Written by Gurudev Shri Amritji
The ego-mind operates like a projector, not a camera. It doesn’t take in life objectively—it throws out old film reels onto the present moment, coloring your perception with past emotional memory. Every time you say, “I know what this means,” or “I’ve seen this before,” you are often unconsciously referring to a familiar emotional pattern, not reality itself.
Your memory doesn’t just store information; it stores meaning—meaning that was formed during moments of intense pleasure or pain. These meanings become like filters on your perception, so that even a neutral face, a tone of voice, or a place can trigger an intense reaction. You aren’t responding to what is; you’re responding to what was, through the lens of what you fear may happen again.
Imagine you walk into a business meeting and see a man in a suit looking serious. Instantly, you feel tense and judged. You assume he doesn’t like you. But this man has said nothing—his face is simply neutral. What your mind has done is resurrect an unresolved memory of being scolded by a father figure. You are not seeing this man; you are seeing your past. He is not judging you—you are projecting an ancient wound.
How Pain Becomes Habitual
Each time you react from that old emotional charge, you’re not living in the present—you’re reliving a reincarnated version of your past. These emotional echoes don’t come back to punish you—they come back to be seen. Your mind tries to survive the pain by building a narrative, but the narrative is shaped by the same stress that caused the wound. This creates a closed loop of suffering.
The ego-mind, in its effort to protect you, clings to the pleasurable and avoids the painful. But both impulses are rooted in memory. The more you identify with these reactions, the more deeply the grooves of suffering are etched into your nervous system and energy body. These grooves become what we call karmic patterns—unconscious, self-reinforcing cycles of emotional pain. Karma, in this sense, is not a cosmic punishment—it’s the echo of what hasn’t yet been integrated.
Imagine a man finds himself constantly anxious in professional settings, fearing he’ll be criticized. Every time a boss gives feedback, even gently, he experiences panic and physical tightness in his chest. What he’s experiencing is not the present interaction—it’s a relived emotional memory of being shamed by a teacher in school. His energy meridians carry that imprint. His brain’s fear circuits are trained to respond, even when the present is safe.
Why the Body Can’t Relax
Your energy body is the temple through which the divine flows. But every time you relive a reactive memory, you resist what is—now. That resistance locks energy in place. The flow of Shakti—the feminine life force—becomes obstructed, and you feel disconnected, anxious, or fatigued.
These emotional memory-stress disorders (EMSDs) are like knots in your energy meridians. They distort your perception and keep the nervous system in hypervigilance or withdrawal. PTSD is a known form of this, but most people carry subtler, chronic versions of the same pattern.
Imagine entering a room full of people and feeling socially anxious. There is no actual danger, but your nervous system is tight, your chest constricted. This isn’t the present causing the pain—it’s a memory-stress from a time you were humiliated in front of others. The energy body holds this like a scar, and until it’s seen and released, it colors every similar situation.
The Ego’s Mask Is How You Protect Yourself From What You Have Not Yet Healed
To survive in a world of emotional memory-stress, your ego creates masks—personas designed to prevent re-experiencing the original wound. If you were once humiliated, you might develop the mask of perfectionism. If you were once rejected, you might become a people-pleaser or withdraw into isolation.
The ego isn’t wrong—it’s just based on outdated survival strategies. These masks may have helped you adapt at one time, but eventually, they no longer serve. They may help avoid certain triggers, but they also block the flow of life. Your relationships become inauthentic, your emotions repressed, and your sense of self fragmented.
Healing begins when you witness the mask without identifying with it. Presence reveals the mask as unnecessary. You do not need to protect yourself from what you are willing to fully feel and witness in the Now.
Let’s say you’ve always been the “strong one” in your family—the dependable, calm problem-solver. But inside, you feel exhausted and unseen. One day, someone close to you expresses disappointment, and instead of admitting hurt, you shrug it off and say, “I’m fine.” But when you sit in stillness later, you see the mask. You realize you’ve built a persona to avoid feeling the helplessness you felt as a child when no one helped you. In that moment of honesty, something softens—and the mask begins to fall away.
How the Ego-Mind Creates Psychological Suffering Through Time Projection
Your suffering is not caused by what is happening now—it is caused by your projection of time. The ego lives either in memory (the past) or imagination (the future), constantly seeking or avoiding, clinging or fearing. This psychological time pulls you out of the timeless Presence where life is actually unfolding.
The unresolved past reappears as fear of recurrence, and the imagined future arises as anticipation or anxiety. This creates a false sense of continuity that becomes your identity: “This happened to me, so I am this way.” But Presence reveals the truth: the past is not happening, and the future does not exist.
Only now can healing occur. Only now can the energetic loop dissolve. You are not a continuation of your past—you are the awareness in which it appeared.
Imagine waiting for medical test results. Your mind races: “What if it’s cancer?” “What if I die?” The fear intensifies. But you catch it. You realize: none of this is happening now. In this moment, you are alive, breathing, supported. You return to Presence. The fear softens. You don’t escape uncertainty—you become bigger than it.
The Cycle of Rebirth – How the Past Keeps Being Born Through You Until You Become Present
Every unhealed emotional event from your past becomes a karmic seed, waiting for a moment of resonance in the present to sprout. This is how suffering becomes cyclical. You keep meeting the same kind of partner, the same emotional pattern, the same kind of conflict—not because life is punishing you, but because life is trying to wake you up.
You are not being tested. You are being shown. Every repetition is grace in disguise—a new opportunity to become the witnessing Presence instead of the reacting ego. When you do, the cycle ends. What used to be reincarnated becomes reintegrated.
To illustrate, you’ve ended three romantic relationships, each ending with you feeling betrayed and abandoned. Each time, you swear you’ll never repeat it—but here you are again. Only now, instead of blaming the other, you pause and witness the entire emotional pattern. You feel the grief without story. You breathe into the abandonment, and you stay. Something changes. For the first time, you are not abandoning yourself. The karma is complete.
How to Dismantle the Illusion of Identity with Pain
Emotions are powerful currents of energy, but they are not your identity. Yet the ego subtly attaches to emotions as part of its self-definition: “I am angry,” “I am anxious,” “I am broken.” This identification is the root of suffering. When you believe you are the emotion, you get swept away in its force.
But Presence reveals a different truth. Emotions arise in you, but they are not you. You are the space they move through. When you witness your emotions rather than become them, you free the body from reactivity and the mind from self-judgment. Healing begins not by fixing your feelings, but by unhooking your identity from them.
Perhaps you’re feeling anxious before giving a talk. Your ego whispers, “I’m not good at this. I’m always nervous.” But instead of believing that thought, you shift into awareness. You feel the racing heart, the butterflies. You breathe. You say inwardly, “Anxiety is arising.” That shift in language creates space. The sensation doesn’t disappear—but you are no longer fused with it. You go on stage, not fearless, but free.
The Discipline of Yoga Happens Now
As Patanjali says, “Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.” Each time you witness rather than react, you unmask the ego-self. You return to the Shiva consciousness—the timeless Presence that you always were.
Christ’s call, “If you have eyes, see; if you have ears, hear,” was not poetic metaphor. It was a call to wake up from the dream of subjectivity. When you no longer live as the predator and prey of your own karmic memory, you are born anew—into the only moment that truly exists: Now.
A Final Word on Healing
This journey is not about perfection or about becoming someone new—it’s about becoming fully available to what is already here. The parts of you that adapted in order to survive were intelligent. And now, you are safe enough to begin releasing them. Healing doesn’t mean never feeling pain again. It means learning to stay present with what arises, without becoming it.