One of the big things you will hear about if you work in the Spiritual field is the ego. The term is usually used for people judged (note that word) to have become overwhelmed by their own magnificence in some way. Or judged (again) for not following the path of spirit faultlessly. Having a wobble is actually good for you but more about that later.
Here is the Cambridge definition: your idea or opinion of yourself, especially your feeling of your own importance and ability.
The much older Latin meaning of ego is simply: I.
I prefer the Latin term personally. The opinion that others think they’re something because you think they’re something isn’t helpful thinking. Although people can appear that way, often its basis is fear of not being good enough, or over excitement about discovering another skill, bit overwhelmed by success, and so on.
So…I?
This is about the most useful term in spiritual terms. As I said in the previous blog, the sense of I is far more than our training and experience in this life. I’s can go back millennia. I didn’t even know what past life regression was until I suddenly became upset about something that made no sense, in my 30s. A past life regression made perfect sense of it and I immediately stopped being terrified of something that didn’t scare me.
The weird part of the regression was that my friend and mentor, Keith, could describe exactly how I was lying, and Tony could describe exactly how I saw the room. That we did not expect.
Some of the most useful research you can do is about children who have accurately described past life experiences. Try looking up the story of the child who insisted he was killed in a crash when his plane didn’t land properly on an aircraft carrier during WWII. He described the accident, they did some research and found some of the people he said were his old crew, they confirmed the information, bought the boy to meet them, and he addressed them all by name.
Spiritual thinking is first and foremost about freeing the mind from our narrow view of reality, accepting that there is more to life than this. The more you can research the experiences of others, the more it will help.
The trouble is that realising that the self you thought you were isn’t the self you are, can be scary. We don’t know who we are without, for example, anxiety, or who we are with an unexpected set of abilities we didn’t know we had. And in my case, didn’t know what they were or meant either. So we cling to what we do know.
We try our hardest to move forward whilst getting in our own way, and mistakenly blaming ourselves for being too stupid or stubborn or egotistical to learn about this new way. This is experience speaking by the way. People will sometimes suggest that your ego is holding you back, it isn’t. It’s the human learning what it means to be soul and struggling with an experience that no one can teach. It’s all very personal.
Sweet freedom
Comes when instead of thinking of this as a journey of change, of improvement, you think of it as an adventure. Instead of feeling unequal to the challenge, realise that you’ve been equal to it for thousands of years, and just need your memory jogged. The beauty of it is that the journey is within to your truth, so it doesn’t cost a fortune.
Suggestion
Meditation is key. That helps you to relax the mind and therefore the body. It centres you in yourself. It’s an invaluable tool for life, let alone anything else. However, you may have no idea where to start.
Yoga classes will always include a meditation. So will a spiritual circle, they’re not just for people who want to work as psychic mediums. Tai Chi is moving meditation and often includes a short meditation at the end. It’s also the foundation of all the martial arts, has some lovely tricks up its sleeve in the way of self-defence, and is suitable for literally any age as long as you can stand and move.
Investigate those sorts of classes.
But don’t believe that you have to have all sorts of classes, crystals, divination cards, and so on, to become your entire self. You don’t. You need simply to become used to consulting yourself on a regular basis and trusting what your soul shares with you.
Simple exercise
This is the tip of a very large iceberg, but it’s perfect for beginners, I also have some highly experienced people in my groups who love it and use it too. There’s no hierarchy in spirit.
Quick story. Imagine this. There is a small cluster of cells in a womb, and suddenly ‘bomp’ the first heartbeat, from there the heart goes on to build the internal workings that will make you a human being. Electrical energy animates the human, so you might say that first heartbeat was your soul arriving. It’s not a harmful idea, so just go with it for the purposes of this visualisation.
- Sit comfortably and breathe normally. If your breathing starts to slow naturally just allow it.
- Place both hands over your heart, anywhere nearby will do, I prefer the centre of my chest. Just breathe in and out, and allow yourself to feel the power in there. Don’t struggle to relax, let it come naturally.
- Imagine a white light in there, your soul, and feel as if that soul energy is expanding out from the heart into your entire body. Again feel the power, feel the expansion. It felt to me as if my soul was saying ‘At last! I can breathe now!’ It still does.
- You know you conduct electricity, and that you have an energy field, because you can spark between you and a car. I’ve never forgotten my first ‘Daaaad, the car bit me!’ So your energy goes out beyond your body. Now expand that light out into your energy field until you see yourself in a bubble of white light.
- Relax into that. If you’re feeling out of sorts you can visualise a clean, pure, white light coming down from above and flowing throughout your body and energy field. Don’t worry if other colours start to appear, they all have properties and meanings, you can look them up later.
- When you feel you’ve had enough, imagine a golden oil flowing down from above and flowing around your energy field until it seals it in about 3″ of golden light. This is Source Energy, the higher spiritual energy, and it puts you in a place of love.
If you have a difficult moment in a day and you’re about to tear someone’s head off, you can imagine reaching out to that golden oil and touching it with your fingers, feeling that love flow to your heart, allow it to calm you. It will take literally seconds, seconds in which you won’t destroy a friendship, resign from your job, or take out your mood on the wrong person.
Conclusion
This may sound all too simple, which is exactly as it should be, complication makes everything harder. Simplify, simplify, simplify, then when you think something is as simple as you can make it, simplify it again. You’ll be amazed how effective it is. Of course, it’s not classic human thinking is it? That’s the point.
People often use the word ego to control you, we often use the word ego to tell ourselves off for not being who we want to be. It’s counter-productive.
Don’t do that to yourself, and don’t ever take your definition of who you are from others.
The true definition comes from soul and soul is love.
Being spiritual is about being loving to yourself and others, being a positive force, a person who creates wonderful outcomes from challenging situations. A healer not a fighter. The only thing worth fighting is for a better world for all living things. That matters. Start with yourself, be the change you want to feel and you’ll land up being the change the world needs.
It’s vital on this journey that you define yourself,
otherwise you’re just doing what you’ve always done,
and you will get what you’ve always got.
Hugs on their way through the ether
Deb xx
P.S. That wobble. It’s natural on a new journey. You couldn’t decide to navigate a foreign country without a map, but we navigate spiritual change, connection and growth without one. There will be ‘moments’, accept them and move on. They’re all useful if you use them wisely. Time to learn not to need to be perfect. Adventurers live on the edge!
Deb Hawken - Amorah 