The relationship between sensation and the desire to increase or decrease sensation is proportional to suffering. When consciousness is identified with desire, it suffers.

This “identification” is really a false identification based on a perspective that is distorted by desire.

To understand why identification leads to suffering, we must understand more about the nature of essence, consciousness, and ego.

Consciousness is the faculty of the Essence.  Essence that becomes identified, fractures and becomes ego.

Simply, in order to awaken consciousness, we must awaken the essence.  Most of us only have about three percent of our essence awakened.  This is why we go about the world and the internet completely fascinated and asleep going from sensation to sensation.

The problem is, like our attention, our consciousness or essence is fractured and separated.  The essence that is awake is unified and integrated, while essence that sleeps is disintegrated, separated.  

Ego is Latin meaning “I”.  This piece of essence trapped like a genie in a bottle is disintegrated from the whole, operating in a false reality as if it were self-sufficient.  Each one of us has multitudes of these egos, vying for control of our human machine at any given moment.  If a function of consciousness is in competition with the rest of the functions of consciousness, it will operate well out of balance.  Ego is essence out of balance.  It is essence asleep.

Ego falsely identifies, “I am angry”; “I want more”; “I require satisfaction”; “I am this!”

Awakened essence correctly identifies, “I am not the body”; “I am not the mind”, “I am not the personality”; “I am not the emotion”; “I am not the thought”; “I am the cause”. “I am.”

In order to awaken consciousness, we must reintegrate all the fractured consciousness by reminding each piece of essence of its true purpose. Each ego’s impulse is a distortion of its true purpose.

A lustful ego’s true purpose may be of love or connection.  A greedy ego’s true purpose is to ensure we and our loved ones have enough.  A wrathful ego’s true purpose is to remind us of the ever present force of Universal Justice and to trust and respect it, etc.  When we are acting from the “I”, we are identified by its distorted perspective, well-meaning or not.

We might even already accept it as a function of our personality, given the cynical idiom, people don’t change.  However, if we truly want to end suffering, we must change.  The best way to do that is to confront our false identifications and awaken consciousness to the suffering they cause.
This is the beginning of understanding cause and effect, and the doorway to intuition which is arrived at by first having hope and inspiration.

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