Ego-consciousness is that which judges everything in our experience according to whether it is good or bad for me as a private, separate individual, rather than according to whether it is good or bad in itself, or within the context of some greater whole, or from God's point of view. It is the consciousness that identifies us with our description, with all the things that can be said about us in comparison with others—that we are taller or handsomer or smarter or richer, or of the opposite sex or the adverse political party, or inside or outside the right church, or more extroverted or less sensitive, or whatever. It is the consciousness that makes us feel the need to insist on getting our way and defending our existence and our description. In short, by ego-consciousness we see ourselves as separated beings, fragments that relate to other fragments in terms of efforts to obtain some advantage. — Radical Optimism: Practical Spirituality in an Uncertain World (Boulder, Co: Sentient Publications, 2002), p. 22:
"What we think of, we tend to become" (Id. at p. 39). We can no longer allow ourselves to view and live in the pre-conceived, dualistic, and judgmental illusions of reality that we create in our minds. There is no separateness in God's Presence that permeates through all of creation. The difficulty is that our finite, self-centered, and fragmented minds prevent us from allowing us to tear through the veil of our illusions, separating us from God's Presence.