Comments for Peak Ego and the Ego Descent Plan at http://hopedance.org , comment 1 to 7 out of 7 comments http://hopedance.org Sat, 31 Jul 2010 20:47:29 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://hopedance.org/home/soul-news/1553-peak-ego-and-the-ego-descent-plan#comment-63 This is a fantastic article and I feel very enriched for having read it! - Dan Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:04:36 +0100 http://hopedance.org/home/soul-news/1553-peak-ego-and-the-ego-descent-plan#comment-60 [quote]Happiness is intricately tied to service which doesn’t necessarily imply helping others constantly but means surrendering to our purpose for why we are here on this planet at this time. I think we each have a unique role to play and we ought to cultivate the soil so that our purpose can use us. There’s a quote attributed to St. Thomas in the Gnostic Gospels where he writes that “if you do not surrender to what you are supposed to do then you will not be saved. If you do surrender to what is of value, then you will be saved.” Lets remove the “saved” part and replace it with joy and happiness and then you will get my drift.[/quote] I'm interested in any PO angle that touches on the 'spiritual' side of the equation, as so many approach this issue from the scientific angle, naturally, and only hint at the possibility that the church may have some part of the solution. As clergy from a mainline protestant denomination, my take on being 'saved' is less decision oriented as some evangelical Christians and more about grace. I try my best not to condemn anyone for their beliefs or proselytize needlessly. That said, if you look at salvation as a present reality, where the reigning of God is beginning to happen but has yet to arrive in its fullness, then an ego descent away from the self toward serving others is part of bringing salvation to those trapped in their own prison, be it capitalistic, consumeristic, isolation, etc. When we find a way to help our neighbor (and post-peak those opportunities will increase exponentially!) we are bringing salvation to the lost while realizing our own awakening into a living, present salvation of freedom to love and serve. The Latin American Base Christian Communities understand salvation as liberation. Both the oppressors (the rich, developed, first world) and oppressed (the poor, developing third world) need liberation from the systems that oppress us all. Our addiction to oil to fuel our convenience and greed is where we first-worlders need liberation, need salvation. But the challenge comes, as has been alluded to above, in finding out how to live in this world with its broken systems and still love, still serve. All this to say, I wouldn't shy away from using the word 'saved', as long as you can qualify the word. I doubt Thomas understood it to mean what American evangelical Christianity has shaped it to mean. Thanks for a thoughtful article. Galen Gallimore - Galen Gallimore Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:39:14 +0100 http://hopedance.org/home/soul-news/1553-peak-ego-and-the-ego-descent-plan#comment-59 Bob - great writeup. I've been following the PeakO crowd since about '05, esp Heinberg/Orlov/Kunstler (and Charles H. Smith lately). You have some good insight, and this struck a chord. As a musician and someone who can be very social when I want, I find myself feeling like I should be "reaching out" more, feel thwarted by the whole layout of suburbia. This was a major revelation for me to put together. As an example of trying to break an area out of their peak-ego lifestyle, my current scene might do. After spending a year+ in very rural/agri northern Cal, where we're setting up a small farming thing, I had to jump back down to consumer-land SoCal to take a job. Though I had very few contacts in our norCal scene, I felt less lonely, somehow, than I do down here in the Ventura County bedroom community of L.A. I go to work everyday, and come home to my empty 1br apt. It was a huge change to go through again, in reverse. There is no "town square" here, just endless strip malls/shopping malls, sporting the occasional "cafe", which sits on the edge of a huge parking lot (of course). You can detect the pseudo-shopping-happiness all around, but if you asked them if they were [i]unhappy[i][/i][/i] with the arrangment, I think you'd get a lot of puzzled grins. This town is where everyone tries to move [b]to[b][/b][/b] to have a clean, mostly white, shopping and living "experience" (the San Fernando Valley having run its course on that and being very "non white" at this point). To sum it up, I think that it's going to take a crisis to shock people into breaking out of peak ego. Sorry, but that's what I percieve. Some may flip out and not survive it, some may use it like profiteers, and others will find a new self. The encouraging thing is that in the very few crises I've been through in America, most people seem pretty "on deck" to start helping others. This corresponds with what Orlov has said. The morning of the Northridge earthquake in L.A. in '94, after the shaking stopped, when everyone noticed their electricity was out, we walked out front of the house in our Burbank suburbhood and lo, everyone else was out there too, checking with eachother, etc. Of course we all still had our houses and refrigerators full of stuff, but it was encouraging. Possibly the above will give a perspective. We're just going to have to ride it out and see what happens. Hopefully more than a few frogs will get the idea of climbing out of the pot when they feel the water getting warmer and warmer, instead of hoping it will just cool off again. You never know with humans. Best, jack - jt Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:14:09 +0100 http://hopedance.org/home/soul-news/1553-peak-ego-and-the-ego-descent-plan#comment-36 Some encouraging words from Osho, "The real can be known only through the false, so the ego is a must. One has to pass through it. It is a discipline. The real can be known only through the illusion. You cannot know the truth directly. First you have to know that which is not true. First you have to encounter the untrue. Through that encounter you become capable of knowing the truth. If you know the false as the false, truth will dawn upon you." [url]http://deoxy.org/egofalse.htm[/url] - fred frisbee Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:45:41 +0100 http://hopedance.org/home/soul-news/1553-peak-ego-and-the-ego-descent-plan#comment-35 From Katie: __________ Bob, My favorite Parts — we gave up our extended families and communities and our psychic and spiritual lives and invisibly traded them for a physical comfort that we probably never realized would ever become our tomb. From time to time I have declared that we need a reverse peace corps in that people from the 3rd and 4th worlds ought to come to the developed world to help us with our non-physical dimensional lives so we can create some balance. Do we fight and claw our way back to the peak as it slips away or do we welcome it, cultivate resiliency and allow that very real and natural interdependence to penetrate our psyches and lives? _____________ Awesome! I love your flow of thoughs- brilliantly named...it did make me think of the two things regarding mcmansioners and compassion. think the people stuck in this matrix created and in the ego are not just the mcmansioners because there are SO many people aspiring to that life or jealous of it and those egos and belief systems will collapse as well and people will feel like "well, what now?" As transitioners we know some of the things that replace old institutions and can provide hope and alternatives but need to be cautious of the potentiality for creating an "other". LIke the ones contributing to the mess vs the ones coming out of it. I guess the main thing I am saying is one important part of the ego descent plan is compassion towards EVERYONE! This means - yes I am going to say it- compassion for George Bush- it means compassion towards everyone- -- Katie Liljedahl - Bob Banner Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:52:40 +0100 http://hopedance.org/home/soul-news/1553-peak-ego-and-the-ego-descent-plan#comment-34 from Katie: - Bob Banner Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:51:10 +0100 http://hopedance.org/home/soul-news/1553-peak-ego-and-the-ego-descent-plan#comment-33 Gotta admit I didn't read the whole thing too carefully, I need to get to class in a minute. Think I got the gist of it though. Anyway I've been thinking about the same thing (didn't call it Peak Ego though, that's a good one), and honestly I couldn't be more thrilled about it. Peak Ego HAS to be realized before humanity can move on. Dualism needs to be expressed to the logical extreme before non-dualism can occur, on the large scale. In my opinion the greatest good is not unity but the process of unification. That's why we have Egos in the first place, because no matter how great it is not to have an Ego, it's nothing in comparison to the process of Ego-death. And the bigger your Ego, the more fun it's gonna be to kill it. - fred frisbee Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:36:29 +0100