#223 WHEN OUR EGO NEEDS HELP April 23 18

                                                           When our ego needs help

    Our ego or self has 2 faces. The constructive/positive and the destructive/negative one.

The good self is critical to grow, to survive, to have pleasure, and to function and interact properly.

No brainer here.

The bad self: Ego is our main source of “pain”, affliction we all have in common. Because of our restlessness quest to get this and that, to be better, smarter, stronger, richer, we are stuck by nagging feeling of frustration, weariness and self-doubt.

Too many desires, hatred, irrational expectations and illusions are all coming from our ego-driven mind. (more…)

#222 EGO: its role in our conflicts with difficult people

                                     Ego: its role in our conflicts with difficult people

Ego-self that is I, me, myself, and mine is absolutely critical for survival, identification, thinking, feelings, behavior at all levels and so on.

However also, ego-self is at the heart of many of our relationships

Because we perceived our ego/self as a single and isolated entity in or society, it may become very shaky and too often take a defensive or an offensive behavior. “ I am myself, then I am not you”.

These behaviors can make us difficult with others and the main source of acute rather than chronic conflicts.

(more…)

#221 EMOTIONAL SUFFERING April 7th 18

                                                               Emotional suffering

 Most of us start to practice Zen mindfulness-based meditation because of problems such as dissatisfaction, unhappiness, physical/emotional pain and disillusion or for any other specific reasons happening in life. These reasons are called “suffering”.

“Maybe Zen meditation is going to fix my problems and make me happy”.

Internet and books are full of this statement and I am hearing these words very often.

Unfortunately, it never works because we are mistaken about the true cause of our unhappiness and dissatisfaction. External causes inducing “suffering” do occur but they are minority and are transient.

(more…)

#220 The PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS by KRIS

                                                     The pursuit of happiness by Kris

Everything we do in life is driven by only one thing and that is to seek happiness and avoid suffering. But what is happiness? Happiness is not one thing but a continuum and evolves as the person evolves. For simplicity, we can consider this evolution to be made up of four stages of the emotional mind state and it moves from the gross to the more subtle. These four stages can be classified as Pleasure, Happiness Joy and Bliss or Serenity.

At the Pleasure level, the mind operates at the lowest level of the five senses of the human body. Even animals operate at this level of the five senses. However, pleasure is transient and needs constant inputs from external sources. For example, if one likes alcohol then regular inputs of alcohol are required. This is how our reward brain circuits work. (more…)