Dreaming at the Feet of Hades

When you recall a memory, you tend to think that that was me then there. But really, that wasn’t you. That person had different understandings and experiences from the ego that you are experiencing here now. So the person in a memory that you perceive as you is actually never you. It’s another ego. The you-ego is only in the now. The perceived you-ego in the past is a completely different being/ego. Maybe that being/ego had similar habits, bundles of egoic mass, and experiences, but you-ego in the now are a different being from the being who experienced something in the illusory past.

Similarities don’t make a being the same as another. They are similar, but not the exact same thing. Two beings liking the same movie and food doesn’t make them the same being, does it?

The ego is constantly growing, learning, changing. And so every moment of “now”, you are an entirely new fresh being with the power to be and do whatever. You are not beholden to what “you” did in the past, because that wasn’t actually you. The only true you is here now.

So what I’m trying say is the ego you perceived as interacting in the past, in a memory, is not even the same ego as you are perceiving in the now. Even that aspect of the ego-self is only true in the now. And in that sense, you are viewing a completely different ego than you were a minute ago, which in turn makes that ego an entirely new unique entity/being.

And so this is why it is possible for habits to carry from life to life beyond the ego, because while both habits and ego are empty, habits are not beholden to a singular state of ego bundle as we tend to think they are. Habits can exist in spaces, in group minds, in anything that is compounded phenomena, and carry and travel as those compounded phenomena inevitable change form, like the habits that change with them.

This view of ego is a simple way to recall the true emptiness of the ego, at any place, in any time. By just recalling the fact that the ego is an ever-changing illusion just like the phenomena around you, and is in every moment born anew; the emptiness of ego cannot be ignored.

Aside: This may be where the sensation of deja vu comes from. Because you, in the ego sense, are a unique being only existing in the exact now-time, you have technically always been there in that moment with those events occurring that feel like “I’ve seen this before”, and the you-ego always will be. Because by the time that space and those events pass, you’re no longer experiencing the ego-self that was then and there. That illusory ego-self stays there with that space and those events, and the you-ego recalling those events is a completely different ego.