You Can’t Suppress the Separate Self

What can we do when the separate self prevents us from going back to our true nature? A woman says she feels an unwillingness to return to her essential self during meditation and is concerned that this will prevent her from living a full life. What can she do?

Rupert says: ‘Don’t listen to the tension or the unwillingness to go back to your essential being. That is a residue of the ego or the separate self in you and it knows that if you do, it will die. So it will try to do anything to persuade you not to go there.

‘But going back to your being will not prevent you from leading a full human life. On the contrary, it will expand your life. You won’t lose anything apart from the agitation and sorrow that attends the feeling of separation. But you can’t just suppress the ego – you have to understand its games and the way it works, and then override what it tells you to do with your understanding.’