A short book on the art of transforming painful emotions into love and bliss through mindful awareness.
A short book on the art of transforming painful emotions into love and bliss through mindful awareness.
Meditations, Mindfulness & meditation, Spirituality
A Sufi tale has it that God plays a joke on us when we’re born. He whispers in our ear: ‘You are the special one!’ The joke is that He says it to everyone.
Referring to the works of Eckhart Tolle, Osho, Michael Singer, Steve Taylor, Erich Fromm, Noam Chomsky, and others, A Short Book About Ego describes the three key strategies we use to be ‘special’ - the Successful Ego, the Suffering Ego, and the Righteous Ego - arguing that the drive to be ‘above’ others is the ultimate root of all misery and prejudice.
Based on 30 years of meditation and 30 years of political activism, David Edwards provides a simple, direct guide to transforming the emotional pain of ego - of anger, resentment, dissatisfaction, boredom, jealousy, craving, and fear - into love and bliss through witnessing, watching, and presence.
Nothing humanises us like the pain we’re willing to accept and embrace. Nothing dehumanises us like the pain we’re willing to reject and project onto others. Drawn from in-depth personal experience, A Short Book About Ego argues that the best way to escape from a man-eating tiger in hot pursuit is to stop, turn, and jump into the tiger’s mouth!
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I have learnt a great deal reading A Short Book About Ego, a thoughtful and gentle book about the change of consciousness we all need to go through. I read it just after reading the Bhagavad Gita while travelling through northern Pakistan, which gave me extra context. ~ Peter Oborne, award-winning journalist and broadcaster, author of The Fate of Abraham: Why the West Is Wrong About Islam
The best way to transcend the ego is to understand it. This book shines a bright light on the machinations of the ego, and shows us a glimpse of freedom beyond it. Best of all, it highlights the clearest path to freedom, through the practice of meditation. ~ Steve Taylor, PhD, author of The Leap and Extraordinary Awakenings
David Edwards shoots straight from the heart at the brilliant stupidity of head-trapped humans and our knack for needless suffering. This book is a creative and witty guide for how to live with sanity and joy in a world that rarely makes it easy. David offers the reader a diagnosis and a remedy and leaves the rest to us. It’s an incisive deconstruction of human delusion. And an opportunity to ponder on the great matters of love and freedom. ~ Richard Gilpin, psychotherapist and author of Mindfulness for Unravelling Anxiety - Finding Calm & Clarity in Uncertain Times
I am a huge admirer of David’s work at Media Lens. Media Lens is one of very, very few news sources that seek to present news stories without bias. Rather than doing the journalism that pays, they have chosen to take the difficult path and write with integrity and present the uncomfortable truths that corporate media choose to ignore. I’m so grateful for their work. It must be very difficult to be so commited to do this work day-in and day-out and continue, unwaveringly, over decades. I often wondered how they managed to do it without being driven to despair and frustration. As David shows in this book, he uses meditation to help provide a shield and source of inspiration to do this difficult work. He argues that this practice gives us all the strength to act decisively and independently. By reaching within we can free ourselves. And he makes a very compelling argument that there has been a systematic effort to try to undermine this refuge so that we are more likely to go along with the propaganda and advertising messages by which we are bombarded every day. I highly recommend this book. ~ Chris Haughton, author and illustrator of A Bit Lost and the forthcoming The History of Information
A Short Book About Ego is a brilliant and concise call to arms. It shows us that those of us who wish to transform the chaos of the world we see everywhere around us must first learn to transform ourselves inwardly. Our ego is our enemy, the self an illusion (standing at the centre of a circle of mirrors), and the road to freedom lies in inner stillness and learning the ancient art of meditation. David Edwards is one of the most important writers at work today. In a saner and more emotionally wise society, he would be both a household name and a national treasure. ~ Torben Betts, award-winning UK playwright and author of Invincible, Muswell Hill and Murder in the Dark
