ring, suddenly there was no bell and no I, just sound.”

And….maybe we could get that jack with for ten dollars, or even for free. Lol

P.S. Oh! Just realize that I haven’t answered your questions yet. So, Here it is.
You asked : If EGO is to teach a lesson then what is the lesson? or
If EGO is to serve a purpose what is its purpose?

When I was a child I saw a butterfly struggling to get out of its chrysalis. I felt pity on it and used a knife to help it, to free it. But that butterfly never flied. Because nature intended it to develop and strengthen its wings by forcing itself out of the chrysalis. I made a serious mistake by made its life too easy and it could not develop its own mastery.
Even our bodies, we sweat after hard works, but that really help to lubricate our joints, massaging them with so good natural oils. And yes, maybe our ego is there to strengthen our mental strength. We do need this kind of mental exercise for our spiritual development. But if our lives are too easy, maybe we will never be able to fulfill our spiritual quests.

P.P.S. Sorry for many quotes. Just wanted to save my effort on typing in English. Still not good at it. :-)