Leonard Jacobson is a modern master, who started out as an atheist attorney! His awakening began in 1984 and he seems to have a specialty of helping us get in “right relationship with the ego”, as he calls it.
In this video, Leonard shares his simple teaching of how judgement keeps the ego in control and how you can start the ego’s surrender by being in presence.
Transcript:
“When the ego starts to relax and realize it’s not the evil one: it is not going to be punished; it’s not going to be condemned, and it starts to feel the flowering of presence within you, and it starts to trust the flowering of presence within you and it will gradually begin to relax and allow you more and more fully into presence. Until one day, you’re fundamentally established in presence and the ego is your friend. Your ego is in service, within the world of time. It’s no longer trying to be enlightened, it realizes that’s not its role in your life. It no longer needs to protect you, it realizes that when you’re present, there’s nothing to protect against.
Everything relaxes, but the ego has to see through it’s own dilemma. And it’s going to be reluctant to do that. It won’t do that, it will not surrender. The ego will not surrender until it trusts the flowering of presence within you.
And it will test you. it will test you over and over again until you pass the test. And the test is: the test of judgement. If it can get you involved in the energy of judgement. If it can get you to identify with the energy of judgement of yourself, of others, or of life – any aspect of life, any event in life – you’re not the true master.
Deep, deep down at the deepest core of itself, the ego knows that the true master is without judgement. The ego knows that. Even though it’s forgotten that, it knows that. But deep down, it knows that. And it knows to test you. And for the most part, we all fail the test. We don’t realize that judgement is just an energy passing through us. Let it pass through you. Express it, just don’t believe in it. Allow it, don’t be “for it” or “against it”; it’s just an energy, let it pass through you. Own it, acknowledge it, confess it, but don’t believe in it.
The problem that the ego has in all of this, is that it can’t trust you until there is a certain level of presence awake in you. But it’s the ego preventing you from being present in the first place. So there has to be that sort of cooperation that I arranged with David’s ego that it would permit him to be present, to test the water.
You cannot defeat the ego. No one has ever defeated the ego. The only thing that can occur, is that the ego, with all the right conditions, will voluntarily, and with honor, surrender. With beautiful grace, it will surrender. It will surrender unto the true master arising from within. And the true master is you, in presence.
Who is the true master? I am.
Who is I am? I am.
Where do you go from there? Just silence, presence. I am that… I am.
The I am of you, the I am presence is filled with silence and all around it is endless silence and you are that, too. There’s no limit to you: pure consciousness, perfect presence.”
Find more of Leonard’s videos at LeonardJacobson.com.