Peak Experiences and Ego Transcendence

Recall your PEAK experiences, the most beautiful experiences of your life. If you think about it, you will realize they ALL involved ego-transcendence. The transcendence of ego is exactly what allows us to experience wondrous qualities of Divine nature: expansiveness, freedom, radiance, joy, ecstasy, sublimity, etc.

But here's what confuses things: AFTERWARDS, we tend to relate to those experiences selfishly: "I had such a wonderful time. I want that again, more and more," etc. Ego instantly becomes so attached to peak experiences, we come to associate ego, not egolessness, with peak experiences. But that is a MISassociation. Indeed, if grasping mentality had been there WHEN those experiences occurred, they could not have occurred. Remember, AT THE TIME when you had any truly glorious experience, ego was out of the way. AT THAT TIME, your focus definitely WASN'T on your little self -- and that's EXACTLY what made such a glorious event possible.

Here's another easy way to verify the point: What always happens AFTER anyone has a peak experience? We want more of it. We try and try to make it happen again. And, it doesn't work. We suffer that particular disappointment nearly every time. Why? Because ego got involved.

This is one of the most important lessons we learn in the school of hard knocks: Selfishness ALWAYS prevents -- or ruins -- beautiful experiences. You can observe that about any kind of peak experience: love experiences, sexual experiences, meditation experiences, spiritual experiences -- all of them. IN EVERY CASE, egoic orientation PREVENTS or RUINS beauty. True beauty ALWAYS disappears the instant ego gets involved.

The grasping response to beauty may be natural enough, all right, but it's not SUPER-natural enough. The natural response shuts the door to the super-natural. That's why it doesn't work to take such huge beauty, and make it about little you. Wondrous beauty can't possibly be seen through the ego's eyes. That's why LASTING bliss belongs only to those who permanently -- rather than momentarily or occasionally -- live beyond ego. Make THAT your goal.

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