#alpine peaks

[huariqueje]

Moonlit night on Beatenberg  -  Waldemar Theophil Fink , 1936.

Swiss, 1893 - 1948

Oil on canvas ,  65 x 53 cm.    25.6 x 20.9 in.

[noir-poetography]

Castle Peak Before Storm

© 2020, James Blatter

[alunah-lalunah]

An Enlightened Bull

Let's say that in a miraculous way we will remove the ego, the internal inhibitor. And then what? People imagine they will achieve a quasi-angelic state and go through life in cosmic bliss.

And what about the inner bull? What about the animal nature? It will be automatically released, and then what? Will this part of our nature, this inner bull also turn in a miraculous way into cosmic consiousness?

[alunah-lalunah]

The last trick of the ego.

Why a person without an ego is always a teacher, and why it's not your fault if you don't get rid of your ego? Because it's a scam. When a teacher promotes “ego-death” or “freedom from ego,” failure is built into the student, success into the teacher.

The student tries to drop the ego. Of course it doesn’t work, because the ego is a survival and regulation system, not a belief you can turn off. So what happens? The ego reappears in a more refined form monitoring thoughts, policing reactions, watching for traces of “self,” correcting emotions, suppressing anger, manufacturing calm. Control increases. Tension increases. Suffering increases. The student feels they are “not there yet.”

Now comes the teacher’s move. The teacher does not revise the theory. Instead, they interpret the student’s difficulty as evidence of remaining ego. “You’re still identified.” “You’re trying too hard.” “You’re not letting go.” The failure is always located in the student’s insufficient surrender, never in the model itself. The teacher has the biggest ego of all. It's the emperor's naked clothes.

Meanwhile, the teacher declares success by position, not by test. They speak from the standpoint of someone who has “seen through the ego,” “abides as awareness,” or “is free from phenomena.” This status is not falsifiable. You cannot check it. If you question it, that doubt itself is labeled ego. The teacher wins by definition.

Success is always somewhere the student is not, and therefore cannot verify. It exists in the teacher’s claimed realization, tone, authority, or charisma not in observable outcomes like reduced harm, increased agency, or improved conditions. This creates a closed loop. The practice fails so the student is blamed. The teacher is unchallenged, his authority increases. The student's ego tightens and his suffering deepens. The doctrine remains intact. It is a self-sealing hierarchy.

And notice the final irony, the more sincerely the student tries to eliminate the ego, the more self-monitoring, self-judgment, and internal control they generate. The practice produces the very thing it claims to dissolve. When this is pointed out, the teacher calls it “the teacher calls it “the last trick of the ego.” This is not liberation. It is a system that converts structural impossibility into personal inadequacy, while insulating authority from scrutiny.

The ego does not disappear it is merely recruited into maintaining the illusion that it has.