Ego is not the Enemy
Welcome back dear friends, I know it has been somewhat turbulent the past week, I hope your hearts are rising to the challenges. This week I would like to talk about something rarely mentioned in spirituality, the healthy and necessary side of ego, desire and assertion of one’s will.
There has been a pervasive antagonistic stance against the ego which must be clarified and understood if we are ever to move forward, if we are to ever reach our fullest potential as adults in this world. The ego at its heart is what allows us to be an integrated and healthy individual in this world, it provides the necessary separation to allow our unique gifts to move forward into our life. Yes, there are infantile desires and instincts connected to this, just as there are in children, yet who advises destroying the child to somehow reach the seed of the adult within?
Yet so much of the language in our spiritual traditions advocates such a very extreme stance. Yes, we strive towards a place of universal love and interconnected bonding with all forms of life around us, but this does not somehow exclude our simultaneous experience of separation and uniqueness. We have to stop making binaries of existence, creating either/or situations where inevitably both sides cancel each other out and we all suffer from the loss.
Your connection to the whole is what feeds and nourishes the unique gifts waiting in your soul, in your unique individual expression on this earth. Conversely, the highest expressions of your own ego desires and wants are intimately connected and bonded to your participation with the whole of existence, finding their most noble articulation through your commitment to your community, which then stretches out to include all people. The numinous gains form through you, through a healthy and balanced ego which knows its place both as an individual and as one connected to something much larger.
We need strong individuals who possess the confidence to bring forth their gifts for the betterment of their community, this is not an egoless action. To be egoless would mean to be without separation, without an intrinsic understanding of the natural differences between objects in this world. We are meant to have a fluidity between our two halves, fully individual humans who recognize their connectivity to all life surrounding them. This requires tremendous work and effort and diligence, we must grasp what is still undeveloped within us and then not shy away from the action and growth which is necessary.
Making an enemy of the ego side-steps the real task at hand, it is a way of creating a strawman who can be attacked as a means of distracting ourselves from the actual work which scares and intimidates us. But we need to feel trepidation, we must go to those places which have subdued us in the past. Here is where our treasure lies, this is where our sense of self and being can expand, mature and stretch out towards the wholeness we have been longing for. Your ego is an ally, a dear friend which you yourself must take responsibility for and guide towards its most integrated expression. We all gain so much from such a process. A strong individual gives abundantly to her community, she possesses the strength of will to let her gifts be shared richly, freely, because this is how we love and live together as a team, a tribe, a united healthy human family. It is time to celebrate such an integrated human, to encourage one another these are the people we seek in our family.
