Source/Copyright: Justin Hobson
It has been awhile since I wrote this series, but I wanted to complete the post on ego and identity in programming. Essentially, I have made a new discovery in this area - that of "spheres of influence". It would appear that the awareness of our minds are free in nature, but it habitually interacts with different levels of our being in different ways. For example, a person who does not like his body may not particularly care to settle his mental awareness within it much of the time. The side effects of this is the lack of communication between the body and the mind include the mind's relative lack of effectiveness in affecting it. Thus, when two people sit down to meditate on their health, they may have different levels of effectiveness depending on how much the body (or whatever subject they care to work on) falls within their "sphere of influence", as I have chosen to call it.
The nature of the sphere is not limited, except by habit and resistance. Awareness can go everywhere if we let it, after all. Thus, the limitations are emitted by ego and identity. As the previous posts have hinted - ego and identity form around points of fixation. Eliminate these fixations and you would experience your emotions as clarity and wisdom. It is a little like the tornado above. Raging though it may be, it has a still point at its center. The ego is a little like that. It requires a lot of activity to maintain. The moment the conditions of its existence are removed, the tornado is no more. Thus, the tornado of ego bustles about, maintaining itself.
Yet, if we spread our awareness in an experiential way, we would discover much of interest. Without resisting or forming fixation points, we may discover that the blocks are within our own minds. More interestingly, we may also discover that we are holding those blocks by habitual clinging, or attachment. There is much material here which I could pontificate on, but suffice it to say that the application of awareness will reveal the resistance. What does remain is to note that just because a tornado may dwindle into nothingness does not mean the air which formed it also is eliminated. If a tornado could think, the great fear of non-existence would probably exist because the tornado thinks of itself as a tornado. If it realised that it were air and would not be destroyed, the existence of a funnel-type formation would bother it not. . U.
