A personal consideration by Krishna Gauci

This was written as a response to a gentleman who wrote asking about comparing different realizations and the way that ego is held in WDM as compared to other teachers and schools. Please remember that this is my own personal consideration which is a result of both my exposure to spiritual traditions as well my own experience of the WDM work in my own body and the bodies of those I’ve worked with over the last 12 years. I’m not speaking for anyone else.

WDM and Teachers of Other Schools:

Without mentioning specific teachers or schools we can pretty much say that in most cases teachers recognize the danger of the ego. What they are mostly concerned about is an ego that remains fixed in on itself in its own separateness and does not feel or recognize the effect that it has on itself or other beings as it acts out from it’s contracted sense. The differences are in how they deal with this.

In some other traditions there is an attempt to dismantle or subdue this ego. It is easy to see the difference between Waking Down and those approaches.

However, in other teachings there is simply the practice of seeing through the ego and recognizing the way that it is an illusion, this is a “kinder gentler” ego tolerance. Those teachings are more accepting of the fact of the ego. They recognize that resisting ego makes it stronger, so their approach is what we could call “transcend and include”. They see through the ego, recognizing it as not being our true identity, but then they include it as a part of us that is useful and to be accepted.

While WDM is sympathetic to those with a more ego -friendly stance it’s very important to point out that (in my view) the approach to ego in WDM is fundamentally different than even those teachings that have that more accepting, tolerant attitude. I would call our approach “include and transcend”. Include and transcend rather than transcend and include. I believe that this is what Linda Groves Bonder has referred to as “transcending in place”.

What WDM has in common with the kinder gentler ego -tolerant transcend and include teachers is that we both recognize that divinity and ego are part of us. The difference is that we in WDM don’t just tolerate the ego; we encourage it to go for more than it’s dreamed of. It must grow larger and through its expansion it transcends itself. Inclusion is what brings transcendence; we don’t go for the transcendence and then include the limit.

We value the limited ego as divine in its own right.

Let me be 100% clear at this point: what we do in terms of embracing the ego in WDM cannot be safely done outside the context of the community container and support of others (teachers in particular) in the second birth, and it’s important to say that up front. WDM is at its heart a tantric teaching and our approach to the ego is tantric. Traditionally tantra was considered a dangerous teaching and there was a clear insistence that it only be practiced under the supervision of a master. In a similar way we have our support teams in WDM because this unique teaching of radical embrace of all limits (including the limit of ego identity) is spiritual fire. It needs teachers established in consciousness, deeply trusting the unfolding of the life process and radiating transmission. It is in this context that the ego can unfold beyond its present form into its next (more evolved) form through fully embracing it as it is now.