In our first article we discussed the power of the ego and how it can disguise its motives and actually use the tools that we have gathered to cure it and it and ourselves to help deepen the fears, anger, prejudices, or whatever psychological influences that often serve as soul cages in our lives. The ego has the power to cloak itself in the best intentions, especially if we don't recognize that it is powerful and controlling our decisions most of the time.
A systems dynamics teacher at a workshop I attended explained it very well when he talked about people and their intellectual abilities. He basically said that the cerebral cortex and reasoning developed to such a large extent in the human being because it was an adaptation that could help human beings get what they wanted when brute force didn't work. He said that reasoning, therefor, detached from deep examination is often rationalizing. It is tricking one's own mind and finding reasons for one to take what one wants, regardless of what happens to others. It is the next step in the evolution of the reptilian brain. I describe this process as an extension of the ego.
Whatever we choose, whatever we like, whatever brings us comfort brings comfort to the ego also. Whatever does not bring us comfort at first, until the ego is pushed aside and its power diminished, is probably what is good for us. This is a hard saying. What it means is that the people who are spiritual teachers that you might feel most comfortable with may be comfortable to you because the ego is making them attractive. If you have chosen some type of spiritual practice the same may be true. One way to get around this, however, is to push the practice a little bit. Reaching a bit beyond one's comfort zone in all things breaks the power of the ego and improves our chances for spiritual enlightenment and freedom.
You may notice how quickly you become dissatisfied with a teacher or a practice just by being pushed, or pushing yourself just a little more. That is because the ego no longer likes it. The ego can put you to sleep to escape this practice. It can make you hate a teacher all of a sudden. It can make you become upset with a group or a teaching. It will do anything to remain in place and in charge, until you begin to receive positive results. The ego is not our enemy, it is the part of the mind developed to help us make it on the material plane. Many people talk about getting rid of the ego. The idea, however, in new spirituality as understood by Diana Sarah Wellness, is to enlist the help of the ego. Once the ego sees that our practice is helping us prosper it will be all for it, and will even remind us to do the practice if we intend to skip a day or two. Once we continue to do the practice, as we begin to lay the ego aside, not striving to be the best or better than anyone else, but just doing our own best, we need not worry as much about the ego in this area.
We need not fight against parts of ourselves forever. We don't need to conquer the mind, the body, hatred or fear. We need to be able to claim them all--reclaim them as part of ourselves, so they become what they were originally meant to be, tools to help us live and prosper in the universe. As we expand our concept of self the ego is no longer beneficial to us, it is beneficial to everyone else. A new cosmology and understanding of the world is what we need to do this. We will speak more of this in our next article on the Ego.
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