RE: Why the Future Never Happens- A Look at Donkeys, a '72 Impala, and God
Nasrudin ought perhaps trade the donkey in for the Impala - I suspect they might get on well. And who says the wise fool should not ride in style!
I really enjoyed your parables @therealpaul, and the contrasting tones help to drive the point home.
I would love to suggest however, that whilst ego in it's dysfunctional or imbalanced state is as you and popular spiritual texts describe it, and according to them to be earnestly denied altogether - but this may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
Does ego not have a valid functional place asides from instinctive survival, as that function rooting our conscious being to this earth - and though we are all a part of a larger collective, we remain as unique, individual and unrepeatable expressions of life in this existence as ego - perhaps not to be denied.
This thinking resonates for me and has been articulately described by the curious palaeontologist / shaman / writer Hank Wesselman!
I'm not one who suggests getting rid of ego as if it were a broken tool-- without that individuality there would just be consciousness, hanging around being all the time. This essay was meant to show how ego can't exist in the present, and how that part of mind will try to lure us into futures and pasts.Some say we need to abolish ego entirely to be pure in mind, but I think you're right, we need that grounding.