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The Erroneous Ego

I love my new job. It gives me several opportunities to squash my ego. I like to think of my ego as this wild monster whom I stuff into a little box and then sit on top. He's always trying to get out and he hates his little container that I'm constantly stuffing him into. I derive great satisfaction by keeping him at bay, and I am equally amused by its strident attempts to escape!

I just finished reading Dr. Dyer's book The Shift. I loved it as much as I love his other works so I had my family watch The Shift last night for family home evening. It's available for free on YouTube because Wayne Dyer is epic like that--he always wanted his content disseminated as freely as possible so that it could bless as many lives as possible.

Anyhow, I took notes on ego and I'm pasting them here. I'd like to spend more time caressing these thoughts, but tonight I'm in a crunch so I'll have to come back. But I did a pretty bang up job scribbling down my thoughts in the first place, so here we go:

The Erroneous Ego

The ego would have us believe the erroneous. Such as:

Who I am is what I have
We are not our possessions. If we lost it all would we be therefore nothing? We came into this world with nothing and we shall leave with nothing. That fact doesn’t change our worth so why would what we accumulate make of us something more that what we arrived as? If we are what we have, then when we don’t have, we aren’t! The Tao Te Ching states “What we gain causes more problems than what we lose. By being content we will never be disappointed.” We need nothing to verify or validate us. Ego will always clamor for more. Time to tell the ego NO MORE!

Who I am is What I Do
Ha! Lie! You are not what you do and if you never did another thing again you’d still be the spiritual essence that is you. Is my best friend Tyler less because he now sits in a wheel chair and cannot do? NO! You are a spiritual being having a human experience. A human BEING not a human DOING. By diminishing we increase. The less we try to do the more we accomplish. Less truly is more. Can you make your fingernails grow, your heart beat? NO. It all happens according to divine order. We too, must learn to allow and flow with the Tao. Tao or God is always doing nothing, yet leaving nothing undone.

If we are what we do, then when we don’t or can’t do, we aren’t!  There is no retirement from who you are. Live your authentic life and you will do what you do till the day you die. We experience life by being not doing. Pablo Picasso once said, “While I work, I leave my body outside the door the way the Moslems take off their shoes before entering the mosque.” Let your soul do the doing.

Who I am Is What others think of me
FALSE! We’re divine pieces of the whole--individualized expressions of God created out of the great void. External validation and the opinions and observations of others do not determine our worth. What others think of us is none of our business. My reputation is none of my concern cuz I cannot control what others think of me. Character, however, is in my control. Self-esteem stems from internally held positive beliefs about ourselves, not from the approval of others. What we think of ourselves is tied to our Source (e.g. God). We get our relationship with Source right and everything else falls into place.

I am Separate from Everyone Else
NOT TRUE! The ego needs to feel special, unique, and distinct. Everything is a competition and ego must win. This creates separation and destroys the unity that is so essential for humanity. We must learn to see how we are all interconnected. Ramana Maharshi states, “There are no others.” When we let go of separation we can stop trying to prove our superiority over others. I’m prettier, smarter, better, etc. Nope, we are all one. All spun from the same divine cloth. All genius. All beautiful, amazing creatures of grace. All brothers and sisters. One grand family. We can see the unfolding of God in everyone. “No tree has branches so foolish as to fight among themselves.” There is no “them” only us and we are here to serve each other and love each other. We are one.

I am separate from what’s missing in my life
NOT SO! There are no shortages in this universe. Ego would have us believe in shortages and scarcity. We must hurry and acquire more than others. Abundance is reality. There is enough and to spare. Since there is nowhere God is not, and you are connected to God, then everything you need is always available and you can learn to attract and manifest exactly what you need in your life when you need it. We simply need to stay connected to source. Create intentions and manifest them into your life. John Muir described it best, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

God or Spirit (Tao) is everywhere 
Therefore God is in me
God is in everything I perceive to be missing 
Conclusion: I am connected by spirit to everything I view as missing 
Suggested action: Align with spirit and see how what appeared to be missing begins to show up

I am separate from God
BLASPHEMY. EGO=edging god out. Ego is terrified that we will realize we are a piece of god. Ego’s leadership is doomed if we realize our godness. Ego would have us believe that we and God are separate. The man-made God is a bully god who punishes, gets jealous, and acts like some surveillance camera in the sky who doles out rewards to those who are worthy and obedient and withholds from those who do not do his bidding. I do not believe in such a God who watches over, punishes, and controls his subjects. My God is love. He is us and we are him. We are connected and she pours forth her love and abundance just as the sun because it is her nature to do so-- just as it is the suns nature to warm and light our planet earth.

AMEN!







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