The Ego and God

In the beginning, if you should come in contact with any greater soul who is in union with the Divine the ego will immediately begin to protect itself. A number of interesting things will happen. You will not be able to ask this person any of the questions about the Divine that have been burning within you. You will find yourself attempting to manipulate them in a manner that you know to be misguided but you have nothing else to draw on. You will find that you can never gain the upper hand on this individual regardless of what you might attempt to do. All of what you believe to be wise revelations on your part will amount to nothing before them.

We are living in a culture where we want everything right now. And this is the way the ego approaches the divine as well. Our egos think we can handle it. The ego will always say that it is not afraid but, the ego is basically suicidal before God. This is the inevitable result of the ego discovering that it can not compete with God. Thus, it comes to the conclusion that the ego must be vanquished in order to perceive God. So, you become faced with the ridiculous situation of the ego trying to vanquish itself. Besides the fact that this is impossible, the ultimate conclusion of the ego to deal with this problem is self sacrifice, which is an aspect of martyrdom, which in effect is suicide. Of course in the end this is not what it is all about.

The ego is primarily interested in serving itself. It will want the Wisdom for its own sake. It will want to use the powers for its own benefit. It believes that the Higher Knowledge is owed to it. It believes that it is the duty of all of those in the service of the Father to save them. It believes that anger is power. It believes that you must fear God even though it will claim that it is not afraid. It believes it knows the only way to heaven. It will rationalize everything to its own advantage. And yet, as long as we are here in the body we cannot do without this thing we have come to call the ego.

So, how do we deal with this thing? For those who are younger in the spiritual sense, and this has nothing to do with age, position, wealth or any other social measure, without the ego they probably would not survive in the physical. So, for them it is a necessary evil. For those who are more mature as souls, whereby these people have a higher purpose to fulfill on Earth, they must come to the point of teaching the ego how to be of service. The ego is supposed to serve the Angel, it is not supposed to be the other way around.

The first step in this process is simply to become aware of which part of you is the ego and which part is the Angel. This is what the disciplines are all about. Discipline is a derivative of discipleship, thus, if your Self cannot discipline your self then it is a good idea to find a Wiser person to “serve.” The disciplines generally used to control the ego are; silent repetitions, vows of silence, fasting, or any vow you make and hold to no matter what, sitting in meditation, breath control, not doing, etc.

The idea of all of these disciplines is to try to control at least some if not all of those things which compel you to act and are motivated by the ego. If you can do this while “watching” from the “center” you will be able to discern which of those things that compel you to move are coming from the ego or the soul. You should be able to find this “center” during your meditations. The intention is never really to eliminate ego, just learn how to manage it in a way that it serves the body and the Angel. But, also know that this is a never ending battle between the Self and the self.