There are many names for God: the Supreme, the Creator, Spirit, Krishna, Christ, Allah, Love, Shiva, the All, Om, etc. We tend to favor one or two that empower us to live the most spiritual life possible.
In fact, just thinking of the (nameless) Holy Name can instantly connect us to God and our own divinity (as do blessings like "Namaste - the Divine within me honors the Divine within you").
But what about the names for things that separate us from God? Isn't it just ego, or are there more? Can spiritual seekers avoid their traps?
Here are their most popular names:
Mind/Ego/I/Identity/Me*/self
These "God-separators" each show a different aspect how duality (us/them, feminine/masculine, follower/leader) keeps are distance from God.
In reality there is no "split," but this illusion is so convincing, we allow it to occur many times a day (despite the fact that it's the cause of all suffering!).
Take "Mind" (please!). Its distracting thoughts pop up frequently and tell us what reality supposedly is.
Most of us weren't taught that we can control not only our thoughts but also our responses to them. Until we learn this, we just get pelted by these thoughts like a car in a hail storm, which leave large dents in our psyche as well.
What kind of thoughts? Usually worries of imagined events in the future, or fears that painful events from the past will revisit us. Not healthy at all.
The problems can really pile up without a spiritual practice in place that includes yoga and meditation, both of which help us to stay out of the past and the future, right here in the present.
Being present it our truest state, but the Mind fights that by constantly trying to get us to forget who we truly are (Divine) so we will only take care of it (the Mind), usually through the senses.
It's consistently successful at getting this kind of care because most of us don't know we are not our thoughts. (We are the ones noticing the thoughts.)
Identity is also a strong God-separator by creating a convincing (phony) beingness that makes being separate from God a plausible reality. With such vivid colors, no less, like painful (or pleasurable) memories of past experiences; the temptation to dwell in the emotional meaning we give those experiences (which affects how we react to life moving forward); our societal conditioning; the story of Me, and who I think I am.
Identity appears as a consistent phenomenon, and that sameness gives us a comfort we're unwilling to give up, at least without great motivation.
It's very popular to refer to all of this as Ego because it feels detached; scientific even. Here, it's handy to use what Gautam Baiji teaches, that the ego is a tool which can only be dangerous when handled improperly, much like how fire is very useful for cooking, but you wouldn't want to turn your back on it for long.
Finally, when one refers to their self, they may wish to pause and ask, "Am I addressing the little self who lives inside me, or the Self?" It's easy to see that we default to our ego-mind-self. We can reverse by entering into an inquiry every now and then to re-member Who We Are again and put the Self back in control (which causes the little self to disappear).
That is, until we're distracted again. But the back-and-forth is part of our spiritual journey.
*They all have capitals because they are always straining for importance or significance. This is their attempt to replicate the true Self to attempt to fool us, but in the end they are all imposters.
**One of the mind's greatest distractions (for people on a spiritual path) is the desire to accumulate more spiritual information at the expense of simply experiencing our True Self, or having self-realization. Sri Mooji says, "It cannot be learned, it can only be recognized in ourselves," and yet we frequently find ourselves pursuing more information for "answers." This is one of the mind's final tricks to delay our re-membering/oneness. (Another mind diversion: telling us we are "too tired" or sleepy as we start to meditate, causing us to stop.)
***Which is ironically like focussing on the dot in the middle of the blank page, while ignoring the vastness of the white paper and who we really are.
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