I'm CHOOSING to suffer

[Minyatur]

I think you are starting to see the nature of the ego. The ego does cling to suffering for various reasons. Self-gratification, self-rightenousness, to perceive oneself as the one that loves, the comfort of staying the same, etc.

You need the ego because without it, you would not be the unique you. It is a part of you. It's how you harness the ego that is the important thing.

I don't mean that you can be without ego, but to change and transform always mean that how you were dies in a certain way.

The ego is ephemeral in its nature and truly it is only the sense of identifying to finite things that is coherent across all moments. You can always become a new sense of identity, because more than a finite identity you are identity itself, full in will. We somewhat are a lot like deeply immersed in dream, but any day you can wake up from a dream you were having at night and its relationships, to let that mirage fade and die so you can be immersed in your life here and now. Humans live consciously in a small bubble, not realizing the truth of their life is truly that they stand within the infinite. They are concerned over the smaller "stars" of their life (others) and fail to see their context of uniqueness among the infinite stars in the vast stary sky. As we don't mind Arcturus to be what it is and where it is, we should not mind others to be what they are where they are. No one minds a comet to come close to us and distance itself away, we learn to enjoy the encounter and let it follow its path.

The discipline of the personality is useful to render the ego more transparent and balanced, it requires to accept the opposite of every thought. Every potential that enters the mind needs to be accepted and balanced. Then, when you accept the worse and yet are open for the best, life is a thrilling walk and any bad experience is at worse a short lived nightmare, like the ones you can have at night and yet don't get hung upon.