I once had an unforgettable experience with the practice of self-observation and exploring the elimination of the ego as I learned from studying Belsebuub’s works on consciousness and personal development.
On one special occasion many years ago at a spiritual retreat held in the high lands of the Australian Alps, I was helped to see what the practice of the elimination of the egos could be like. The setting was beautiful.
During the retreat there were many practices held with night time astral practices & meditation practices and inspiring talks about the inner work but the one practice that stood out to me was an amazing awareness walk through the forest of the Kosciusko national park.
The walk was organized and we had a goal to achieve on the walk which was to learn something about the elimination of our egos during the walk.
The walk seemed to have a quality to it that is hard to describe but I was trying to be aware of the present moment and then take that awareness within myself to learn to see what subconscious elements or egos would arise within me.
As we walked along a forest track, I tried to do my best and as we continued on I started to feel an awareness that seemed to have a quality to it that was deeper than the awareness that I would normally be able to get from my own practices.
I don’t know if it was the spiritual environment or that I was helped by the divine but somehow something interesting occurred as I walked along.
The awareness seemed to penetrate a point that seemed to make time stand still, I knew I was walking and looking around but things seemed more focused and alive and internally I was very quiet.
The egos weren’t their normal selves by being loud and causing my mind not to focus, but instead the silence of the depth of that type of awareness was quite amazing. As this depth of awareness appeared to happen, I noticed that I was looking ahead and caught myself looking at the jacket of the person in front of me.
I knew that I was consciously looking at the person’s jacket; this perception felt different to my normal awareness and suddenly from looking at the jacket a thought rose in my consciousness but I just didn’t think the thought, I could see it visually.
I don’t know how this happened but I saw the thought rise in the consciousness and it looked like a mini fire cracker at a new year’s eve fireworks spectacle, so to speak – just like a firework that rises in the sky with its luminous tail, this ego rose inside of my consciousness.
As it rose I sensed what it wanted, what its energy felt like and truly understood that ego right there and then. I didn’t have to analyze it, my consciousness could understand it as it was. This ego felt bad and it was a negative type of thought but I wondered “How did I see a thought?”
I saw the thought rise, understood it and asked my divine mother for its removal and then I saw that ‘firework’ disappear from the scene. Wow! That ego was gone.
Then as I took a couple of more steps I seemed to lose that depth or perception that the awareness gave to me at the time and came back to the awareness that I was more used to obtaining with the efforts that I normally made.
But that moment of awareness was like I had stepped into a time vacuum because I noticed so much going on within me, assessed the ego, judged it and then asked for its removal all in the time it took to walk maybe 5 steps, if that really!
Just a small moment in time but so much happened in that moment that even now I don’t really know how it all occurred, except to say that this small glimpse, that small moment, in which I somehow peered into seeing egos consciously was something else, it was amazing.
Thanks Steve for recounting your wonderful experience. I find myself struggling with self observation and reading your experience brought back to memory victories and moments of strength I had in the past. Although those victories are in the past I still draw inspiration from them to persist today.
Hi Aleksandr,
No problems at all, I hope that you gain all the strenght that you need for your inner work as I’m sure everyone’s had moments were the awareness lead to a deeper perception of reality which is so inspiring!
Great insight you got on that walk Steven and also how it came about. It really shows how through perception we can get insights compared to analysing a situation with the mind, weighing options and then coming to a conclusion.
Hi Roy,
In that moment the consciousness could understand things about the ego that it was observing instantly, there was no thinking about it, it just understood what it saw, very different perception, the perception was alive in a way.
Thank you for describing that magical moment Steve.
It is an amazing feeling when you can see an ego arising, feeling detached from it, seeing what it wants and how it is evil, how it is not me. There is no confusion, no haziness, no doubt, just the perception. I don’t mean I’ve experienced it in such a lucid way as you did – directly seeing a thought like that, with the ability to understand it completely and get rid of it in the moment, would be so amazing. Perhaps it was a glimpse of what might be possible further along in the inner work?
As Ella said, the clearest that I’ve been able to watch and understand the egos in the moment has been when I’ve sat down and deliberately focused entirely on watching them, with the intent of understanding them while being detached from them. It is more difficult to carry this approach with me into daily life, where the train of the mind driving you to get things done is very fascinating and confusing, plus all the events going on making you lose the inner focus. I really yearn for it but am not sure where to find the passion to bring this single minded focus into my daily life, because it seems something like that is needed or there does not seem to be so much the motivation, interest, and spiritual drive and focus to do it to really get it going.
So yes I also tend to feel disheartened when I can’t or forget to see within in daily life, but I suppose the thing is to try anyway, even though it feels hazy to begin with, but otherwise you can’t get to a clearer perception, other than training it. There seems to be merit in trying our hardest with the spiritual techniques, even when it seems like it isn’t going anywhere and you don’t believe you are doing it right, of course not mechanically but sincerely trying. Much better than not trying at all and wallowing in it not working.
Hi Laura,
I remember Belsebuub saying that starting off with self observation is like trying to look into “Pea Soup” and that it gradually gets better from there, so it sounds like that it takes a natural progression from starting out a bit rusty so to speak and getting better from there if we can keep the momentum going. I found that ideas about the awareness and the approach I took after the experience were the problem that clouded my practices which stumped me for quite a while. I found that those ideas about what awareness was where making it harder to be aware in my daily activities than it really was.
It seems as a great experience you had Steve. One that truly helped you on the way to becoming more conscious in daily life. I feel that without this kind of help there will be very little that we can do to acquire the depth of comprehension about this work and how to live it in our daily lives.
Hi Tina,
Nice to talk with you! I think so too that the experiences given to us help us to understand more and for me shows me how little I know compared to that depth of understand that can be achieved with consciousness.
What a great insight you received Steve! Reading your experience pushed me to try to approach the inner death with a new curiosity and discipline. Walks in nature really are an amazing way to connect to the essence. It seems like when we are immersed in the great, pulsating atmosphere of a natural environment, thoughts can be really obviously ‘out of place’. Not so in the city. I actually remember clear as day a similar ‘time standing still’ moment when I was walking alone through the countryside once. I felt like I lost sense of my life, as in I forgot it’s context, I was just alive, on this road. It was really beautiful. But I can’t say I’ve experienced seeing a thought in the way you describe. It’s when I do a sitting practice aimed at watching the thoughts arise that I’m able to see how they start from this subtle agitation and grow. It’s something I’ve got a long way to learn how it works. Thanks for the inspiration to keep trying!
Hi Ella,
That feeling of time standing still is pretty magic as the perception is quite enhanced somehow and like you say “I was just alive”! It’s funny to say it but it’s hard to define it in any other way as you just feel alive is true. I read somewhere about the conscious observer and I wonder if that is relating to these states as well because it also feels like your truly observing things, I mean you just see things with a different perception separate from the ego’s but seeing them. I wonder if these states are like your in the consciousness and seeing the mind and the egos with in the mind? I don’t know I’m just wondering if that’s what’s happening. Thanks for relating all you experiences too Ella, as all of us sharing here helps to ignite that inspiration that we need sometimes.
Thanks Steve for sharing this inspiring experience.
It sounds like you had an amazing connection on your walk, that even many years later it still is with you 🙂 I can imagine how it has helped you to yearn for those moments of conscious awareness.
You mentioned that during the walk you knew that the awareness was beyond your normal capacity! I can relate to how you felt, that these are true moments of divine mercy, Something to cherish deeply.
Hi Chris,
Yeah their help is truly amazing sometimes as they can show us more than we can think is possible.
Thanks for sharing that profound experience of full consciousness in that moment Steve, it was inspiring to read and motivating to work towards seeing life in its true reality like you did.
What an incredible experience in eliminating the egos. It sounds truly incredible to have seen the ego arise, too.
It’s interesting how you clearly went through observing and judging the ego and asking for its elimination.
Ordinarily when I work with the technique to eliminate the egos, while my aim is to be that thorough, I’m not sure I am. Sometimes I feel I lack a sincere judgment/remorse in the moment.
On that walk, it sounds like with your intense lucidity, you were able to achieve an immense level of thoroughness and depth with the technique. Very inspiring!
Hi Mike,
I feel that this experience was a help for me because I haven’t been able to get back to that depth or level of perception myself.
I think don’t worrry about comparing efforts of awareness and self observation as it can be a bit of a trap, obvisouly try to improve the awarness and self observation but be carefull of the mind and those judgements that will come with the comparing of efforts because for me I started to compare my efforts too and it didn’t help because I always had this thought which was ever so subtle in the back of the mind which limited the awareness. It was very decieving actually.
Thanks Steve sounds like a great experience and although maybe short these experience seem to stay with us like stuck to our consciousness, I like your explanation of the ego being like a fire cracker, I know what you mean
Hey Richie,
What was your experience like with the conscious observation?
Thanks for sharing Steve! Sounds unforgetable for sure! And thank goodness for these kind of glimpses into the nature of consciousness, its so motivational to crack into the reality of such higher states and realise that there is so much out there to explore. Seems like sometimes we can easily get stuck with a certain way of doing things, but if we keep exploring and making efforts we can chip away at perfecting the method 🙂
Hi Olga, I suppose if the divine didn’t help us to see the benefits of being conscious, then it we wouldn’t know the difference between being in the mind and being out of it in the consciousness, so the help given to us is merciful in a lot of ways. Yeah I agree about getting stuck in ways of doing things because the mind and the egos with in it are so limiting compared to the consciousness it’s unbelievalbe and once you get an experience the mind can get that experience and start making “belief barriers” with terms and conditions attached to it rigid thought processess that can affect things once that idea is lodged in the mind.
That sounds really nice Steve. I especially like your way of describing it as ‘as if time stood still’. That moment of a heightened way of being does sound marvellous actually, I can imagine stepping out of what feels like a longlasting submersion for a moment, looking around, only then to return back to it.
Your experience with self observation actually feels quite familiar, because of something I wrote recently 🙂
It’s nice as well you had that opportunity to go for such a special walk with others who had the same interest. Gathering like that, I feel, is very precious.
Hi Karim,
What’s the article called which you wrote about your experience?
Practicing with other people is very special indeed and the strength in those practices is usually much stronger too!
Wonderful, thank you for sharing Steve! I have always wished to reach the state of “magic” with self-observation, where I would see these ego-monsters in their true nature in the very moment they arise. The closest I got to it is when I apply death to thoughts in a lie-down practice, catching them at the moment when they just start to be formed. This is then reflected in my dreams, where I often become lucid after applying this elimination for a while before falling asleep. During the day, however, this is very difficult and I usually miss most of them, which often leaves me quite disheartened.
Looking forward to your next articles on the topic! 🙂
Hi Lucia,
It sounded like the practice you mentioned was pretty effective by waking up in your dreams from it!
I feel the same about the difficulties with the daily awareness and self observation because at work it’s too easy to loose the internal focus as I seem to get caught up with the work activities too much,
I think the article will be going up soon so talk to you then about it!
Though motivating and instructive, it’s too bad those sorts of time-standing-still experiences don’t automatically translate into efforts and results in daily life isn’t it!
Yeah Jordan, too easy to even be awed by such experiences but just go back to struggling with the same problems, obstacles and traps as we had before in daily life. It seems like while such help is given that makes us feel able to do spiritual things, we need to consciously and actively cause it to inspire us to do things differently afterwards. Thanks for that important point!
Hi Jordan,
Interesting point because although the experience was motivating and I did try to be aware during daily activities, I found that the awareness after the experience was based on an “idea” of the awareness and wasn’t based on simply experiencing what ever happened in the moment as it was happening, so I found that the approach I took to the practice after the experience was wrong.