April 17, 2008 [Start]

Today, I decided to write. About personal achievement, success, brain biology, psychology, religion (currently I am interested in Hinduism and Buddhism), and spirituality.

I have read a lot, listened a lot. But I still need more. So, my plan is: read/study as I write. I will also find some friends to do this together with me——to form a small virtual group, to encourage each other (is that ego at work?)

Today, I would like to provide my observation to ego. Ego is the 'self sense'. It is so very important that it is the motivation to carry on in our lives. We all feel different and special (and we are) than other people. And we all feel important. Even a small child will have this sense. And what we do is to reinforce our notion of self.

Well, that is the positive side of ego——to provide fuel to live. It has caused problems in our lives. When we are faced with situations to choose from right or happy, or to choose from right or kind, our first reaction is to choose to be right. So, sometimes, we just will have to let the ego get out of the way to make things work.

After careful analysis, this ego is just a mental fabrication. It has no entity, no physical form. It is developed when we grow up. And we constantly feed it.

According to Hinduism, our true SELF——our spiritual being should be focused on, and ego should give way to SELF. Buddhism does not admit a ever-lasting self or ego. These are false connotations and one of our tasks is to have right understanding.

Another word about methodology, I am also very interested in subconscious. But the problem with it is we cannot use it, we only have our conscious mind to reason, infer, make things look logical. So we can only use experiments. Of course, there is another way. We can expand our conscious, make otherwise unconscious field into conscious field.