Above all, know that ego isn't personal. It isn't who you are. If you consider the ego to be your personal problem, that's just more ego.

To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it - who are you?

All you need to know and observe in yourself is this: Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that's the ego in you.

All you need to know and observe in yourself is this: Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that's the ego in you.

Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego.

Humanity is reaching the end of the evolutionary stage of ego. The closer we get to the end, the more dysfunctional humanity becomes.

Very unconscious people experience their own ego through its reflection in others. When you realize that what you react to in others is also in you (and sometimes only in you), you begin to become aware of your own ego.

There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right !

If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength. This spiritual truth is diametrically opposed to the values of our contemporary culture and the way it conditions people to behave.

When you let go of the belief that you should or need to know who you are, what happens to confusion? Suddenly it is gone. When you fully accept that you don't know, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be. Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.

Negative states of mind, such as anger, resentment, fear, envy, and jealousy, are products of the ego.

I sometimes say animals are closer to God than humans. They are closer to the source. The humans are more lost in the mind forms. Being is more obscured to the human because of the overlay of ego and mental formation.

Ego is an immature stage of development for humans, and that's what it will be recognized as when the consciousness changes on the planet. Children will develop an ego and quickly outgrow it. That's very different from developing an ego and being stuck with it for the rest of your life.

Non-reaction to the ego in others is one of the most effective ways not only of going beyond ego in yourself but also of dissolving the collective human ego.

Through allowing, you become what you are; vast, spacious. You become whole. You are not a fragment anymore, which is how the ego perceives itself. Your true nature emerges, which is one with the nature of God.

The whole movement of happiness, unhappiness, happiness, unhappiness, could be called unhappiness. You're suffering because your state of mind is in flux, moving back and forth. The ego's happiness is really a form of suffering, because it cannot live without unhappiness.

Forgiveness happens naturally when you see that it has no purpose other than to strengthen a false sense of self, to keep the ego in place.

To awaken within the dream is our purpose now. When we are awake within the dream, the ego-created earth-drama comes to an end and a more benign and wonderous dream arises.

When someone becomes transparent, then something shines through that person that has nothing to do with the person or any of his or her personal history. What is required is becoming so transparent that the self or ego dissolves.

The ego is just waiting to identify with anything. Whether it's your misery or being a great meditator, it seeks some identification.

The ego wants to want more than it wants to have.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could spare them from all suffering? No, it wouldn't. They would not evolve as human beings and would remain shallow, identified with the external form of things. Suffering drives you deeper. The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form and erodes identification with form. A lot of it is caused by the ego, although eventually suffering destroys the ego-but not until you suffer consciously.

Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don't see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.

You become most powerful in whatever you do if the action is performed for its own sake rather than as a means to protect, enhance, or conform to your role identity.

Christ is your God-essence or the Self, as it is sometimes called in the East. The only difference between Christ and presence is that Christ refers to your indwelling divinity regardless of whether you are conscious of it or not, whereas presence means your awakened divinity or God-essence.

Ego means self-identification with thinking, to be trapped in thought, which means to have a mental image of "me" based on thought and emotions. So ego is there in the absence of a witnessing presence.

Are you stressed? Are you so busy getting to the future that the present is reduced to a means of getting there? Stress is caused by being "here" but wanting to be "there" or being in the present but wanting to be in the future. It's a split that tears you apart inside. To create and live with such an inner split is insane. The fact that everybody else is doing it doesn't make it any less insane.

When you always want the next thing, every human being becomes a means to an end.

Vigilance in oneself is very important. Vigilance means to be alert to what happens inside, so you can catch an old, collective habit pattern.

Worry means the mind is controlling you. Worry is always pointless. A solution never comes out of worry.

Even if they don't know it consciously, people can feel when you are making them into a means to an end only. And people are much less likely to do what you want them to do - for example, to buy the car - when they feel you are reducing them into a means to an end.

So really what it comes down to, it's God. Wherever you look, it's God appearing as this, that, that...and what you really love and appreciate in each form is the divine formless out of which each form comes. But to be able to sense that you have to sense it in yourself first. And that is seeing the beauty in everything, that's really what it means.

When you are present, when your attention is fully in the Now, Presence will flow into and transform what you do. There will be a quality and power in it. You are present when what you are doing is not primarily a means to an end (money, prestige, winning) but fulfilling in itself, when there is joy and aliveness in what you do.

The Truth is far more all-encompassing than the mind could ever comprehend. No thought can encapsulate the Truth. At best, it can point to it. For example, it can say: "All things are intrinsically one (The Pearl of Great Price)." That is a pointer, not an explanation. Understanding these words means feeling deep within you the truth to which they point.

The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse... By misuse, I mean that people who have never glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is they are denying. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as "My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false," or Nietzsche's famous statmeent "God is dead.

So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.

Don't get stuck on the level of words. A word is no more than a means to an end. It's an abstraction. Not unlike a signpost, it points beyond itself

When work is no more than a means to an end, it cannot be of high quality.

To some people, surrender may have negative connotations, implying defeat, giving up, failing to rise to the challenges of life, becoming lethargic, and so on. True surrender, however, is something entirely different. It does not mean to passively put up with whatever situation you find yourself in and to do nothing about it. Nor does it mean to cease making plans or initiating positive action. Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life.

As you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life. It means fear is no longer a dominant factor in what you do and no longer prevents you from taking action to initiate change.

You don't need to suffer anymore. You've suffered enough to take you to this point where you hear the words, "You don't need to suffer anymore," and you understand them. You recognize their truth and you then see that you do have a choice ­ that you can surrender to the suchness of now, which means every moment to relinquish resistance and if it still arises, to recognize it.

Through forgiveness, which essentially means recognizing the insubstantiality of the past and allowing the present moment to be as it is, the miracle of transformation happens not only within but also without.

Stress means there is something wrong, and you are not aligned with life.

To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for you inner state at any given moment. That means now

Many adults play roles when they speak to young children. They use silly words and sounds. They talk down to the child. They don't treat the child as an equal. The fact that you temporarily know more, or you're bigger does not mean the child is not your equal.

Your primary purpose is to be here fully, and to be total in whatever you do so that the preciousness of the present moment does not become reduced to a means to an end. And there you have your life purpose. That's the very foundation of your life.

Being rich/wealthy is being in touch with the fullness of life. When you are open to the present moment, what comes in, is a gratitude for "what is". When you are aligned with the present moment, there is a peace that comes, so it is like you are experiencing life for the first time, when you become present. When you are in a state of gratitude for what is ... that is really what being wealthy means

There are situations when all answers and explanations fade. When you fully accept that you do not know, you give up struggling to find answers with the limited thinking mind. That is when the greater intelligence can operate though you. Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and becoming comfortable with not knowing.

When forms begin to crumble there is always an opportunity for great deepening. By deepening I mean the arising of who you are beyond form.

Stressful energy arises when you think some future moment is more important than the present moment, and the doing becomes only a means to an end.