Throughout this book, I will be discussing the ego because it is so intricately woven onto the fabric of our being. If we believe in limitations, separations, judgment and fear of any kind, we have bought into the illusion of reality that has been sold to us by the ego. Likewise, if we respond to any person, place or thing with judgment, sadness, negativity, stress, anxiety, annoyance or anger, know that we have bought into the same illusion. These beliefs and responses have been ingrained and reinforced in us in such a way that they have become habitual. These habits, this habitual belief system (simply referred to as the ego-self or ego) is what we use to react to our daily experiences. This habitual belief system is mostly an unconscious belief system that manifests itself as our beliefs and attitudes. These beliefs and attitudes influence our daily reactions, responses and behaviors toward ourselves, our fellow humans and the world in general. Like robots, any time we react with limitation, separation, judgment or fear, we are simply reacting as we have been programmed to. Eventually, we learn that this is not how we want to act, react, be or live. Slowly, we consciously become aware of our unconscious habitual belief system, and we can then begin to de-program ourselves. This is a time of great celebration, for as we become aware of our programming we also begin to understand the possibility of choice. We learn that we indeed have the choice of seeing things as we’ve been programmed to, or examining what we currently believe to see if it fits with what we truly desire. We can then choose whether we want to continue with that limited belief system or replace it with a more empowering understanding.
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 4-5
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There are places in your life where you have built walls around the truth of who you are. You’ve built these walls with judgment and cemented them with fear. You strained all your life to build and keep these walls together. These walls that you have built to protect you hold all perceptions, judgments and beliefs about yourself, your brothers and sisters, God and the world. You hide behind and defend these walls with your life; for you believe that if someone were to ever penetrate them, they would recoil in disgust once they saw who was really there. Methodically, on a daily basis, you reinforce these walls, creating emotional, psychological and spiritual barriers. You take secret pride in their structure and strength. Yet with every breeze, you curse the pebbles that bounce off these walls. And you even blame the wind for blowing. You keep telling yourself that you are safe, and yet you fear any breeze that dares caress your walls.
You have been taught to believe that in your walls’ changelessness, your strength and safety lies. You are taught to fear change, for it means that your walls would weaken. So you defend these so-called impenetrable walls against anything that challenges their structure. To you, anything and everything that differs from your belief system challenges its structure. You spend your day in defense of pebbles, and curse the wind whenever any of these pebbles are tossed toward your walls. So you end up living your days in defense of these impenetrable walls. The walls that you built to defend you, you end up defending against the outside world, and you judge and curse any attempt to change or weaken them.
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 13-14
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We perceive the attacks on our ego and its illusions as real, so we become defensive. The more time we spend defending our false or ego-self, the more we reaffirm the ego’s reality. The more we reaffirm the ego’s reality, the more willing we are to come to its defense. The more we defend the illusions of the ego-self as real, the more concepts and ideas we will encounter in the world that do not fit into our reality. We perceive different concepts and ideas as assaults to our reality. We defend our ego-self, through the act of judgment. The exercise of judgment separates us from our fellow brothers and sisters causing stress that may be conscious or unconscious. Stress creates confusion, and a build up of confusion ultimately leads to chaos.
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 26
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My friend, I am here to remind you that peace of mind, love and joy are your inheritance. Peace of mind, love and joy are the main attributes of the Godself. We all have a Godself, because we are simply our Godselves and nothing else. Everything else, including our ego-selves is an illusion we have created to help us live in the illusionary world. The ego is a speck of dust that we have made into a mountain. Yet still, what is even the highest mountain compared to the universe, to All That Is? As the illusion that is the ego slowly dissolves in the light, so too will the mountain, in time, return to dust.
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 30
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The ego wants us to believe that we are separate from our brothers and sisters. It wants us to think this way, because when we do, we also believe that if we attack them, the attack has no effect on us. Not only does the ego want us to believe this, but it also wants us to think that when we attack our brothers and sisters, this action somehow weakens them and strengthens us. In reality, any and all attacks weaken us.
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 33
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The ego has us see ourselves as a drop of water on its rowboat. We are in the middle of the ocean and the ego continually tells us that we do not belong in the ocean. We can see and feel the ocean and something within tells us that it is there we belong. But the ego tells us that if we jump into the ocean we will drown. It tells us that as long as we are with the ego we will be safe. So day by day, we move back and forth on the ego’s rowboat. We feel a small sense of safety but also of limitation, separation and loneliness and the ego has us blame the ocean for this. It tells us that it is because of the ocean that we feel limited, separate and alone and we buy into it because we believe that we are literally in the same boat as our ego.
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 34
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The ego wants us to think of it in negative terms, it wants us to judge it. It controls us, and maintains and obtains power through our judgment of it. This gives it more power than if we were to simply ignore or forgive it. Its plan is this – the more we judge it, the more attention we give it. The more attention we give it, the greater part of our lives it becomes. Thus, its relationship with us is strengthened. It wants us to become angry, judge it, and see it as evil, for it understands that if we see it as evil, we will unconsciously perceive a part of our own selves as evil. The ego lives for the day when we will consider the possibility that the capacity for evil lives within us, and that it is a natural part of who we are. If we see the ego as evil and we believe that evil is a natural part of who we are, then we and the ego must be the same. It would serve us well to understand that the ego is not an evil aspect of ourselves; it is simply a misperception that we hold about ourselves, and nothing else.
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 34-35
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Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?
– Luke 6:39
Cited in You Have Chosen to Remember, p. 36
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Everything that the ego’s world offers us as a belief system is, in the end, really just junk. We have placed different values on illusions, and thus, some junk, material things and ideas seem more valuable to us than other junk. Being just illusions, junk’s value is ever changing and never lasting. But everlasting peace and joy cannot be found in the never lasting.
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 44-45
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The ego rules by fear because that’s all it knows. It has invested a lot of time into making you believe its fairy tale is true. It has already instilled in you the belief that you can be a failure. It knows that you fear being a failure and that you fear being homeless, and thus it uses these fears against you in order to control you. But the only reason that you fear being a failure and that you fear being homeless is that you believe that you can be. Fear and failure are used by the ego to chain you to its world. It has also enslaved many others in its name, and has taught them how to judge those who dare not follow its laws. The ego, with its soldiers of judgment, observes your every move. From its ivory tower, it guards your every thought, waiting for you to disagree with its laws, to send its judgment upon you. Those who believe themselves to be enslaved by the ego, those who see the ego as their master, carry out this judgment. They obey the ego because they fear the ego. Because they have bought into the ego’s illusionary thought system, they believe that they and their brothers and sisters are separate, and because they are separate, one can be judged without affecting the other.
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 96-97
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Forgiveness is not a natural reaction for the ego-self. If the ego-self even considers forgiveness, it might do so saying that your brother deserves forgiveness because he was simply in an immature or insane state at the moment when the “infraction” or “error” occurred. The ego’s sense of forgiveness is to look upon your brother as insane or immature. By saying this, the ego is implying that the infraction or error is real; that there is something to forgive; and that somehow you are more or better than your brother – that you’re the “bigger person” because you can forgive. It is also saying that your brother is capable of insane or immature behavior, thus making insanity, immaturity and their consequences real. Even in forgiveness, the ego’s secret and silent goal is separation.
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 155
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The ego-self will always answer first because it has made itself our programmed response. We have been trained by it and thus we react as we were trained. Speaking with anger and condemnation is a natural response of the ego-self; it makes us right for doing so. Anything that differs from our point of view of how the world and those in it should behave and react is taken by the ego-self as an attack upon us. And the ego-self continually tells us that it is right and honorable to defend ourselves against an attack.
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 166
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It is a part of everyone’s development to react with negative emotions or feelings toward their brothers and sisters. In fact, it is the ego’s hope that we judge every brother we meet, and blame every brother for how we feel. The ego tries to make our brother responsible so that we will not take the time to look within. The ego hopes we will judge our brother any time he acts in a way that differs from our belief system. Yet the ego’s hopes are also its demise, for the more it gets us to react the way it wants us to, the more we realize that it is a fruitless, insensitive and agonizing method of existence.
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 170
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There will be bumps on almost every road down here. The key to living a more balanced life is not to judge, curse or avoid the bumps but to see them as blessings. The ego-self will want you to see bumps as bumps because it has already taught you how to react to them. The ego has already taught you that you have every right to judge, curse or try to avoid the bumps. It has already taught you that such a reaction is normal and correct. But has reacting in such a manner ever brought you true peace of mind and joy? Has reacting in such a way ever brought more clarity and balance to your life? Thus, is it such a stretch to say that the ego’s normal and correct way of reacting to bumps has little or nothing to do with you achieving peace of mind, joy, clarity, and a balanced life? My friend, if you deal with bumps by judging, cursing or by trying to avoid them, you have bought into the ego’s thought system as being real. If you have bought into the ego’s thought system as being real, then is it any wonder why achieving peace of mind, joy, clarity and a balanced life appears difficult to do?
– James Blanchard Cisneros, Author of You Have Chosen to Remember: A
Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy, p. 244-245
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Footnotes / Acknowledgments
Every effort has been made to provide accurate source attribution. Should any attribution be found to be incorrect, the author welcomes written documentation supporting correction for subsequent printings. For material not in the public domain, selection was made according to generally accepted fair-use standards and practices.
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