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Your Ego Is Your Friend?….
Last updated on: May 16, 2014 at 2:22 pm by David Matthew Brown
Your Ego Is Your Friend?…. 2014-05-16T14:22:15-06:00 David Matthew Brown
Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.
Many people in spiritual circles admonish the “Ego”. Some call it the enemy, some come up with clever phrases about it, such as “Electing God Out”, yet as we begin to move in our practice through meditation, prayer, contemplation, self-reflection, and discernment, we begin to discover that this so called enemy is really just lost and yet we identifying with it as who we are, so we are lost. As we move closer to who we really are, which is “unconditional love”, we discover that the Ego and Spirit actually are in union together. We discover this because, everything is connected in love, and all is one, and the one is in all and all are in the one.
With this inner knowing we see the movement of the Ego. The Ego is not bad or good, but when the Ego leads then we find ourselves in trouble. The Ego is not a good leader, in fact it is a horrible, self centered, and selfish leader when left on its own. But as when we begin to recognize ourselves as Spirit and stop identifying ourselves with Ego, then we begin to see how helpful the Ego movement is. For example, the Ego is here to protect us from harm, without it we would be in trouble. Lets say you are walking on the street and see someone coming at you with a knife, your Ego will either tell you to run or fight. Hence flight or fight. This is part of a healthy Ego. Many people in their practice want to rid themselves of Ego to become perfect, but that is still Ego using them. Ego is subtle, for example, Ego is impatient, until we discover that we are love and then love teaches us that love is patient. So here again Ego comes in to teach us and help with our growth back home. Underneath Ego’s call, is a call for love. It is popular in most circles to say that Ego is evil, or the enemy, but that is still Ego. All is one. It is difficult to hear this message. Truth is Truth, it doesn’t need belief.
But when Ego leads your life, then separation dominates, judgment, condemnation, fear, greed, lack, etc… and these are created by something that is lost. When we are lost in the Ego as who we are, then we are “lost” till we are “found”. The finding is that we are unconditional love. But in our practice we are moving from all conditions, traditions, and beliefs. That is its function, to protect, that’s it. So it is makes no sense in our practice to say that EGO IS THE ENEMY when it is not. Everything is working for us. EVERYTHING IS LOVE.
Here is a feature I wrote on Unconditional Love that recently appeared in REAL US: REAL US
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