Are You Addicted to Your Ego?
Wholeness is safe; duality isnt. Wholeness brings a seamless, unified world, but you will not know what that world feels like until you give your allegiance to a new operating system. Shifting from the old system to the new one is a process, one that each of us must commit ourselves to every day.
Our shared addiction to duality is total; it leaves nothing out. The good news is that no aspect of life is immune to transformation. Every change you make, however small, will be communicated throughout existencequite literally the whole universe will be eavesdropping on you and lending you its support. From its point of view, the formation of a galaxy is no more momentous than the evolution of a single person.
A skeptic will protest that this new operating system is only a matter of perception, and that just seeing yourself as the creator of your reality doesnt mean you are. But it does.
Reality shifts as you do, and when you change your perception of being separate, the one reality responds by shifting with you. The reason everyone doesnt notice this is that the ego-based world with all its demands, pressures, drama, and excesses is highly addictive, and like any addiction it needs a daily fix as well as denial that there is any way out. By giving your allegiance to the one reality instead, you wont end the addiction immediately, but you will begin to starve it. Your ego and personality, which give you limited awareness of who you are, will be put on notice that clinging and grasping must come to an end. Your conditioning from the past that told you how to win out over the outside world will no longer help you survive. The support you counted on from external sources such as family, friends status, possessions, and money will no longer make you feel secure.
Rest assured that perception is flexible enough to let go of the addiction to duality. Any event can be seen as coming from the creative center in oneself. At this very moment I can look at any part of my life a! nd say I made that. Then it is only one step away to ask Why did I make that? and What do I want to make instead?
Adapted from The Book of Secrets, by Deepak Chopra (Random House, 2004).
