The Inevitable Spiritual Ego
Sometimes I hear from clients or readers that they do not want a “spiritual ego.” Well, I’m sorry, but that is inevitable as Spirit rises toward conscious awareness while ego is still the center of your consciousness. It is, in fact, what teachings like A Course in Miracles are for.
Any sense of
meaning, purpose, significance, value, learning, journey, or mission about the
person’s life and world is ego. And as the Course says, Spirit will not
take these away from you, but transform them. What happens after an experience
when Truth dawns on your mind spontaneously, through a near death experience,
or through a teaching is a shift in what you see the personal
experience—consciousness—is for. It now has a spiritual purpose, which will
vary from person to person. It may be about morality, loving each other,
forgiving, learning about the Truth within you, or some combination of these.
It may evolve over time. Ego does not
fall away in this process. It is spiritualized.
This is not a
bad thing or a wrong thing, but, again, an inevitable thing as Spirit rises
toward conscious awareness while ego is still the center of consciousness. It
is, in fact, what most people want, what excites them about spirituality, and
where spirituality begins and ends for them. For many, Spirit advances toward
conscious awareness throughout their life and their spiritual ego advances. For
a relative few, the spiritual ego turns out to be just a passage that ends in enlightenment.
Advanced stages
of a spiritual ego are often mistaken for enlightenment. But enlightenment is
when ego falls away from the center of consciousness and there is no longer any
sense of meaning, purpose, significance, value, learning, journey, or mission—even
spiritual versions of these—about the person and their world. This is when one
discovers the meaning behind the Buddhist “gateless gate”: One embarks on a
journey at the end of which is a gate. They pass through the gate and look back
and see there was no journey. What seemed to take a journey to the gate—ego—has
fallen away, leaving What (Spirit) was always beyond the gate and had nothing
to do with what went on a journey. What is past the gate is wholly unlike what
came before the gate.
So, do not
disparage a spiritual ego. It is an indication that Spirit is rising to
conscious awareness. And the more that occurs, the more it mitigates the pain
of ego.
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Comments
My purpose in this visit to the dream is to go to school. To gain spiritual Knowledge. As a person in the dream one of the ways I learn is through experiences, through events that take place in my life. Memories. Dream thoughts. Spiritual Knowledge is here also, but I can’t get at it. It is only part of the event, part of my story, (a special relationship). I am unaware of Knowledge. To free it (which is why I am here after all) it must stand alone in its pure form. This is where Forgiveness comes in. When we release the dream, the special relationships, and move into the Now, the Knowledge is released in its pure form. It is not the part of a human story. It is not usually something I am aware of. It is a spiritual process. I may experience it as intuition, maybe a thought that suddenly comes where I think, “Where did THAT come from!” Forgiveness is the key to spiritual Knowledge. Over time in working a spiritual program we begin to feel we are smarter than we used to be. Not book smart, but intuition smart, spiritual smart. Thoughts come to us from their Source. We are living a life of spiritual awareness.