So back to why the discussion of “ego” has been ‘programmed-out’, if you will, in many of the western intuitive/meditative disciplines today.
The reduction of Ego is systemic in traditional Eastern training– you shut-up, & practice. The Teacher is Right, so again– shut-up, don’t question, & do the same [basic] training, over&over&over. And in the same way that this kind of ‘basic training’ often helps you break-down bad [physical] habits — such as standing-meditation for hours teaches the body to stop using hard muscular force (by dint of painfully screaming muscles) — a similar mental submersion of one’s will to that of someone else is a very effective technique to diminsh one’s ego’s ‘lock’ on one’s personality.
But we in the West have no patience for that. If only i had a nickel for every Martial Arts Teacher who said, “traditionally you’d have to practice [this technique] for a year before you get the next one, but we teach you all 3 the first day”. IOW, “forget all that ‘mental’ stuff, & let’s get to the ‘good stuff’”. How many of you have gone to Yoga or T’ai Ch’i classes, whose Teacher never even mentions the word ‘meditation’? Well, this is not a ‘win’.
Nevertheless, with all the excesses racked-up by Guru’s in West, the whole idea of the guru-chela relationship is viewed with some suspicion… & for good reason. We would rather to treat our Teachers initially with a bit of deference, a bit of respect over time, but certainly not ‘putting-aside’ our own ego’s, thank you very much. But perhaps we’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater?
Actually, I think it’s more of the lingering residue of Hubbard & Erhardt, whose mental beliefs still can be found all over what’s left of the Consciousness Movement. Those two did a startlingly good job gleaning some of the more powerful mental practices of various eastern spiritual disciplines, combined it with some military boot-camp confrontational tactics, & invested it with a tremendous load of obfuscatory, pseudo-mystical belief.
On the one hand, many of those techniques are effective, even quite powerful. But on the other hand, the [schools] in which they are taught often turn-out ppl more messed-up than when they started… as much psychosis, if you will… but now with a whole lot more mental decisiveness, “Certainty” if you will, as well as unstoppable belief in their inner ‘Rightness’. Their egos, as Chogyam Trungpa, would say, have been “reinforced by spiritual techniques”.
I’d love to get a similar nickel for each person I’ve met who after year(s) in a meditative community/discipline, comes-out with an (insufferable) conviction of their own Rightness, & a huge interest in sharing it with everyone around them. Perhaps Erhardt’s masterstroke was tying-together his students’ conviction in their own ability to “Get It”, with the number of fellow students they’d recruited.
I always want to say, to those who come to my door hoping to save my Immortal Soul, “I’m so very happy you’ve discovered Truth or Spirituality; I’ve found my own too, let’s share what we’ve learned with each other!” But that, unfortunately, only results in them smoothly switching to another of their well-rehearsed scripts, along the lines of “Your Truth isn’t any good; ours is the Right one”.
Alas. I’ve read a few books, been in a few schools, ‘been meditating for some years… I bet we’d've had a fun conversation… if it only could start.
