The Ego Trip: An Earthly Vacation

If there is one thing that has had a bad rap over the years it would be that Freudian term: the ego.

Constantly crucified as the source of all problems psychological and all human frustration.

But is this justified or just another scapegoat or rather scapegoat? And beyond that, if the ego is the source of all conflict, how do we get rid of it? Or can we?

First a story about my university days. Once upon a time I took a University class in psychology 101. I was curious about this area of study, yet all I really knew about it was that it was a compound Greek word. Psyche is a Greek word for "spirit" and logos is Greek for "study." So psychology in its most basic form is the study of the spirit. However, as I read the first three pages of the "psychology" textbook I was informed that modern psychology consists of three main components:

1. The study of the parts of the brain 2. The study of human behaviour, including body language 3. The study of the environment in which we live and the affects thereof

"Well, this is illogical" I thought with tongue firmly pressed in cheek. There isn't even a mention of the spirit or spirituality in this University's texbook definition of psychology. The more I thought about this, the more infuriated I became.

"Don't words mean anything anymore?" I questioned. A person could go through this University and get a degree in "psychology" without knowing the very first thing about it! Without even knowing what the word means! This is ludicrous. This is crazy. Somebody pinch me:)

So this was my first experience with modern psychology. While I have respect for this field of endeavor and some of the treatments that come from it, I simply don't think it is named correctly. Alas, I was disenfranchised with this, so I pursued what I thought psychology really was.

I soon found out that in order to "study the spirit" one must be a mystic. One must engage in the etheric experience of the spirit, the psyche of others. From this lost knowledge would come some insight to indentify and resolve conflicts on the energetic level.

As I began to explore my own mystical abilities and understanding, I became to realize that what defined spirituality was not its unlimited nature. Rather it was defined by what limited the spirit the most. Renowned"psychologist" Sigmund Freud coined the term: "ego" in order to describe this limiting aspect of the human personality.

What essentially caused the dichotomy between ego and spirit is their intrinsic motivation. The ego, through biological impulse, is motivated to survive in a world in which physical death is inevitable (give or take...physical immortality is an intriguing concept as well). So this is why the ego is fraught with frustration, because it is trying to fulfil the unfulfilable, to satisfy the insatiable, constantly thwarting the inevitable. In this context, life is nothing but a biological struggle which inescapably leads to failure because success is never fully realizable.

Then of course there is the spirit, which is motivated to learn, to experience. Yet it does this in a much more detached way than the ego, which is sleeping around a hundred pounds or more of physical body weight. As Gautama Buddha apparently once said "Suffering is born of attachment." Well, it is because the spirit is detached from the body (while the ego is very much attached to the body) that it is able to THRIVE whereas the ego struggles to merely SURVIVE.

Heck, even Sri Sathya Sai Baba, arguably one of the most spiritually advanced/realized people on this planet (he is a seventeen point avatar who lives in India) has said that "God is man minus ego."

So here we have the rift between the physical hungers of the flesh and the spiritual thirst for experience. But how are we ever able to resolve this conflict? How can we subtract the ego from our being?

Well, generally speaking, I don't think we can eliminate the ego and still exist in a physical body. The reason for this came to me when I was struggling with laundry and I ran out of clean T-shirts. So I asked my roommate if I could borrow one of his shirts. Graciously he agreed and handed me a shirt that had the following slogan written on it:

SALAD IS MURDER

At first I started laughing really hard at that one. I thought it was an illogical statement that was so absurd that it was hilarious. Especially considering that my roommate was a vegetarian and who also saw humour in this. But as I started thinking about it, technically I had to agree. That is, in order to make a salad, we have to kill a head of lettuce and grind it between our teeth and ingest it. It is quite a grizzly end for the lettuce!

Now I won't get into the philosophical arguments over whether or not flora and fauna is self-aware or even sentient at all. However, without the ego's biological fear of meeting God/experiencing death, we wouldn't be able to eat at all. Because the spirit doesn't see itself as superior or inferior to anything at all. In the eyes of the spirit, everything is inherently equal as it is connected to the same source, the same "Oneness." So if we were truly spiritual, we would have no right to kill another living organism, plant or animal, in order to sustain ourselves. It is the ego's inferiority/superiority complex that actually allows it to survive by willingly killing and violently chewing, crushing and digesting (the stomach is filled with hydrochloric acid) other lifeforms in order to sustain itself.

Like it or not, the ego is synonymous with physical life. If we were spiritual, we would not need to eat other organisms, nor would we be motivated to do so. Because ultimately, how do we rationalize killing and processing other life forms in order to satisfy ourselves? Surely that is as far from spiritual as spiritual gets.

So, even if we could get rid of the ego, why would we want to? I mean the first sign of being "ego-free" is an unwillingness to take any other forms of life to sustain our own physical existence.

Now I would like to put a caveat in here. I have heard of a woman named Jasmuheen who has started a group called the "breatharians" who apparently do not need to eat food because they have trained their bodies to take the energy that sustains themselves entirely from prana, which is a form of lifeforce that we breathe in air. So this is an interesting example of possibly being able to exist without the ego. However for most of us, this is either a lofty goal or a ludicrous idea, so the name of the game isn't how to eliminate the ego as it helps us survive in the physical world from which the spirit is comfortably detached. The name of the game is learning how to cope with the rift between the ego and spirit.

The name of the game is integration. Have you ever heard the saying "thoughts are things?" How about "energy follows thought?" Either way, this rift between the spirit and ego can actually be seen etherically as it can create conflicts within the psyche itself. The pain the personality endures because of this rift can be quite traumatic and from this trauma can stem self-defeating and self-sabotaging patterns in our lives that recur with frustrating consistency. It can also cause health problems as energy blockages within the lightbody itself.

I am not speaking here from a textbook but on years of experience of "studying the spirit" of many people from all over the world. It is out of my own sense of frustration and that of my clients who I saw were going through the same tug-of-war with this "two-headed monster within" that I decided to develop a solution to this problem.

In myself and many others from around the world with which I have worked, there is quite a lot of anger in our psyches. Much of this anger stems from the "indignance" of the spirit. From a physical-ego perspective, it is easy for the detached spirit to declare:

"I would like to learn about how to love, so I will physically incarnate into an abusive and emotionally unsupportive family and be conditioned to not accept nor approve of myself. While this will almost certainly result in much pain and suffering in the physical realm, including many destructive family and personal relationships. Hopefully this pain will be stimulating enough so that I can begin to question the source of this conflict...and begin to learn about love. Okay, sounds like a plan. Make it so!"

So as long as we put the spirit on a pedestal above the ego, and as long as we demonize the ego for all of its "sin," we Karen't acknowledging the real nuts and bolts work that we are doing down here in the physical. It is easy for the detached spirit to have a shopping list of things it would like to learn and experience.

However there must be a conscious spiritual acknowledgement of the ego who is actually doing the legwork. Then both spirit and ego can get on the same page and begin to truly work together for mutual benefit. The spirit may see no point in getting a new car or earning a million dollars. The ego may see endless frustration in driving an unreliable junker and perpetual financial insecurity. There is a disconnect there.

So the goal here is for both the ego (who is doing the legwork) and the spirit (who is providing the energy) to acknowledge each others needs so that the ego isn't [ironically] going on an ego trip and screwing over the physical person. Likewise, if the ego is constantly resentful of the spirit and its lofty ideals, then it will be cutting itself off from its source of energy and its source of influence in the world to accomplish what it (ego) wants and needs. So finding the common ground is crucial. This is beginning to sound like marriage (grin).

Now because I can etherically communicate with other people's spirit and see their psyche, I can access the root of these contradictions and transform them, one issue at a time. All of this happens in the spirit world. When many thoughts of struggle and strife can manifest into physical, emotional and mental problems in the physical world. However, with the help of an aspect of consciousness that I call The Highest Fully Integrated Self, many of these issues can be resolved at their source.

This process of resolving these issues has evolved into an energy work session that I perform for people from all over the world at a distance. It is called T.H.I.S. Integration Station session. For more information on how to resolve this perennial conflict between ego and spirit through the issues it causes, on how to move from textbook theory to mystical experience, please visit my website http://www.cosmicbliss.net and feel this amazing work for yourself!

By Grant MacPhedran