The spiritual disciplines of devotion, knowledge, selfless service, and/or meditation are best taught by those who already mastered them. The best students are those who have already mastered their self, by discarding their ego and abandoning their individuality.
While you are feeling, thinking or acting with the selfish purposes of I, me or my you cannot realize divine union. These concepts bind you to the mundane world with your confusing personal emotions, the preconceptions of your mind and the restrictions of your senses. You must reach beyond the ego self to the underlying self: the soul.
Love for the divine must be selfless; it is never complete while it is simply your sentiment. Concentration on divine Truth is not total while it is just one thought in your mind. The divine Reality cannot be experienced by your senses; the senses find symbols, not essence. Divine Love, Truth and Reality flow as One into the soul, yet they are independent of your self. The soul is always here and now.
Like each of the spiritual disciplines, discarding your ego and abandoning individuality must usually be accomplished in stages. In only a few instances have any mystics achieved these goals easily or quickly. Others may provide guidance, but every person must do it alone. The quest may seem lonely when considered yours; there is no loneliness in the divine. It is sharing in universal consciousness.
Some people seem to be naturally selfless. It is easy for them to give up their ego because they are so concerned with the well-being of others. These rare and wonderful persons, however, can seldom escape their own feeling of separateness as an individual.
Others want control and express their ego strongly, yet they often lose their individuality while performing tasks for the betterment of their team. Directing, or at least guiding, activities as a member of the team seems the best way to accomplish these objectives.
Unfortunately, there are those who find it almost impossible, and undesirable, to give up either their ego or their individuality. Any goal only seems important to them in terms of its effects on I, me or my. These selfish people just look to the benefits for themselves.
As teachers, mystics will gladly take on the selfless students, find those driven by ego to be a challenge, yet ignore the selfish as not worthy of instruction. The first are easily guided, the second require disciplined direction, but the third are hopeless unless they change.
A Jewish mystic asked a prospective student “When someone insults you, do you still feel injured? When you receive praise, does your heart expand with pleasure?” When he answered “yes” he was told to come back in a few more years. In Hinduism’s ancient text, the Bhagavad-gita (Song of God), the Lord Krishna tells the despondent warrior Arjuna that he must do his duty. “The world is imprisoned in its own activity, except when actions are performed as worship of God. Therefore, perform every action sacramentally and be free of all attachments to results.” You must forget yourself, your entire self, to succeed. “You” is then integrated into the One.
Discarding your ego and abandoning individuality do not simply mean being unselfish. Properly seeking divine oneness will require losing all awareness of self. Consciousness in divine unity, after selflessly following the spiritual disciplines, results in losing any sense of separateness of other. These unforgettable experiences are initially momentary, they may be repeated and extended, and they should