Ask: How can one differentiate between true love and peace and ego?

       “How can one differentiate between an egoic experience of what seems to be Truth or Love or Peace and an authentic awareness of Truth? All I can sense is that authentic Love feels so ‘other’, and cannot be described…but if something is ‘experienced’ at all, is this, by definition an egoic interpretation?” – MG

 

You may have heard that all experiences are illusions. This is ultimately true. The absolute—the absolute truth—is not an experience. There are no words for what it is. All experiences occur in and are registered by consciousness, which is ultimately an illusion, too.

But consciousness is all we are dealing with here. And in terms of consciousness, there is pure consciousness, or the truth of consciousness, and there is ego, or illusion appearing in consciousness. So not all experiences are ego. Some are pure consciousness, or the truth of consciousness.

What it seems you are trying to sort out here is ego’s versions of love and peace from an authentic experience of pure consciousness (the truth of consciousness), which inspires feelings of wholeness, peace, happy lightheartedness, and/or gentle love.

True love and peace are unconditional, meaning no condition, or situation, is needed for them to be here. They are sourceless. If you feel love and peace without a seeming cause, that is pure consciousness. These experiences feel timeless, endless, and everpresent, which is why they can feel different or “other” from ego’s versions of love and peace, which are dependent on others as sources or objects or on circumstances. Ego’s versions of love and peace feel limited and “heavy” relative to true love and peace as they are always hedged in by fear.

Both true love and peace and ego’s love and peace can seem to pass. Ego’s love and peace are subject to change because they are dependent on circumstances. But true love and peace do not change. However, ego may resume in your conscious awareness and true love and peace may seem to be gone. But they are still here, you have just become unconscious to them again. If they rise to conscious awareness again, you recognize that you experienced them before, and that they are always here, even when you do not experience them.

Sometimes when truth emerges in conscious awareness it causes a dramatic physiological response, like one’s mind filling with light and/or overwhelming love and joy and oneness, etc. Ego loves the drama of these seemingly extra-ordinary experiences, but in fact they are distortions that block the gentle, everpresent, and ordinary nature of truth. But no matter, unless these experiences are caused by some other physical factor, like drugs, stroke, brain tumor, etc., they signal truth has come to conscious awareness and you can dismiss how ego uses the body’s responses to inflate them into something exotic.

So, how can one tell the difference between ego’s love and peace and true love and peace? You must experience both to know the difference.

>>>> 

If you have a question the answer to which you feel may be helpful to others, send it to Liz@acimmentor.com and indicate that you want it answered in this newsletter/blog.

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