I like the God's and Neale's conversation about the ego in Friendship with God by Neale Donald Walsch. What I found interesting is when God said: "Your ego is who you THINK you are. It has nothing to do with Who You Really Are. It is very okay to have an ego because and ego is necessary in order for you to have the experience you are now having, as what you imagine to be a separate entity in a relative world." "True self-love disappears the ego, it does not enlarge it. Put another way, the larger your understanding of Who You Really Are, the smaller your ego. When you know Who You Really Are fully, your ego is fully gone." In short the ego is a very important, useful and necessary tool to help us experience The Unified Self, The Big Self, The Oneness, Samadhi. Your ego is the part of you that thinks of you as being an individual. What we are trying to do is use the illusion of separateness to better comprehend and appreciate the experience of Oneness.
I always ask myself why can't our common respites be enough to bind us? Technology can provide analog experiences that are awe inspiring or more importantly, information on how to manifest it.
First, being in awe doesn't have to include fear. You don't have to struggle to open your heart. Second, you really should judge your own meditative practice as good or bad, how would you otherwise improve. This no judgment thing is wrong. Third, while I applaud Pollans reintroduction of psychedelics in the mainstream, it's still a quasi scientific weakly esoteric take that is easily digestible and therefore slimmed down. Shamanism it's essence cannot be found in this world, because everything is a replica of the real thing nowadays. Fourth, if you really think that Trump is the cause of tribalism you're part of the problem. We are living in an industrial world that has been cut of by the roots of nature, just as Joseph campbell describes in the holy grail myth. That is the problem. If you are unable to see that you are blind of the underlying causes.
