The Ego

Have you ever noticed, on this spiritual journey of ours, just how amazing The Ego is?
As a holistic therapist, I frequently work with clients who feel utterly overwhelmed by the sheer degree of emotion they are experiencing. They feel they are drowning. And they are initially shocked when I ask them how they know they are drowning, and gently point out that if there wasn’t somewhere a bit of them that wasn’t drowning, they would have drowned by now.
I ask them what or who it is that is observing that they feel like they are drowning. Who is it, I ask, that is staying afloat enough to know that another something feels like it is drowning. It is usually a revelation, and hugely liberating. From then on, we talk about them noticing that a part of them feels like it is drowning. And we can also appreciate that there is always a part – the observer, the noticer – that is not drowning. Ever.
That is always true. Even in severe mental illness – in fact, especially in severe mental illness – there is a part of us that looks on and is not overwhelmed. A part that is not drowning. So, what I want to think about is this “me” at the centre of all this happening that’s taking place. Who do I mean when I talk about ‘me’ drowning? Or me feeling overwhelmed? Or even, me deliriously happy or over the moon? Even, me dying, or being born?
How can I experience, and observe, and observe myself observing, all at the same time? Is there, if you will, a dancer doing the dance? Or is there simply just the dance, which I am both a part of and yet watching at the same time? How can I be both the dancer doing the dance and the observer watching the dancer and the dance?
Who am I? Really? Which brings me to the crux of what I want to talk about. I want to have a think about ‘The Ego’.
I’ve been noticing a lot, recently, how we love to knock this thing we call ‘The Ego.’ We read in spiritual literature, and hear from spiritual speakers and thinkers, that it is our enemy. We read that it is fear-based, the opposite of all we really are. We read that we have to find it out, discover all its little tricks, recognise when we are identifying with the ego, and believing it, rather than remembering that we are Love.
We talk a lot about duality, don’t we? We like to say what a bad thing it is, this splitting everything into good and bad, love or fear. I’ve done a fair bit of that sort of writing myself, before things became a bit clearer.
We like to knock duality, and yet, when we do so we miss completely that it is the ego that is responsible, quite magnificently, for how we relate to these human bodies of ours, these personalities which we borrow for a little while, and every single moment, peaceful or dramatic, which takes place in this now? That it is, in fact, absolutely central to our growth as spiritual beings.
Let me ask you, how would expansion happen, how would contrast happen, how would we grow in experience and wisdom, how would we rediscover unconditional love, if it were not for this superbly created and crafted, beautifully responsive and reactive, player we call the ego? What would we do? What would challenge or excite us? Where would the adventure and the gift be?
Supposing that the ego is not bad at all? Suppose it is of the same loving energy as everything else that is? Suppose that it is our own creation, and that we create it in the service of All That Is? Supposing that we are always essence flowing in the flow of all that is life itself? And that we adopt a persona – The Ego – to help us to perfect the role we have decided to adopt for the purpose of this lifetime? Just as others of our soul family created theirs? Suppose that we all planned how our respective egos would interact to play out the adventures and dramas and joys of this lifetime?
Supposing that the ego is not an enemy at all, but a supreme gift? Supposing, in fact, that this time/space reality could not function without it? Suppose that it is the perfect foil to the unconditional love that is our true nature, and that only by creating this temporary personality, flawed and with work to do, and a psychological and emotional history to go beyond, can we be helped to rediscover who we really are? And that this, and only this, is how this time/space hologram serves as a unique playground for those who choose to incarnate here, eager for expansion, and with a sacred purpose which will only gradually be revealed?
I believe we are, indeed, essence. That we have journeyed many lifetimes as the essence we are. We have been male/female, we have manifested as this pure essence we are in different cultures and circumstances, and experienced all that life has to offer, and the entire range of human emotion, joy and suffering and everything in between.
And I find that enormously liberating. I like knowing that I am never fixed, never one way, always changing and expanding and experimenting and having fun. I like that I am all experience, and at the same time I am the flow which gives birth to the experience.I like that I am not these thoughts that come and go, that I am not these feelings that I feel happening in my body. That I am rather the quiet compassionate watcher as all this comes and goes. The stillness in the eye of each storm.
I am in awe at the intricacy and scale of it all, of us, of who I really am. How awesome are we!