The Tantric Sage by Ken Wilber

"But "egoless" does not mean "less than personal"; it means "more than personal." Not personal minus, but personal plus—all the normal qualities, plus some transpersonal ones. Think of the great yogis, saints, and sages—from Moses to Christ to Padmasambhava. They were not feeble-mannered milquetoasts, but fierce movers and shakers—from bullwhips in the Temple to subduing entire countries. They rattled the world on its own terms, not in some pie-in-the-sky piety; many of them instigated massive social revolutions that have continued for thousands of years. And they did so, not because they avoided the physical, emotional, and mental dimensions of humanness, and the ego that is their vehicle, but because they engaged them with a drive and intensity that shook the world to its very foundations.

The great yogis, saints, and sages accomplished so much precisely because they were not timid little toadies but great big egos, plugged into the dynamic Ground and Goal of the Kosmos itself, plugged into their own higher Self, alive to the pure Atman (the pure I-I), that is one with Brahman; they opened their mouths and the world trembled, fell to its knees, and confronted its radiant God... There is certainly a type of truth to the notion of transcending ego: it doesn't mean destroy the ego, it means plug it into something bigger... Put bluntly, the ego is not an obstruction to Spirit, but a radiant manifestation of Spirit.

The integral sage, the nondual sage, is here to show us otherwise. Known generally as "Tantric," these sages insist on transcending life by living it. They insist on finding release by engagement, finding nirvana in the midst of samsara, finding total liberation by complete immersion." ~ Ken Wilber from One Taste: November 17

The chapter in Ken Wilber's One Taste from which those (incredible) thoughts are lifted wins the award for THE most underlined chapter in all of my books. (That's a tiny fraction of its grand mojo and the chapter alone is worth the price of the book.)

You ever notice how so many of us "spiritual" people want to get rid of our desires? We admire the gurus who seem to be beyond their desires for sex, fast cars and the material world in all its glory. Ken likes to say we want our gurus to be dead from the next down—smiling, happy heads with none of those desires that tempt us mere mortals.

But WHY?!?

Who says the ego is bad?

I prefer the idea that "the ego is not an obstruction to Spirit, but a radiant manifestation of Spirit."

My vote?

Let's plug into our Highest Selves and become the radiant manifestation of Spirit that is our destiny.

"In the heart of Emptiness there is a mysterious impulse, mysterious because there is actually nothing in the heart of Emptiness (for there is nothing in Emptiness, period). Yet, there it is, this mysterious impulse, the impulse to ... create. To sing, to shine, to radiate; to send forth, reach out, and celebrate; to sing and shout and walk about; to effervesce and bubble over, this mysterious exuberance in the heart of Emptiness." ~ Ken Wilber from One Taste: July 31

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