Joy or Fear: Distinction between Ego and Unique Self #7

by posterize

by Dr. Marc Gafni in Your Unique Self

The Unique Self is in joy. Joy is the natural by-product of living your Unique Self story. The ego is rarely happy and often plagued by an underlying feeling of fear, deadness, or depression. The happiness that the ego does experience is of a heavier and less richly textured quality than the joy of the Unique Self. The joy of the Unique Self is lighter and freer, often verging on the ecstatic.

For further discussion:

“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.” ~ Erich Fromm

Joy has become front and center in our everyday psychology. And we often feel that there is something wrong with us when we don’t feel happy all the time. The pursuit of happiness is even one of our constitutional rights.

But what do we mean by that? And why is joy called a by-product here if it is that important?

Our ego – by definition – lives in the realm of separation. Feeling separated from each other, the earth, the Ground of Being, Source, ourselves… means that we feel insecure all the time. The world becomes a place of constant danger, scarcity, and struggle for more. Fear arises…

It might even seem to us that this exact struggle for more is the very source of our progress–as if we would stop making progress by connecting to our True Self of Being. See what Ken Wilber has written about the relation between happiness and progress.

The ego’s grasping that is based on fear is the exact opposite of joy.

Authentic joy comes from being connected to the all and being connected to the now. And as Marc Gafni often points out in contradistinction to for example Eckhardt Tolle’s description of the now “the fullness of the now includes in it the entirety of the past and future in the present moment”.

LOOKING for joy actually postpones joy into some place in the future – not here, not now. And by that very pursuit of joy we are actually pushing it away. The ego’s happiness therefore is often a false happiness that tries to overpower the fear and pain that it really feels underneath which gives this “happiness” a heavier quality which Marc mentions above. Or it might be euphoric, building castles in the sky, nurturing illusions of a better future that are not grounded in reality.

Realizing our connection, right here, right now, living fully in the moment, paradoxically puts us in the middle of our story – our Unique Self story. Unique Self is not looking for something that is lost; it is living from its fullness – letting it overflow to whoever is there, expressing itself in an ocean of creativity, love, and Eros. And that is the source of true joy – even when not avoiding the unavoidable pain of authentic living. Being connected to our true essence and purpose, giving our gifts that only we can give to this world, becoming outrageous lovers in this world of outrageous pain, and writing outrageous love letters to the universe in everything we do is the way to a deep inner joy that is rooted in love and that naturally flows into the world moment by moment.

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Notice today:

Where can you find those different qualities of joy in your life? How can you discern those qualities? How can those discernments help you recognize whether you are in your Ego story or in your Unique Self story?

Today is the last chance to sign up for the 10-week telecourse on Unique Self to deepen your understanding, start living more fully from your awakened Unique Self, and connect to a unique evolutionary community of like-minded people from all over the world.

“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.” ~ Richard Bach