When we talk of ego, it is as if we are talking about a man with a body and limbs. It has a basic makeup and it has its tentacles, so to speak, as well. Its basic makeup consists of paranoia and confusion. But at the same time, its basic makeup started from some kind of wisdom as well, because there is the possibility that we don't exist as individual entities or as solid persons who can continue all the time. There is the possibility that as individuals we consist of particles or of lots of things — but those particles don't exist as individuals either.

The ego, the moment to moment (constant) creation of a sense of separate self creates fear. The emotion of fear is not happening to you it is your own creation. Wherever there is the sense of subject, object, or relationships, there is fear, and fear then makes the adventure of existence.

This separate sense of self is created spontaneously and unconsciously and the heartbeat alone is responsible for your primal belief in your own existence. The heartbeat is the most primitive incident and the center of fear and the one great fear is that if the heartbeat stops, you disappear. The heartbeat shocks us with its rhythm, with its striking, pounding movement and the only salvation in this fear is to penetrate this motion, this sound, this signal that shocks us into fear.

The primal incident is not any thought nor the sense of "me," but it is the heartbeat and in reaction, vital shock - the knot in the pit of your stomach. The heartbeat in the center of the body-being is the ultimate meditation. It is the single motivator of life. It is the principal illusion of all beings. All beings have in common this beat, everything that lives, that is self-conscious, is meditating on the beat or intensity that is the heart. The heartbeat alone is responsible for the whole adventure and complication of existence.

The primal incident is differentiation of the One and Present Reality, which is Infinite Consciousness, from Love, Radiance, Light, and Vibratory Life, or all the Infinite Eternity at once. But in that instance of differentiation the most primitive archetype of all knowledge appears. It appears as a simple presumption of independent existence, consciousness, and pleasure over against all kinds of relations or objects, high and low.

This Primal Call, a scream for those who are sensitive to the madness. This call creates religions and religions answers, God or God-apart, the Creator with it's infinite numbers and kinds of relations and worlds - highs and lows - separating self and God.

Birth and (the potentiality of) Death are simultaneously created in this primal incident. Birth is usually associated with shock as is death. As an incident both are usually interpreted psychologically — in terms of its emotional-mental or subjective impact. But their significance is in the event itself, the sudden identification with the body and mind.

Birth is shock - vital shock, a recoil from life felt as a cramp in the solar pelus. Life then becomes a drama of struggling against an unbearable demand: survival, relationship, incarnation, or love. We are a constant mood of recoil, contraction, and self-possession along with a constant demand for life's requirements — by virtue of birth itself, the apparent independence of self all relations. The feeling and actuality of independence is the burden of living beings.

RESPONSIBILITY

The whole process of the Way of The Heart involves inspection and responsibility relative to the primal incident of each moment. It involves inspection and responsibility for subjective contraction, as ego, mind, and limiting or separative identification with the apparent body in any realm.

The sense of relationship, of me and you, us and them, is the outcome of the primal incident. Fear or contraction is the native and simultaneous reaction to this incident and Understanding involves the ultimate responsibility for this reaction.

Resonsibility occurs through a natural pattern or process of transformation toward maturity, for the reaction of fear. In this Understanding and responsibility, the reaction of independence, subjectivity, contraction, illusion, dilemma, and fear has ceased to be necessary - so that the pattern of arising conditions is no longer the basis for fear and contraction around the illusion of self. Life is then transformed into a creative process.

In this process the tendency of attention to be associated with conditions is dissolved. At first association with the grosser conditions continues. Then as the tendency of those associations is gradually released, a subtler disposition appears in this life. By our continuing in this disposition of recognition, the tendency of attention to associate and identify with conditional existence in any plane whatsoever is dissolved in its prior condition, which is essentially and always before the Primal Incident or Big Bang.

This process of Understanding may not merely be presumed in mind to be the case. There must be the Sacrifice, the Transforming Fire, the Dissolution of knowledge, preferences, the very being, the whole body or reflex that is illusion of self. There must be revulsion or turning, from "creature and creations" to the Source Condition, from the worlds and all fascinations to the Truth of every condition.

You cannot merely, by inverting upon the self essence, identify with the the Source Condition. To invert upon the self essence is merely to continue the reaction to fear. The Process is true only in where the poles of the primal incident, are resolved in Radiance, Bliss, or Love, without center, objects, or bounds.

One can experience physical and vital well-being by removing the sources of enervation and toxicity. One can experience mental and emotional well-being, the clear and quiet mind, by analyzing the structure of mental and emotional problems. One can experience spiritual realization and enjoy the form of reality in its superconscious shape by dissolving the process of the radical avoidance of relationship. But one will not cease to suffer, seek or experience dilemma and identification with what is separate unless one abides as no-seeking in the heart. Therefore, understand and abide in every form of understanding, until understanding becomes radical activity and realizes its nature as consciousness itself.

Beezone edit and adaptation - from the the writings of Adi Da Samraj

more:

According to Buddhist psychology, the basis of neurosis is the tendency to solidify energy into a barrier that separates space into two entities, "I" and "Other", the space in here and the space out there. This process is technically termed "dualistic fixation". First there is the initial creation of the barrier, the sensing of other, and then the inference of inner, or I. This is the birth of ego. We identify with what is in here and struggle to relate to what is out there. The barrier causes an imbalance between inside and outside. The struggle to redress the imbalance further solidifies the wall. The irony of the barrier-creating process is that we lose track of the fact that we have created the barrier and, instead, act as if it was always there.

Maitri - developed by Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche - Marvin Casper

The Five Skandhas- Chogyam Trungpa

Ego is not an entity, but an activity - Paradox of Instruction

EGO DEATH AND THE DISSOLUTION OF NARCISSUS

Source of the Heartbeat

Beyond the Heatbeat and the Mind

Identification of the Beloved is the Principle of Existence