“Why can’t the ego just evolve or wake itself up to the greater realities? Why can’t it just start realizing all this interconnectedness and wholeness?”
In a way, ego does wake up as enlightenment arrives. But the whole derivation and function of ego was to be separate, to defend its position of separation, and to survive there. Once ego realizes its nature, nature overtakes it, and dissolves this function that is no longer fit to survive. An awakened ego must dissolve, and eventually die! It must go the way of the saber-toothed tiger or the stegosaurus.
As I’ve said, natural appreciation draws itself from the Source, infinite and empty, into the form life that is finite and full. Appreciation is essential awareness—before there is any thing to be aware of. This appears an impossible abstraction from the mind’s perspective; hence the separation at ego level. The human mind cannot encompass or comprehend the depth into which consciousness must plunge in order to truly appreciate. The mind rushes up to the threshold of this depth and peers through the ‘glass darkly’, but it can go no further.
The reality of true appreciation is not abstract at all; it is the essence of practicality. It is the natural mechanism for appraisal of any situation, internal or external. It enables the relations of all things among themselves. This is possible because all those things and selves are really just one Self. Appreciation is embedded in the very fibers of manifested consciousness on all planes, binding them as one.
