2020-12-28
There is an interesting similarity between our awareness/attention and our ego. Specifically, consider how amongst all the thoughts and sensations that arise in a moment, the ones we’re drawn to are selected by our attention, i.e. if you weren’t attentive to it, it wouldn’t have any impact on you.
And further still if we think of each thought containing a belief structure[1], repeated attention onto some thoughts- i.e. some belief structures- aggregates into an ego. So our attention is both a gatekeeper and a snapshot of our ego.
And so understanding what arises in the moment, i.e. the thoughts, and the feelings and reactions, they invoke, etc. can help us understand our own deeper psychology, the choices we’ve made, and why we’ve made them; and the choices we continue to make.
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[1] This is the view (Adyashanti) that each thought is a belief structure unto itself, and hence people aren’t innately good or bad; but rather belief structures have a certain flavor, and result in certain trajectories.