The Unseen

The Ego is the Story of Satan (Iblis) - who rules over the material world (dunya)!

the totally demonic state of complete "Egohood."

The ego is an IDOL which grew from our interaction with the Materialistic World (Dunya)

the functioning of ego is that of the "Three idols of Materialism": the "Idol of Form," the "Idol of Speech," and the "Idol of Mind."
The Idol of Form

...to try to control nature. It is ego's ambition to secure and entertain itself, trying to avoid all irritation. So we cling to our pleasures and possessions, we fear change or force change, we try to create a nest or playground.

The Idol of Speech

refers to the use of intellect in relating to our world. We adopt sets of categories which serve as handles, as ways of managing phenomena. The most fully developed products of this tendency are ideologies, the systems of ideas that rationalize, justify and sanctify our lives. Nationalism, communism, existentialism, Christianity, Buddhism — all provide us with identities, rules of action, and interpretations of how and why things happen as they do. The Idol of Speech refers to the inclination on the part of ego to interpret anything that is threatening or irritating in such a way as to neutralize the threat or turn it into something "positive" from ego's point of view. The Idol of Speech refers to the use of concepts as filters to screen us from a direct perception of what is. The concepts are taken too seriously; they are used as tools to solidify our world and ourselves. If a world of nameable things exists, then "I" as one of the nameable things exists as well.

The Idol of Mind

rules when we use spiritual and psychological disciplines as the means of
maintaining our self-consciousness, of holding onto our sense of self.

the sense of self / the ego (l-nafs) is a mask or armour which protects us and it fights whoever attacks it or if you try to remove it (on your way to becoming enlightened / awakened) using survival tricks of the mind - but this ego mask / armour is what covers / veils us (from Reality / the Truth / God) - so we want to remove it - but then we'd be vulnerable / naked and scared!

We try to feed it pleasures and shield it from pain.
Ego is able to convert everything to its own use, even spirituality. For example, if you have learned of a particularly beneficial meditation technique of spiritual practice, then ego's attitude is, first to regard it as an object of fascination and, second to examine it. Finally, since ego is seeming solid and cannot really absorb anything, it can only mimic. Thus ego tries to examine and imitate the practice of meditation and the meditative way of life.
very elaborate defenses erected by the Three idols to prevent their subjects from discovering the fundamental deception which is the source of their power
ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality. Ego is constantly attempting to acquire and apply the teachings of spirituality for its own benefit.
if our teacher speaks of renunciation of ego, we attempt to mimic renunciation of ego. We go through the motions, make the appropriate gestures, but we really do not want to sacrifice any part of our way of life. We become skillful actors, and while playing deaf and dumb to the real meaning of the teachings, we find some comfort in pretending to follow the path.
rationalizing is not easy to deal with because everything is seen through the filter of ego's philosophy and logic, making all appear neat, precise and very logical. . We attempt
to find a self-justifying answer for every question. In order to reassure ourselves, we work to fit into our intellectual scheme every aspect of our lives which might be confusing.
It does not matter what we use to achieve self-justification: the wisdom of sacred books, diagrams or charts, mathematical calculations, esoteric formulae, fundamentalist religion, depth
psychology, or any other mechanism. Whenever we begin to evaluate, deciding that we should or should not do this or that, then we have already associated our practice or our knowledge with categories, one pitted against the other, and that is spiritual materialism,
"What is wrong with evaluating, with taking sides?", the answer is that, when we formulate a secondary judgment, "I should be doing this and should avoid doing that," then we have achieved a level of complication which takes us a long way from the basic simplicity of what we are. The simplicity of meditation means just experiencing the ape instinct of ego. If anything more than this is laid onto our psychology, then it becomes a very heavy, thick mask, a suit of armor.
we may eventually find ourselves possessed of a huge collection of spiritual paths. We may feel these spiritual collections to be very precious. We have studied so much. We may have studied Western philosophy or Oriental philosophy, practiced yoga or perhaps have studied under dozens of great masters. We have achieved and we have learned. We believe that we have accumulated a hoard of knowledge...Our vast collections of knowledge and experience are just part of ego's display, part of the grandiose quality of ego. We display them to the world and, in so doing, reassure ourselves that we exist, safe and secure, as "spiritual" people.
But we have simply created a shop, an antique shop. We could be specializing in oriental antiques or medieval Christian antiques or antiques from some other civilization or time, but we are, nonetheless, running a shop. Before we filled our shop with so many things the room was beautiful: whitewashed walls and a very simple floor with a bright lamp burning in the ceiling. There was one object of art in the middle of the room and it was beautiful. Everyone who came appreciated its beauty, including ourselves. But we were not satisfied and we thought, "Since this one object makes my room so beautiful, if 1 get more antiques, my
room will be even more beautiful." So we began to collect, and the end result was chaos.
The idea of it can be extremely frightening, though not the real experience. It is generally a fear of space, a fear that we will not be able to anchor ourselves to any solid ground, that we will lose our identity as a fixed and solid and definite thing. This could be very threatening.
our struggle is futile and may wish to surrender, to completely abandon our efforts to defend ourselves.
If we regard sjnrituality as a way of making ourselves comfortable, then whenever we experience something unpleasant, a disappointment, we try to rationalize it: "Of course this must be an act of wisdom on the part of the teacher, because 1 know, I'm quite certain the teacher doesn't do harmful things.
We have so many different defense mechanisms fashioned out of the knowledge we have received, the reading we have done, the experiences we have undergone, the dreams we have dreamed. But finally we begin to question what spirituality means really.
The biggest trick of the Ego - its core deception - the mental myth that the SELF / EGO exists - reinforced over and over in our memories - until it becomes into a continuous solid entity

the Three Idols seduce us by creating a fundamental myth: that we are solid beings. But ultimately the myth is false, a huge hoax, a gigantic fraud
The heart of the confusion is that man has a sense of self which seems to him to be continuous and solid
"if our real condition is an awakened state, why are we so busy trying to avoid becoming aware of it?" It is because we have become so absorbed in our confused view of the world, that we consider it real, the only possible world. This struggle to maintain the sense of a solid, continuous self is the action of ego.
The Idols' defenses are created out of the material of our minds. This material of mind is used by the Idols in such a way as to maintain the basic myth of solidity. In order to see for ourselves how this process works we must examine our own experience.
Confused mind is inclined to view itself as a solid, on-going thing, but it is only a collection of tendencies, events.
It is like a spacious hall where there is room to dance about, where there is no danger of knocking things over or tripping over things, for there is completely open space. We are this space, we are one with it,...Because it is spacious, it brings inspiration to dance about; but our dance became a bit too active, we began to spin more than was necessary to express the space. At this point we became selfconscious, conscious that "I" am dancing in the space. At such a point, space is no longer space as such. It becomes solid. Instead of being one with the space, we feel solid space as a separate entity, as tangible....Because this extreme intelligence has been transformed into the perception of solid space, because this intelligence with a sharp and precise and flowing luminous quality has become static, therefore it is called avidya, "ignorance." We deliberately ignore.
The flux of things becomes solid tangible time, a solid idea of time.

so if Complex Rationalising (and thinking ) is NOT the answer to remove / unveil the Ego piece by piece - then what is? Painful Personal Life Tests [fitan] and Simple Meditation (absence of thoughts, future expectations or past or present bias mental filters.. just be present in the now without judgement) and self-surrender (absence of struggle) = letting GO - the middle way

one has to drop the first watcher, the intention of protection itself.
not having enough confidence in ourselves, "confidence" in the sense of seeing what we are, knowing what we are, knowing that we can afford to open. We can afford to surrender that raw and rugged neurotic quality of self
We must surrender our hopes and expectations, as well as our fears, and march directly into disappointment, work with disappointment, go into it and make it our way of life, which is a very hard thing to do.
the main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of ego. This means
stepping out of ego's constant desire for a higher, more spiritual, more transcendental version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgment, comfort or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking.
...The method that the Buddha discovered is meditation. He discovered that struggling to find answers did not work. It was only when there were gaps in his struggle that insights came to him.
free ourselves from the domination of the Three idols unless we too cut through, layer by layer, the elaborate defenses of these idols.
There have been a number of misconceptions regarding meditation. Some people regard it as a trancelike state of mind. Others think of it in terms of training, in the sense of mental gymnastics. But meditation is neither of these,
although it does involve dealing with neurotic states of mind. The neurotic state of mind is not difficult or impossible to deal with. It has energy, speed and a certain pattern. The practice
of meditation involves letting be — trying to go with the pattern, trying to go with the energy and the speed. In this way we learn how to deal with these factors, how to relate with
them, not in the sense of causing them to mature in the way we would like, but in the sense of knowing them for what they are and working with their pattern.
A musician asked, "Should 1 control my mind or should I completely let go?" The Buddha answered, "Since you are a great musician, tell me how you would tune the strings of your instrument." The musician said, "1 would make them not too tight and not too loose." "Likewise," said the Buddha, "in your meditation practice you should not impose anything too forcefully on your mind, nor should you let it wander."
there is no need to struggle to prove our existence, that we need not be subject to the rule of the Three Idols of Materialism. There is no need to struggle to be free; the absence of struggle is in itself freedom.
The protective mechanism of ego involves checking oneself, which is an unnecessary kind of self-observance. Meditation is not based on meditating on a particular subject by checking oneself; but meditation is complete indentification with whatever techniques you are employing.
Surrendering does not involve preparing for a soft landing; it means just landing on hard, ordinary ground, on rocky, wild countryside.
Traditionally, surrendering is symbolized by such practices as prostration, which is the act of falling on the ground in a gesture of surrender. At the same time we open psychologically and surrender completely by identifying ourselves with the lowest of the low, acknowledging our raw and rugged quality. There is nothing that we fear to lose once we identify ourselves with the lowest of the low. By doing so, we prepare ourselves to be an empty vessel, ready to receive the teachings.
If we eliminate the filter of "I" and "other," then the space becomes sharp and precise and intelligent. Space contains the tremendous jsrecision of being able to work with the situations in it. One does not really need the "watcher" or "observer" at all.
You do not have to regard the watcher as a villain. Once you begin to understand that the purpose of meditation is not to get higher but to be present, here, then the watcher is not efficient enough to perform that function, and it automatically falls away.
When the watcher is gone, there is no evaluation of the experience as being pleasant or painful. When you have panoramic awareness without the evaluation of the watcher, then the bliss becomes irrelevant, by the very fact that there is no one experiencing it.
Have we ever unmasked, stripping out of our suit of armor and our shirt and skin and flesh and veins, right down to the heart? Have we really experienced the process of stripping
and opening and giving? That is the fundamental question. We must really surrender, give something, give something up in a very painful way. We must begin to dismantle the basic structure of this ego we have managed to create. The process of dismantling, undoing, opening, giving up, is the real learning process. How much of this ingrown toenail situation have we decided to give up? Most likely, we have not managed to give up anything at all. We have only collected, built, adding layer upon layer. So the prospect of the hard way is very threatening. The problem is that we tend to seek an easy and painless answer. But this kind of solution does not apply to the spiritual path, which many of us should not have begun at all. Once we commit ourselves to the spiritual path, it is very painful and we are in for it. We have committed ourselves to the pain of exposing ourselves, of taking off our clothes, our skin, nerves, heart, brains, until we are exposed to the universe.
It is a matter of an operation without the use of anaesthetics. You have to be willing to do it.
The ape instinct of ego dissolves because it is based upon secondhand information rather than upon direct experience of what is. Struggle is ego. Once you give up struggle, then there is no one left to conquer struggle; it just disappears. So you see, it is not a matter of achieving a victory over struggle.
being able to accept the present moment as it is.
The idea is not to regard the spiritual path as something very luxurious and pleasurable but to see it as just facing the facts of life.
you want to get something quickly to satisfy your desire. When there is no desire to satisfy yourself, there is no aggression or speed. So if a person can really relate to the simplicity of the practice of meditation, then automatically there is an absence of aggression. Because there is no rush to achieve, you can afford to relax. Because you can afford to relax, you can afford to keep company with yourself, can afford to make love with yourself, be friends with yourself. Then thoughts, emotions, whatever occurs in the mind constantly accentuates the act of making friends with yourself
(opposite of struggle is self surrender) It is very paradoxical that, the more you dislike the wall, the stronger and thicker the wall becomes, and the more you make friends with the wall, the more the wall disappears.
people make the mistake of thinking that, since ego is the root of suffering, the goal of spirituality must be to conquer and destroy ego. They struggle to eliminate ego's heavy hand but, as we discovered earlier, that struggle is merely another expression of ego. We go around and around, trying to improve ourselves through struggle, until we realize that the ambition to improve ourselves is itself the problem.
"letting go" is only possible for short periods. We need some discipline to bring us to "letting be." We must walk a spiritual path. Ego must wear itself out like an old shoe, journeying from suffering to liberation.
always focused on the future, is habitual with ego: "I would like to see such and such results. I have an idealized theory or dream which I would like to put into effect." We tend to live in the future, our view of life colored by the expectation of achieving an ideal goal. Because of this expectation we miss the precision and openness and intelligence of the present. We are fascinated, blinded and overwhelmed by the idealized goal...The competitive quality of ego can readily be seen in the materialistic world in which we live. If you want to become a millionaire, you first try to become a millionaire psychologically. You start by having an image of yourself as a millionaire and then work very hard towards that goal. You push yourself in that direction, regardless of whether or not you are able to achieve it. This approach creates a kind of blindfold, rendering you insensitive to the present moment because you are living too much in the future. One could take the same mistaken approach to the practice of meditation. ...the first point is not to focus yourself too much upon the future attainment of the awakened state of mind.... the situation of this present moment, here and now, and means working with this situation, this present state of mind. Any meditation practice concerned with transcending ego is focused in the present moment.
such as the awareness of walking. First you become aware of standing, then you are aware that your right leg is lifting, swinging, touching, pressing; then the left leg is lifting, swinging, touching, pressing. There are many, many details of action involved in the simplicity and sharpness of being in this very moment, here, now
the relationship between you and nowness.
One begins to realize that whatever we do in everyday life is beautiful and meaningful. If you pour a cup of tea, you are aware of extending your arm and touching your hand to the teapot, lifting it and pouring the water. Finally the water touches your teacup and fills it, and you stop pouring and put the teapot down precisely, as in the Japanese tea ceremony. You become aware that each precise movement has dignity. We have long forgotten that activities can be simple and precise. Every act of our lives can contain simplicity and precision and can thus have tremendous beauty and dignity.
when we speak, we do not simply want to communicate to the other person, but we want a response as well. We want to be fed by the other person, which is a very egocentric way of communicating. We have to give up this desire to be fed,
This was the experience of the Buddha. After he had studied numerous yogic disciplines under many Hindu masters, he realized that he could not achieve a completely awakened state simply by trying to apply these techniques. So he stopped and decided to work on himself as he already was. ...But most people are too busy attempting to rid themselves of irritation, too busy seeking distractions from themselves to look into the material they already have. It is too embarrassing to look into it. This is the attitude of paranoia: if you look too closely, you will find something fearful. But in order to be a completely inspired person like Gautama Buddha, you have to be very open-minded and intelligent, an inquisitive person. You have to want to explore everything, even though it may be ugly, painful or repulsive. This kind of scientific-mindedness is very important.
that is, awareness of the overall pattern rather than the focusing of attention upon details. We begin to see the pattern of our fantasies rather than being immersed in them. We discover that we need not struggle with our projections
never seeks a trance state, bliss, or absorption. He is simply awake to life situations as they are.
you cannot become a bodhisattva unless you give up wanting to become anything. It is not a matter of playing games with yourself. You simply have to surrender. You have to really open and give up.
we are no longer able to perceive things as they actually are. We have created a kind of padding, a filter or veil between ourselves and the object. This is what prevents the maintenance of continual awareness both during and after meditation practice. This veil removes us from panoramic awareness and the presence of the meditative state, because again and again we are unable to see things as they are. We feel compelled to name, to translate, to think discursively, and this activity takes us further away from direct and accurate perception.
True awareness must be open rather than cautious or protective. It is open-mindedness, experiencing the open space within a situation.
layer 1: Thoughts

our meditation practice must begin with ego's outermost layer, the discursive thoughts which continually run through our minds, our mental gossip. The Idols use discursive
thought as their first line of defense, as the pawns in their effort to deceive us. The more we generate thoughts, the busier we are mentally and the more convinced we are of our existence. So the Idols are constantly trying to activate these thoughts, trying to create a constant overlapping of thoughts so that nothing can be seen beyond them.

Layer 2: Emotions

the Idols stir up emotions to distract us
In the practice of meditation we neither encourage emotions nor repress them. By seeing them clearly, by allowing them to be as they are, we no longer permit them to serve as
a means of entertaining and distracting us. Thus they become the inexhaustible energy which fulfills egoless action.

Layer 3: Labels

a still more powerful weapon, concepts. Labeling phenomena creates a feeling of a solid definite world of "things." Such a solid world reassures us that we are a solid, continuous thing as well. The world exists, therefore I, the perceiver of the world, exist. Meditation involves seeing the transparency of concepts, so that labeling no longer serves as a way of solidifying our world and our image of self. Labeling becomes simply the act of discrimination.
a product of the intellect which says, "Let's give it a name, let's call it something, let's call it '1 am'," which is very clever. "I" is the product of intellect, the label which unifies into one whole the disorganized and scattered development of ego.

If you remove it - then what? Enlightenment / Awakening is not something created...rather it's the taking off of veils / mask / armour / ego and being naked / vulnerable ( to the raw, unfiltered Truth) - being completely Present in the moment (the Now = the present - not our mental projection of the future or past, nor our mental perception of the present - but the actual present "as it is")

So it is not a matter of building up the awakened state of mind, but rather of burning out the confusions which obstruct it. In the process of burning out these confusions, we discover enlightenment. If the process were otherwise, the awakened state of mind would be a product, dependent upon cause and effect and therefore liable to dissolution. Anything which is created must, sooner or later, die. If enlightenment were created in such a way, there would always be the possibility of ego reasserting itself, causing a return to the confused state. Enlightenment is permanent be- cause we have not produced it; we have merely discovered it. In the Buddhist tradition the analogy of the sun appearing from behind the clouds is often used to explain the discovery of enlightenment.
If you really appreciate an object of beauty, then you completely identify with it and forget yourself. It is like seeing a very interesting, fascinating movie and forgetting that you are the audience. At that moment there is no world; your whole being is that scene of that movie
beings are overwhelmed by the Divine Light and are unaware of their own existence' as opposed to dimly aware of their own existence as distinct from God's.
The teaching just happened. He did not have the desire to teach or not to teach. He spent seven weeks sitting under the shade of a tree and walking along the bank of a river. Then someone just happened along and he began to speak. One has no choice; you are there, an open person. Then the situation presents itself and teaching happens.
We are so busy preserving our existence in the face of this threat that we cannot see the thing clearly at all. To open we have to cut through our desire to preserve our own existence. Then we can see and deal with the situation clearly, as it is.
It means being free to do whatever is called for in a given situation. Because you do not want anything from the situation, you are free to act in the way genuinely appropriate to it. And, similarly, if other people want something from you, that may be their problem. You do not have to try to ingratiate yourself with anyone. Openness means "being what you are." If you are comfortable being yourself, then an environment of openness and communication arises automatically and naturally.
Situations develop automatically. We do not need to fit ourselves into special roles and environments. I think many of us have been trying to do that for a long time, limiting ourselves, pigeonholing ourselves into narrowly defined sets of circumstances. We spend so much energy focusing our attention in just one place that to our surprise we discover that there are whole areas we have missed.
the awakened state is present
If you are completely aware of your present state of being and the situation around you, you cannot miss a thing.
When you see the nowness of the very moment, there is no room for anything but openness and peace.
"as it is."
six transcendental activities which take place spontaneously. They are: transcendental generosity, discipline, patience, energy, meditation and knowledge
able to cross the river so to speak, without falling into its turbulence.
does not act in a premeditated way; he just communicates. He starts from the generosity of openness and falls into the pattern of the situation. It is an often-used metaphor that the ... conduct is like the walk of an elephant. Elephants do not hurry; they just walk slowly and surely through the jungle, one step after another. They just sail right along. They never fall nor do they make mistakes. Each step they take is solid and definite.
never provokes a reaction. The bodhisattva can accommodate himself to any situation because he never desires or is fascinated by anything.
It does not mean he becomes vague or wooly-minded. Rather, he actually sees verbalized and conceptualized values as they are, and then he sees beyond concept and evaluation. He sees the sameness of these little distinctions that we make. He sees situations from a panoramic point of view and therefore takes a great deal of interest in life as it is. So the bodhisattva does not strive at all; he just lives.
Spontaneously. Therefore it is accurate, as in the case of causing vegetables to grow; it is very scientific, right on the point. So your actions become exceedingly accurate because they are spontaneous.
he saw the precision of the situation without watching himself or trying to be heroic.
Finally we come down to earth, we see things as they are. This does not mean having an inspired mystical vision with archangels, cherubs and sweet music playing. But things are seen as they are, in their own qualities. So shunyata in this case is the complete absence of concepts or filters of any kind,
the perfect sage has conquered the false habits of mind. He does not see the mind or thought derived from the mind."
Complete openness is complete victory because we do not fear, we do not try to defend ourselves at all.
Enlightenment is being awake in the nowness. For instance, animals live in the present and, for that matter, an infant child lives in the present; but that is quite different from being awake or enlightened...In the case of an enlightened being, he is not dwelling upon the idea — "I am an enlightened being" — because he has completely transcended the idea of "I am." He is just fully being. The subject-object division has been completely transcended.
Whenever someone requires his help, he just gives it; there is no self-gratification or self-congratulation involved.

What Enlightenment is NOT - False Awakenings / Temporary Enlightenment - beware - the ego is a tricky survivalist!

He is still preoccupied with securing and enhancing himself, still caught up in fixed ideas and concepts about the world and himself, ...Since his state of consciousness is based on concentration, on dwelling upon other, he must continually check and maintain his achievement.... I finally made it. I have really got it now. But wait a minute . . . Have I really made it? Ah, there it is. Yes, I've made it. / have made it." The monkey thinks that he has achieved nirvana, but actually he has achieved only a temporary state of Egohood.
Is an enlightened person omniscient? I am afraid this is a mistaken conclusion drawn from the Yogacharin one mind theory, a theory which has also appeared in other religious and philosophical traditions. The idea is that an enlightened person has become the one mind and so knows everything that ever was, is or could be. You always get this kind of wild speculation when people involve themselves with "mystery," the unknowable
people might experience a sudden flash of enlightenment, but if they do not work their way through, their habitual thought patterns will resume and their minds will become overcrowded again

The Unseen

Sunday, 9 July 2017

Poem of Fahtima (ra)

Saturday, 8 July 2017

dua importance - even in bibe

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (very good) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Cutting through materialistic spirituality - extracts

Extracts from refuting isis: Shariah - its not just in-depth knowledge - needs whollistic, well-rounded understanding

Enforcing or encouraging others to practise the sunnah?

Am i proud?

Reply to a post quoting proofs for isis

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