The Sense of Ego
Of the four mysterious senses of Love, hearing, word, thought and Ego, the Ego sense is the most subtly exquisite (ORIGIN late Middle English (in the sense [carefully ascertained, precise] ): from Latin exquisit- ‘sought out,’ from the verb exquirere, from ex- ‘out’ + quaerere ‘seek.)
With this sense we perceive the eternal essence, the I AM, of other individuals. Imagine all the other perceptions falling away – the ones that tell us all about the earthly appearance, the personality, the intelligence, the energies, the feelings, all the “things” and attributes of another – and all we are left with to know is the pure spirit of the other. Can you bear that imagination?
It is an imagination of a flame searing your soul leaving behind embers of profound truth, indescribable beauty, fierce goodness and the warm glow of evolving freedom and emerging love.
We are always perceiving the Ego of others, but oh, so rarely are we conscious of this perception. We remain dull to this sense most of our waking lives as the other senses draw our attention. When we do bring consciousness to this perception it is usually felt as a glance, a glimmer, a whiff, a moment of buoyancy, a whisper of the name of God.
I thought I would ask you to recall this fleeting experience of the I of another, but as I think about it, I realize that ordinary memory does not come from these most sacred perceptions. We cannot remember what lives beyond thought. We cannot memorialize the “I” the way we can memorialize what perceive in our bodies or in the world. We memorialize through our emotional responses and reactions, we like and dislike, we judge and evaluate, we desire or resist the perceptions of the other eleven senses.
This is what we can gradually grasp through attention to the four senses of love, that all the senses are only alive in the moment, that our memories of perceptions are just memories and are diminished and intensified , even distorted, over time. We must strive for a wise innocence in all our perceptions, we must perceive in the living moment free from all memory.
Instead of the kind of earthly security that comes from perceptual familiarity, leap into the fires of the present and experience the person beside you free from the veils of space and time and memory. Simply love, in freedom. Then your soul will be blessed by the perception of the Ego of the other, shining forth.
What we can remember is within each human being, in their holy of holies, dwells the Ego, the “I Am” and that within our own souls lives the sense to perceive it.
This is the closing post for this 2010 Inner Summer journey through the realm of the senses. Thank you for sharing it with me.
Thanks also to those who have shown their appreciation through the donation button on the blog.
I have found it a rich experience to commit to the responsibility of writing once a week about the Inner Year mysteries of the soul. I work to articulate the thoughts that create an imagination of Self. I plan on continuing this rhythm. The next six Sundays I will be writing about the many ways we find meaning in our daily lives.
Lynn
