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Daily Meditator: April 2007
Ego-Transcendence
Dear Meditator,
The theme for this month’s Daily Meditator is Ego-Transcendence. Swami Kriyananda recently wrote, “The first duty of every soul is to release the hold that ego-consciousness has upon it. All other spiritual practices are subservient to this one supreme obligation. I address ego-transcendence, therefore, as the first, and indeed the only, challenge on the spiritual path.”
The ego’s tendency is to refer everything back to itself in order to inflate its own importance. Ego-consciousness, like a beggar, always grasps at life. The problem of living in ego-consciousness is that one’s experience of life is limited and illusory, for we are children of God and our true home is Infinity.
On the last day of our recent trip to India, my wife Anandi and I were sitting with Jyotish and Devi and Swami Kriyananda, while he was finishing his breakfast. As Swami Kriyananda was recounting an experience that would have been intimidating and stressful for most people, he said simply, “But I don’t exist, so there was not a problem.”
Paramhansa Yogananda said that most people’s problem is that they take things too personally.
Our four selections below are excerpted from Swami Kriyananda’s writings. I pray that these articles on transcending the ego inspire you to live in greater freedom and joy.
In this issue:
In Divine Joy,
Bharat Cornell
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