There is a dark aspect of change and transformation that has held me personally in its grips for significant periods of time. It’s what – in addition to limiting beliefs and habits and lack of self-love – contributes to the never-ending cycle of wanting to change but feeling unable to. You want to stop drinking, start exercising, or whatever it is, and while you know both are for your highest good, you still seem unable to actually implement change. Well, there’s a whole being of your own making that’s standing on your magic carpet not letting you fly, and that’s your ego.
(PS, as always, catch this post on the podcast if you haven't already: https://yougetwhatyougive.podbean.com/)
What is the Ego?
Let’s talk about the Ego, what it is, and what it’s not, according to the information that’s been made available to me (via channeling, in case I haven't made that clear). As I have come to understand it, the Ego is the False Self, the identity that we’ve all stitched together over time. It’s probably easiest to think of it as a quilt, with each patch representing something that has occurred to you in your past, something that triggered a limiting belief about yourself. At the academy and through the BLESS Coaching model, there is a process we go through called Life Cycling, where we examine your Ego Quilt patch-by-patch. Each patch is tied to a particular event that triggered a particular limiting belief or series of beliefs that often are linked to other patches and events and vice-versa, all making up the complex thing that is your particular Ego quilt.
With life cycling, each energy centre of your body, or chakra, is linked to one of the Four Pillars of Source (Love, Creation, Joy, and Abundance). Each centre and aspect of the Pillars is also associated with an age range. For example, the Root Energy Centre or Root Chakra, which is associated with Abundance, is your life cycle from 0-7 years. Let’s say something happened to you in that first life cycle; that event is going to trigger behaviours and limiting beliefs that will show up in ways that correspond negatively to the corresponding energies of both the energy centre and associated Pillar. For more information about this, and to see a graphic representation of life cycling, pick up your 12-Step Transformation Guide (the graphic is in there).
When you are going through coaching or are on a transformation journey, it's critical to examine your habits and limiting beliefs in order to determine where they originated in your life cycles because this will reveal what energies are working against you - which by default reveals how we go about undoing them, and that’s by working with the energetic opposites. As above, so below. For most of us, there are big T and little T trauma events which occur throughout our life cycles and these are what trigger new patches in the quilt, new beliefs which become part of our false self, the identity forged over time and tribulation (this is not to say that the events which occurred in your life were false, or not impactful or valid or true, just that the limiting beliefs the events taught you are untrue). The beliefs they triggered are limiting, the perceptions wrong, and the results, well, they can be dire.
The Ego, the false Self, is a quilt made of misperceptions, chief among them, the perception of your not-enoughness. This quilt cannot keep you warm, and to look upon the patches does not bring positive memories. Your Ego is a trauma quilt, a self-hating quilt, a misperception quilt, an unhappiness quilt. And yet you cling to it, believing that a better blanket does not exist, that this is all you deserve.
The Ego lies, manipulates, cajoles, imitates, diminishes, tortures, maims and kills, all in an effort to keep its host – you – feeding it, needing it, clashing with other egos, engaged in conflict, separated from all life and love, hating yourself and making yourself small. Why? Because it was made by fear. Your fear. And fear cannot be anything else but what it is. You made it, fashioned your quilt with it, every time something happened to you which threatened your being. And what are you? You are love. Love is both what made you, and that of which you are made. But this third dimension is a real trip, isn’t it. The veil of forgetting drops as we exit the birth canal, and then we each make our quilts, only to then have to undo them over time and over the rest of our human lives. It’s a worthy effort, and we do it for a reason called karma.
The Ego is a part of this experience, of the human condition, but it is not who you truly are. Not even close. But the Ego is aware of your True Self, and it’s afraid of it. The Ego is afraid of oblivion, which explains our fear of death, and the Ego wants to exist, wants to live forever in its abyss of endless wanting and grasping and clinging, of hatred and fear and perfectionism and conflict. The Ego is the reason you find yourself incapable of sustained transformation.
How does the Ego prevent change?
Well, the Ego doesn’t just live in the mind, that amazing tool you’ve been given with which to create and find solutions and manifest in this world; it also lives in the body. Limiting beliefs – the Ego’s tools to keep you in a box –are the physical imprint of traumatic events, the sensations of which return in an instant when we are confronted or triggered by something that takes us back to that event in the life cycle (even if we’re not conscious of what the event actually was). Limiting beliefs are nurtured by the mind, so that when the body experiences a physical flashback, it triggers a reaction in the mind that either repels or attracts something. In the case of a person who is addicted to alcohol, for example, when somebody offers them a drink or if they pass by a liquor store, there will be a physical reaction to the stimulus – which may not even be noticed unless the person is paying attention – which will trigger a reaction in the mind. What is the limiting belief of the Ego in this case? Well, that depends on what events in that person’s past triggered the behaviour in the first place. It might be a series of events and a series of linked behaviours and feelings. It all depends on the person.
The body consciousness, also known as the subconscious, is where your operating system resides. If the mind is a tool, then the body is the workbench upon which all things are made. It’s why trying to change anything about yourself using only your mind is, frankly, ineffective. The mind and human intellect is astounding, no question, but to accept that it’s all there is when it comes to healing, is as helpful as saying modern medicine should be thrown out in favour of alternatives. ‘Hearts and minds’ is a common saying, and what it refers to is the unification of these two powerful systems to advance a cause. The unification of Heart and Mind (or the Crown chakra or energy centre) opens up the Heaven’s Gate Portal, through which spiritual transformation may occur. As above, so below, and as such, the unification of Heart and Root opens up the Eden’s Gate portal – that which brings forth the spiritual aspect to the physical in the creation of Heaven or paradise on Earth. It’s also the namesake of the academy.
Why do I bring this up? I do so to illustrate that we live in a dualistic reality. A paradox. To change, you must address both the heart – the body – and the mind. The heart and root, in this case both representing the body (the heart, being the centre, has both ethereal and worldy aspects), addresses the fact that the body holds all the trump cards when it comes to change; the codes in the body therefore have to be re-written, in harmony with that of the mind, to unify a person’s efforts to transform. It is one of the most difficult journeys that a human being may take, but it is also the worthiest.
When we consider the Hero’s Journey, it is wise to remember that you are both your own hero, and also the villain; the villain of course, being that of your Ego.
How can we bypass the Ego when trying to change?
Essentially, this is an exercise in trying to fool ‘yourself,’ to pull the wool over your own eyes. It’s to recognize that there are three parts to your mind – your true self, your false self, and the Witness. Being aware of this is the pre-requisite to beating the ego at its own game.
Remember, the Ego is a quilt made of sadness, of hate, of all the parts of you that live in the darkness. But isn’t that also a part of you? Well yes, it is. That is the paradox. How you get around this is by learning to first…now this is very important…LOVE all of those unlovable parts of yourself. True love of self is learning to first love the false self – the one that you began constructing as a child when confronted with the unreal realities of this very tricky dimension. So who started building the ego if first, all there was was your True Self? That’s a great question, and an example of the Paradox Principle at work. The Ego was pre-destined and based on your soul’s karma, which means, it is supposed to be as much a part of your Self as anything else. This is why learning to love the Ego is so important; it is the most difficult hurdle to jump, and if you are able to do it, you are already on your way to getting to the place beyond even karma (and yes, such a place exists). For most of us, however, we grapple with our Ego our whole lives, and if we’re lucky, we’ll glimpse the True Self from time to time. When that happens, it’s as if someone turned on the light after being in a dark room for days. It’s blinding. It hurts. It’s why a spiritual awakening can be so painful.
So how do you start to love the Ego? It’s easier than you think. Self-knowledge begets self-love, and self-love begets self-knowledge. The more you learn about how this works in the third dimension, the more you start to see how this game is played. The more you understand how everything transpires exactly as it should under the universal laws that we are all working within, laws such as karma and attraction and scarcity and conflict. When you see the image reflected in the dark mirror for what it truly is – a reflection meant to test you, to get you to react, you realize that the reason for all this conflict and these obstacles and pain isn’t just to cause needless suffering – it’s to get you to do something. Pain so often comes when we resist change, which is as intrinsic to our being as love, which is something else we resist a lot. Obstacles are detours, but resistance is death. Stagnation. It’s where the Ego thrives. Gotcha! It says. See you in the next lifetime to see if you’ll fall down the same manhole because you didn’t want to take another route.
The Ego is something you constructed to protect you from the pain of your mis-perception that you are not loveable based on the things that have happened to you over time, but your armour is your prison. The castle that you’ve walled yourself up in becomes unescapable. You become both the fearsome monster and also he or she who needs saving. The Ego is yourself, and what yourself needs more than anything else…is forgiveness. Forget about needing love, remember that you ARE love. It’s both what made you and that of which you’re made. Forgive the Ego for doing exactly what it was intended to do, which is diminish you so that you might ultimately overcome it and move on into a more advanced spiritual realm. This is what waking up is really about. It’s about understanding that all those bad things that happen actually do happen for a reason, even if it’s one of the hardest things for a human heart to accept. It’s about understanding that forgiving yourself for all of it is to forgive others who hurt you, which releases YOU from that prison. Forgiveness has nothing really at all to do with others, it’s one of God’s greatest gifts, our get-out-of-jail free card, the golden scissors to cut the rope, one of the master keys.
Self-knowledge begets self-love begets forgiveness of Self, and others. And when we remember that we are all aspects of each other, when we live by the unity principle that all are one, then we realize that true self love is to love others as yourself, truly. The evidence of this can be seen, as always, in the collective. Who or what do you think is to blame for all of the tragic and condemnable things that happen in this world? It’s the collective Ego at work, because the reality is we are all connected, we are all one, and we are all going to the same place. How the ego works at the micro is how it works at the macro, too.
When you realize that your Ego quilt was never supposed to be the only thing to keep you warm, you’ll reach for the down comforter that is your True Self and wrap yourself up in them like a little baby, grateful for both of them, and the knowledge that both were made to support you (just in different ways
Using the Witness
One thing I don’t want to leave out is the witness. I mentioned it briefly already as being a third aspect of the mind, but the Witness is a powerful tool at any time, but particularly when you are on a transformation journey and struggling with the Ego.
Think of the Witness as an impartial observer. It doesn’t judge, it doesn’t cause a fuss, no drama, no heat. It simply exists. It’s just there, always. So what is its function? Well, it’s meant to create space in the moment. To blow the whistle on a heated argument. To call a time-out. It doesn’t want to sway your opinion in any direction; no, its sole goal is just get you to STOP, breathe, and question. If you’re lucky or advanced, you may even embody the Witness in particular cases, which is quite a trip. There you are, observing the two aspects of your own mind – the Ego, and your True Self – treated to a rare, bird’s eye view of the human condition at work. If you can get there, and it is always possible to get there through practices like mindfulness and meditation, it will actually change you just by the fact that you have now moved from participant to observer. Because what do they say about things that are observed? That they change. Cool, isn’t it?
But back to the witness. Let’s say you’re on the verge of breaking a promise to yourself, you find yourself in a triggering situation and your Ego has already given you permission to ‘do the thing’ you don’t want to do anymore. It’s the devil on your shoulder (the devil being the religious embodiment of the ego, by the way, but that’s a story for another day). If you are unaware of this dynamic interplay, you might just shrug your shoulders and say, “fine, I’ll start tomorrow,” or, “it’s just one,” or, “I’m a failure anyway, so I might as well.” If the hole in your heart is big enough, no number of promises made to yourself or others will work. On the other hand, if you’re awareness of what’s going on, but still find yourself losing against the Ego (which is a very frustrating and disempowering experience), this is where the Witness can step in to help you out.
If you find yourself in a tricky situation and you feel like you’re on the verge of making a choice that your true self – the self that is rooted in love – doesn’t want, STOP, breathe, and question. Bring in the witness. Excuse yourself for the briefest of moments – physically remove yourself from the place that you are standing and put yourself somewhere else. Ram Dass talked about the concept of standing in a different place in the context of perspective, and here, a physical change of placement of your body (which is a container for Ego) will help provide both a metaphoric and literal change of perspective. It will give you the opportunity to observe from above, say, “ahhh, this is a test.” Except, remember, there is no failing. Just another chance to change, to move in a different direction. A chance to say ‘Gotcha’ to your Ego, and beat it at its own game.
Be well, and know that you are loved beyond measure.
